Does anyone know if there are ways to tweak extra performance out of a C720? I'm thinking about adding more RAM, can it take more and does it improve things? Any other thoughts?
Thanks
Steve
-- Stephen J. Wilcox Internet Manager, Opal Telecommunications Plc http://www.opaltelecom.co.uk/ Tel: 0161 222 2000
On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
Does anyone know if there are ways to tweak extra performance out of a C720? I'm thinking about adding more RAM, can it take more and does it improve things? Any other thoughts?
I've played extensively with an F740, trying to squeeze every last op out of it...
o The F740 comes with 512 MB of RAM. We stuffed it with 1 GB of RAM (unsupported) and got 10-20% more ops out of it. This was the single biggest improvement we got, short of the inevitable and unpalatable "upgrade your filer to an F740/F760" solution.
o Turn off TCP for NFS. UDP has much less overhead.
o Turn on "minra" for your volume(s).
o Make sure "checksum_blocks" is off (default) for your volume(s).
o Offload some of the network load to the Gigabit NIC's (see below).
These have pros and cons, so careful, judicious, and documented changes, with monitoring and numerical results, will really help to determine if it does anything for you.
See the notes of this page:
http://www.spec.org/osg/sfs97/results/res98q3/sfs97-980805-00006.html
for some explanations of these.
Until next time...
The Mathworks, Inc. 508-647-7000 x7792 3 Apple Hill Drive, Natick, MA 01760-2098 508-647-7001 FAX tmerrill@mathworks.com http://www.mathworks.com ---
On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Todd C. Merrill wrote:
On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
Does anyone know if there are ways to tweak extra performance out of a C720? I'm thinking about adding more RAM, can it take more and does it improve things? Any other thoughts?
I've played extensively with an F740, trying to squeeze every last op out of it...
Doh! I have been informed that a C720 is a much different beast than an F720. My apologies, Stephen, if I got your hopes up. I didn't see the "C" before the number before I replied.
Until next time...
The Mathworks, Inc. 508-647-7000 x7792 3 Apple Hill Drive, Natick, MA 01760-2098 508-647-7001 FAX tmerrill@mathworks.com http://www.mathworks.com ---
I've got a 720 as well and we've been informed that a memory upgrade isn't supported. We've thought about going ahead and trying to stuff more RAM in the thing as well... I think that the biggest thing about trying to go about "improving things" is to understand the basics of how to monitor the performance of the filer. I wrote a message to toasters awhile back about performance monitoring but no-one came back with anything. I know how to take performance snapshots via STATIT and WAFL_SUSP but I have questions as to what the numbers I'm seeing really mean. I guess take one set when things are going well and one when people are gathering around with torches and pitchforks. Take a look at them next to each other and see what you can... Anyway this long winded messages relates to the topic and hand because in order to do anything to the filer to "improve things" including adjusting network, configs, or anything- you're going to have to understand how to read the cards after you work your magic. This whole thing is probably way too easy for the guys on this list, who've been working with servers and UNIX their whole adult lives, but for newbies like me... I guess I need to get a copy of "Performance Monitoring for Dummies" and let it ride.
GR
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com]On Behalf Of Stephen J. Wilcox Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 12:13 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Cheap upgrade
Does anyone know if there are ways to tweak extra performance out of a C720? I'm thinking about adding more RAM, can it take more and does it improve things? Any other thoughts?
Thanks
Steve
-- Stephen J. Wilcox Internet Manager, Opal Telecommunications Plc http://www.opaltelecom.co.uk/ Tel: 0161 222 2000
The performance monitoring thread must have been before I joined the list - if anyone has info on how to perf monitor could they fwd it to me..
Thanks also to Todd for his input on increasing system RAM. I've since found out that a C720 has 16Mb NVRAM, 512MB System which means it only has half the NVRAM of its big brothers.. is this also upgradeable to increase performance? Presumably if so this would increase the drive's read/write speed plus increase the capacity in the case of a filer?
