On Sat, Aug 12, 2000 at 01:54:53AM -0700, Eyal Traitel wrote:
I can suggest you to check:
- Network cards and switches/routers between the Linuxes and the filers - check for 100mbit full duplex settings - check in the filer and the linux for nfsstat and netstat errors.
Good plan. It sounds to me like either an NFS tuning issue or the dual-processor, dual-ethernet locking problems that caused the Mindcraft benchmarks to be so horrible. You might actually get better performance under 2.2 if you dump the extra processor and buy a couple more servers (relatively cheap if you're going with, say, VA/Linux).
- I don't have experience with NFS on linux, but I know that there were a lot of nfs changes in the last kernels, so even if it worked OK before, maybe you should just consider to upgrade the linuxes - it is never bad in linux anyway... :) You'll probably get faster NFS that way, since nfs was moved to kernel level I think in 2.3 or something...
Ok, there's actually a kernel (no pun intended) of good advice, here, but there's also a lot of danger in what you're saying. Here's the detail:
The 2.3 series is an UNSTABLE development series. It is intended for kernel developers and those who want to test out new code only. The 2.4-test series is the beta for the initial roll-out of 2.4, the next stable kernel series based on 2.3.
If what you're running into is SMP-related you could very likely benifit from using 2.4, but IT IS ONLY IN BETA, so you would be crawling out on quite a limb here. At the very least, you would need to do some serious Q/A before deploying.
That said, your best first step here is to see if you have the same problem with one processor. If you don't, you know you're running into the SMP/ethernet locking problem and that your only options are single-processor or 2.4. Check the kernel mailing list and see if I'm wrong. There might be other ways to address this....