Oscar Olsson wrote:

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Howard Martin wrote:

Now to the next question. Why does the network I/O create such a high CPU
utilization? Is it because the ce adapters lack hardware acceleration
features, or is it because the Solaris 9 IP-stack isn't very fast?

You have mentioned you run Sun Trunking. IIRC that software can only run
on old Sun GEM gigabit cards (driver ge).
Those cards produce a lot of interrupts so they are not very efficient
in terms of CPU consumption.
You'd better of with newer chipsets, but not sure if Sun Trunking now
supports them.
In any case I know there are other 3d party alternatives to Sun Trunking
that work with many (if not all) NICs.

I have read the previous suggested documents about IP stack and OS tuning,
and I have applied some changes that I see fit, according to the various
sources. This has boosted performance with say ~5-10%, but I'm looking for
more like 50-100%, since that's what the drives should be able to handle
on average with live data comming from the clients.

So, is this high load by design, or are there better network adapters,
that can offload the CPU better than the ce ones, or is perhaps Solaris 10
an alternative, since SUn boasts how they have improved the IP stack? I
really don't know where to look next. I can't add more CPUs, since there
are already 4 CPUs in my V440 system. And upgrading the CPUs will probably
be too expensive, compared to the expected performance boost.

//Oscar

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