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Date:      Sat, 21 Aug 2004 17:58:38 +0930
From:      Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        freebsd-performance@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: RAID-3? (was: cvs commit: src MAINTAINERS)
Message-ID:  <20040821082838.GF92256@wantadilla.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <20040820193547.GZ30151@darkness.comp.waw.pl>
References:  <20040817132740.GA32139@freebie.xs4all.nl> <41449.1092750244@critter.freebsd.dk> <200408161043.i7GAhfXs079045@repoman.freebsd.org> <20040817004407.GA81257@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20040817074633.GO30151@darkness.comp.waw.pl> <20040817112900.GA31635@freebie.xs4all.nl> <20040817124020.GK88156@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20040817131612.GT30151@darkness.comp.waw.pl> <20040819024359.GA85432@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20040820193547.GZ30151@darkness.comp.waw.pl>

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[Removing cvs-src and cvs-all]

On Friday, 20 August 2004 at 21:35:47 +0200, Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 12:13:59PM +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> +> On Tuesday, 17 August 2004 at 15:16:12 +0200, Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:
> +> > On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 10:10:20PM +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> +> > +> On the contrary.  RAID-3 requires byte-level striping, which is
> +> > +> ridiculous on the hardware that FreeBSD supports.
> [...]
> +> > Want to compare performance with vinum's RAID5?:)
> +>
> +> Feel free.  But do it with more than a single process accessing the
> +> disks.
>
> Tests were done using this HW:
>
> da0 at iir0 bus 2 target 0 lun 0
> da0: <ICP Host Drive   #00 > Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device
> da0: Tagged Queueing Enabled
> da0: 8675MB (17767890 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 1106C)
> da1 at iir0 bus 2 target 1 lun 0
> da1: <ICP Host Drive   #01 > Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device
> da1: Tagged Queueing Enabled
> da1: 8675MB (17767890 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 1106C)
> da2 at iir0 bus 2 target 2 lun 0
> da2: <ICP Host Drive   #02 > Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device
> da2: Tagged Queueing Enabled
> da2: 8675MB (17767890 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 1106C)

So these are two disks + parity, right?  That's not exactly a typical
setup.

> Test has been done for 10000 random requests (offset, size and operation
> type was random).
>
> RAID3:
> 		Number of	Bytes per	Requests per
> Operations	processes	second		second
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> READ		3		6329500		95
> READ		15		8981047		135
> READ		100		10719314	161
> WRITE		3		5073263		76
> WRITE		15		7467387		112
> WRITE		100		8631136		129
> READ/WRITE	3		6041795		90
> READ/WRITE	15		8104847		121
> READ/WRITE	100		9494250		142
>
> RAID5:

What was the RAID-5 stripe size?

> 		Number of	Bytes per	Requests per
> Operations	processes	second		second
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> READ		3		6041795		90
> READ		15		14768833	222
> READ		100		19546985	294
> WRITE		3		3479568		52
> WRITE		15		5403231		81
> WRITE		100		6211191		93
> READ/WRITE	3		4521071		68
> READ/WRITE	15		7911875		119
> READ/WRITE	100		9360528		140
>
> As you can see RAID5 is only faster in READ tests for 15 and 100 processes
> working in parallel. As I can see, RAID3 is faster in all the rest tests.

I don't really see enough to convince me either way.  If you use small
RAID-5 stripes, then yes, it's possible to get better performance from
RAID-3.  I'd also suggest that your figures would look very different
with five or nine disks.  It would also be interested to see the
results of rawio on these configurations, and also the relative
performance of a single disk.

> Of course you are welcome to try by yourself.

Yes, of course, but I don't have time

> Anyway, if I can ask for something. Think twice before calling
> something ridiculous without understanding.

I'm sorry if I upset you, but I'm still by no means convinced of the
usefulness of RAID-3.

Greg
--
Note: I discard all HTML mail unseen.
Finger grog@FreeBSD.org for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.

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