Networker

Re: [Networker] Solaris 10 Global Zone Server Networker 7.4

2007-08-30 14:33:59
Subject: Re: [Networker] Solaris 10 Global Zone Server Networker 7.4
From: Jonathan Loran <jloran AT SSL.BERKELEY DOT EDU>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:29:12 -0700
Thanks for the info on iowait.  I didn't know that.  how annoying!

It think you're right about the iSCSI initiator code being the bottleneck. On other systems, in particular X86, with more single thread throughput, they don't really need the TCP offload engine. We've done some testing with QLogic cards, in particular, the QLC4052C, and it didn't provide any IO enhancement on these boxes. Running ZFS on the X86 boxes to iSCSI arrays, with write caching enabled, we see huge IO numbers, even with the Solaris software initiator. I think we will be moving to an x86 based backup server in our next round.

Jon

Matthew Huff wrote:
Just an FYI, the iowait statistic is disabled on Solaris 10 (both in
top, and other utilities). It always shows as 0. The reason given by Sun
is that it was a misleading statistic. Annoys me to no end, but nothing
can be done about it.

We aren't running a T2000 for backups, but we are running an 8 core
T2000 with 64GB of ram for our primary OLTP trading database running
Oracle 10gR2. We have it connected to a Texas Memory Systems RAMSAN
(memory based filesystem with battery backup) for the Oracle Transaction
logs, and an EMC CX array for the data storage. We do around 3-5 million
transactions per day. The point of this is that the T2000 can do very
high io throughput. I suspect the iSCSI was the issue especially since
if you were using the onboard ethernet it doesn't have an iSCSI offload
engine. A card like Qlogic QLE4060C will provide huge speed improvements
with low cpu overhead. Also, tcp tuning for iSCSI especially jumbo
frames is very important.




----
Matthew Huff       | One Manhattanville Rd
OTA Management LLC | Purchase, NY 10577
www.otaotr.com     | Phone: 914-460-4039
aim: matthewbhuff | Fax: 914-460-4139



-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Jonathan Loran
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 1:04 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Solaris 10 Global Zone Server Networker 7.4

Hi Ben,

I have a few comments on the T2000 as a backup machine. We bough a 6 CPU 8GB RAM T2000 for our backup server. This system is indeed an impressive box, as you probably know, since it sounds like you have some

experience with it. However, you need to be aware that as a backup server, it can have bottlenecks. The single task processing power of the Sun T1 processor architecture is not very high.
We were using a storage array on an iSCSI SAN as an advanced file system

device. We used software iSCSI on the T2000 for the initiator. When backups were running full speed, the maximum throughput we saw on the T2000 to the iSCSI SAN was about 10-15MB/sec, and if there were more than 2 sessions running at a time, this would slow down to 5-7MB/sec. All the while, the T2000 would only be using 10-20% of it's total CPU. IO wait was always 0, the SAN was not the bottleneck. Basically, what was happening was a few of the 24 processing threads on the T2000 were pegged, and the rest of the machine was idle.

We recently changed the backup server to a 2 CPU Sun V215, a much less powerful system, by all accounts, but it has about 4 times the single thread integer performance of the T2000. The write speeds to the SAN now top out at about 30-40MB/sec, while the CPU usage on the V215 hits 80-90% sometimes.

I'm not sure what backup media you're storing your data to, but I will bet you will find the T2000 under utilized at best, and at worst, you may experience poor throughput.

Good luck,

Jon

Benjamin Harner wrote:
Hey All,

I am in the midst of taking the big leap here and planing an upgrade
from 7.2.1 to 7.4.  I plan on putting it on a T2000 that runs other
apps
now(internal admin box you could say).  I am going to move everything
on
there now to a local zone and run networker from the global zone.
Anyone have a setup like this?  If so any issues or gotchas?

Thanks

Ben

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--


-     _____/     _____/      /           - Jonathan Loran -           -
-    /          /           /                IT Manager               -
-  _____  /   _____  /     /     Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley
-        /          /     /      (510) 643-5146 jloran AT ssl.berkeley DOT edu
- ______/    ______/    ______/           AST:7731^29u18e3


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