Trying to build a speed demon

[pete wright]

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 08:54:41 -0700, Randy Grafton
<rgrafton at indatacorp.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I am trying to build a Samba file server that will serve 2TB to a single
> dept. The dept will have a large variety of file types being saved to
> the server; thousands of small (<32K) files to hundreds of medium to
> large files (a few hundred KB in size to a few hundred MB in size). I am
> using a 3ware 9500 series card in a PCX slot with 8 SATA drives
> connected to it in a RAID 5 config. The proc is an Intel 3.2GHz with 4GB
> of 400MHz DDR ECC Dual Channel RAM. The computer also has a single GB
> Ethernet. The clients are all XP Pro. I have put 5.3 on it and
> recompiled the kernel with only the items (drivers?) in it that are
> physically on the system and being used. For example I've turned off
> USB, Serial and Parallel ports in the motherboard's BIOS and have
> removed them from my kernel. Do you gurus have anything else you could
> recommend? I know that RAID5 will have a slowdown in write performance
> as will using UFS (Journaled file system). Of course I'm not
> specifically asking for Samba help but any advice for kernel/OS/Network
> config or insight to fine tuning SAMBA on FreeBSD, so that this machine
> can set new land speed records. I was also wondering about dual NIC for
> load balancing as I'm hoping that the network is actually going to be
> the bottleneck here.
> 
first thing i would take a look at when doing file serving in this
type of config is to look at disk i/o as your main bottleneck.  RAID 5
will not give you the best throughput, also the 3Ware cards do not
have much onboard cache (as do most "pro-sumer" IDE RAID cards).  If
you are really concerned about limiting all bottlenecks I would move
away from IDE RAID and goto SCSI controllers with large amounts of
onboard cache.  not only will you gain the added benifits of quicker
disk I/O with SCSI RAID but I think you find a much more reliable
system in the long run.

HTH

-p


-- 
~~o0OO0o~~
Pete Wright
www.nycbug.org
NYC's *BSD User Group