From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 31 22:01:29 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F5651065672 for ; Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:01:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kwoody@citytel.net) Received: from mail.citytel.net (mail.citytel.net [209.145.111.46]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6D7908FC08 for ; Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:01:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pop.citytel.net (pop.citytel.net [209.145.111.50]) by mail.citytel.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 19FA967FBB for ; Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:41:31 -0800 (PST) Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:41:30 -0800 (PST) From: Keith To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20111031132920.A86972@pop.citytel.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: RAID5 speed question. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:01:29 -0000 Have an ancient 4.1R mail server to replace. It has about 3000 accounts. Usual /var/mail to store mail. /var/mail is RAID5 on an old Dell PERC3 card. Its worked pretty well and have lived through 3 drive failures over the years. New Dell box with a PERC5/i. Same drive setup, a 500GB RAID5 for /var/mail. I do an ls -l in /var/mail on the old 4.10 machine and I get a directory listing in about 2 seconds. This is about 3000 mailboxes. On the new machine running 7.3 with the PERC5/i I rsync'd /var/mail and do an ls -l and it takes a full 22 seconds to get a directory listing. A plain ls in /var/mail on both machines is instantaneous. I know RAID5 is not 'optimal' for this but I'm surprised at the difference in how long it takes to do a directory listing using ls -l on the new machine compared to the old one. The new array is 500GB compared to about 36GB on the older machine. Shouldn't a long directory listing be faster on the PERC5/i compared to the old PERC3? Other than that the new machine in all other aspects is faster, a lot faster. Thanks.