From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Oct 31 09:35:27 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 13D65106567D for ; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:35:27 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from QMTA06.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net (qmta06.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net [76.96.62.56]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B47178FC31 for ; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:35:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from OMTA09.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.62.20]) by QMTA06.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id ZMDE1a0010SCNGk56Mavlc; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:34:55 +0000 Received: from koitsu.dyndns.org ([69.181.141.110]) by OMTA09.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id ZMbQ1a00H2P6wsM3VMbRYm; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:35:25 +0000 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=aQgbMQmz5TEA:10 a=qMCG-Xc8eBMA:10 a=QycZ5dHgAAAA:8 a=BuEIq7yJM_gBHHhUonMA:9 a=BCseai8xRAVsDhux3Lq9B5VicFgA:4 a=EoioJ0NPDVgA:10 a=LY0hPdMaydYA:10 Received: by icarus.home.lan (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 6B836C9419; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:35:24 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:35:24 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick To: Simun Mikecin Message-ID: <20081031093524.GA27933@icarus.home.lan> References: <580369.72525.qm@web36607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <580369.72525.qm@web36607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Cc: Danny Carroll , reebsd-fs@freebsd.org, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Areca vs. ZFS performance testing. X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:35:27 -0000 On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 01:44:25AM -0700, Simun Mikecin wrote: > Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > > The tuning variables I advocate for a system with 2GB of RAM or more, > > on RELENG_7, are: > > vm.kmem_size="1536M" > > vm.kmem_size_max="1536M" > > There is no point in setting vm.kmem_size_max. Setting vm.kmem_size is > enough. vm.kmem_size_max is used for auto-tuning of kmem size which is > in this case actually overriden by manually setting vm.kmem_size. This information hasn't been mentioned by anyone before, so it's news to me. > > vfs.zfs.arc_min="16M" > > vfs.zfs.arc_max="64M" > > vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable="1" > > You can gradually increase arc_min and arc_max by ~16MB increments as > > you see fit; you should see general performance improvements as they > > get larger (more data being kept in the ARC), but don't get too crazy. > > I've tuned arc_max up to 128MB before with success, but I don't want > > to try anything larger without decreasing kmem_size_*. > > Can you explain why would you have to decrease kmem_size to use larger > ARC? AFAIK it should be contrary to what you are saying: when you use > larger kmem_size you can also use larger arc_max. Well, my understanding (which is probably wrong) is that the memory used for the ARC is somehow separate from that of the kmap. I was under the impression the kmap was used by ZFS for other things, and did not include ARC. If I'm incorrect, please state so -- it's cool, I just need to know. :-) > My suggestion if you are using kmem_size of 1536M would be to not tune > arc_min and arc_max if your system isn't panicing. If it does you > should try decreasing arc_max (from it's default value) until it > doesn't. People have advocated increasing arc_min and arc_max in the past, citing large performance gains as arc_max gets larger; you might see people mentioning that they see great performance increases when increasing arc_max from 64M to 128M. My understanding is that increasing the ARC provides more actual cached data that ZFS can reference (vs. pulling it off disk). Again, if I'm incorrect, please state so. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |