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Date:      Wed, 04 Mar 1998 12:18:31 -0800 (PST)
From:      Simon Shapiro <shimon@simon-shapiro.org>
To:        Wilko Bulte <wilko@yedi.iaf.nl>
Cc:        grog@lemis.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, blkirk@float.eli.net, jdn@acp.qiv.com, tlambert@primenet.com, sbabkin@dcn.att.com, karl@mcs.net
Subject:   Re: SCSI Bus redundancy...
Message-ID:  <XFMail.980304121831.shimon@simon-shapiro.org>
In-Reply-To: <199803041805.TAA01136@yedi.iaf.nl>

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On 04-Mar-98 Wilko Bulte wrote:
 
...

>> The difficulty is in having FreeBSD capable of producing this traffic on
>> small blocks (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/something bs=64k is NOT typical
>> application).
> 
> Build a datawarehouse and do full-table reads etc. For dataprocessing etc
> you will never come near.

Sure.  These you make with 256KB stripes or larger, and turn read-ahead on.
BTW, these applications should enjoy Super-Ultra-Wide-ExtraWide SCSI.

> We've seen host adapters becoming saturated before the RAIDbox. This is
> of course using an artificial benchmark that produces 100% cache hits on
> the RAIDbox' cache.

Yup.  I think you will enjoy the new generation DPT controllers.  Even as a
passthrough to your RAID box.

>> > I could run two host channels on this thing across two RAID sets into
>> > two
>> > Adaptec adapters.  That might be a big win.
> 
> That could be possible, highly depends on the adapter & driver. But for
> single stream a well written driver & good card will probably not be the
> bottleneck. 

The bottleneck is not in the driver, but most likely in the SCSI sequencer.
 I suspect something in the kernel is also holding things down.  A clue can
be had in the drop in I/O rate when you switch from UP to SMP.  I dropped
the ball on tracking these down but will pick it up soon.  SMP is twice as
slow as UP in these tests.

----------


Sincerely Yours, 

Simon Shapiro
Shimon@Simon-Shapiro.ORG                      Voice:   503.799.2313

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