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Date:      Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:39:40 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us>
To:        Jeremy Chadwick <freebsd@jdc.parodius.com>
Cc:        freebsd-fs@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ZFS/compression/performance
Message-ID:  <alpine.GSO.2.01.1110121435130.9971@freddy.simplesystems.org>
In-Reply-To: <20111012165126.GA26562@icarus.home.lan>
References:  <alpine.BSF.2.00.1110111710210.12895@Elmer.dco.penx.com> <j73vl7$v02$1@dough.gmane.org> <CAHHaOua7zwp4DCgcU4bSFG2d-Kz-j_ovV7YiSMqmy700wFjBHg@mail.gmail.com> <20111012165126.GA26562@icarus.home.lan>

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On Wed, 12 Oct 2011, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>
> That might be the case on OpenSolaris but the performance hit on
> FreeBSD RELENG_8 is very high -- enough that enabling compression (using
> the defaults) causes stalls when I/O occurs (easily noticeable across
> SSH; characters are delayed/stalled (not buffered)), etc..

Solaris solved the problem by putting the zfs writer threads into a 
special scheduling class so that they are usually lower priority than 
normal processing.  Before this change, a desktop system would become 
almost unusable (intermittent loss of keyboard/mouse) while writing 
lots of data with compression enabled.  Some NFS servers encountered 
severe enough issues that NFS clients reported NFS timeouts.

> Another point: I haven't tinkered with compression on our Solaris 10
> machines at work so I don't know if it performs better, equal, or worse
> than FreeBSD or OpenSolaris.

>From what you describe, Solaris must be doing much better in this 
regard than FreeBSD.  Solaris is not necessarily faster but there is 
now little impact on interactive tasks.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/



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