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Date:      Fri, 3 Sep 2010 18:09:43 -0700
From:      Artem Belevich <fbsdlist@src.cx>
To:        Steven Hartland <killing@multiplay.co.uk>
Cc:        freebsd-fs@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: zfs very poor performance compared to ufs due to lack of cache?
Message-ID:  <AANLkTi=6bta-Obrh2ejLCHENEbhV5stbMsvfek3Ki4ba@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <5DB6E7C798E44D33A05673F4B773405E@multiplay.co.uk>
References:  <5DB6E7C798E44D33A05673F4B773405E@multiplay.co.uk>

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> For reference top shows:-
> Mem: 42M Active, 3129M Inact, 565M Wired, 3188K Cache, 19M Buf, 203M Free

Here's your problem -- inactive list got all your memory and starved ZFS ARC.
Easy workaround is to set vfs.zfs.arc_min to a value that would
guarantee that ARC does not give up too much memory. Let's say - 2GB.
Be warned that it would effectively make those 2GB unavailable to
applications.

Long term, though, there were number of patches posted on
freebsd-current and freebsd-hackers recently that do improve that
particular issue with ZFS. This patch in particular may help you:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2010-August/032731.html

> Swap: 4096M Total, 1180K Used, 4095M Free
>
> So what are we missing and how to we get zfs to perform like ufs
> and use all free ram as cache?

--Artem



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