Steve
-- Stephen J. Wilcox Internet Manager, Opal Telecommunications Plc http://www.opaltelecom.co.uk/ Tel: 0161 222 2000
On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Gregory T Rotunda wrote:
I've got a 720 as well and we've been informed that a memory upgrade isn't supported. We've thought about going ahead and trying to stuff more RAM in the thing as well... I think that the biggest thing about trying to go about "improving things" is to understand the basics of how to monitor the performance of the filer. I wrote a message to toasters awhile back about performance monitoring but no-one came back with anything. I know how to take performance snapshots via STATIT and WAFL_SUSP but I have questions as to what the numbers I'm seeing really mean. I guess take one set when things are going well and one when people are gathering around with torches and pitchforks. Take a look at them next to each other and see what you can... Anyway this long winded messages relates to the topic and hand because in order to do anything to the filer to "improve things" including adjusting network, configs, or anything- you're going to have to understand how to read the cards after you work your magic. This whole thing is probably way too easy for the guys on this list, who've been working with servers and UNIX their whole adult lives, but for newbies like me... I guess I need to get a copy of "Performance Monitoring for Dummies" and let it ride.
GR
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com]On Behalf Of Stephen J. Wilcox Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 12:13 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Cheap upgrade
Does anyone know if there are ways to tweak extra performance out of a C720? I'm thinking about adding more RAM, can it take more and does it improve things? Any other thoughts?
Thanks
Steve
-- Stephen J. Wilcox Internet Manager, Opal Telecommunications Plc http://www.opaltelecom.co.uk/ Tel: 0161 222 2000
On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
Thanks also to Todd for his input on increasing system RAM. I've since found out that a C720 has 16Mb NVRAM, 512MB System which means it only has half the NVRAM of its big brothers.. is this also upgradeable to increase performance? Presumably if so this would increase the drive's read/write speed plus increase the capacity in the case of a filer?
Do the C720's have the sysstat command? If you're doing a "lot" of writes (for large values of "lot"), more NVRAM will probably benefit you.
Is the box CPU bound (again, sysstat)? Filers are good in general up to about 70-80%, we've found, and then performance starts to suffer. They really hurt at 95-100%; ask me how I know. ;)
On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Gregory T Rotunda wrote:
the thing as well... I think that the biggest thing about trying to go about "improving things" is to understand the basics of how to monitor the performance of the filer.
Amen. To that end, I signed up for NetApp's 202 class (I think that's the number...) next week. I hope to get all kinds of useful info on what's available to measure, what things to look for for trouble, etc. Will report back at the end of July...
adjusting network, configs, or anything- you're going to have to understand how to read the cards after you work your magic.
I would strongly add you should get a baseline *before* you change things, too. That way, you can tell if you're change really did any good, in addition to "gut feel" and system and interactive response, which is immeasureable.
This whole thing is probably way too easy for the guys on this list, who've been working with servers and UNIX their whole adult lives, but for newbies like me... I guess I need to get a copy of "Performance Monitoring for Dummies" and let it ride.
You can't be a dummy if you want/need to tweak these things! NetApp designs them out of the box for dummies [0]; to go beyond that, you need some smarts, Gregory! ;)
There's a book by Adrian Cockroft called something like Performance Tuning. It's geared towards Sun boxes and is (obviously) UNIX but the methodology and philosophy carries over quite a bit to filers. Filers are nothing but CPU's and disks and I/O channels, too.
[0] This is not a jab at NetApp; on the contrary, it's a tribute to the design. In 5 minutes with less than a half-dozen numbers (IP address, default router, etc.), you can have a file server on your network. Try installing any UNIX or NT and getting it set up in that amount of time!
Until next time...
The Mathworks, Inc. 508-647-7000 x7792 3 Apple Hill Drive, Natick, MA 01760-2098 508-647-7001 FAX tmerrill@mathworks.com http://www.mathworks.com ---
On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, Todd C. Merrill wrote:
Amen. To that end, I signed up for NetApp's 202 class (I think that's the number...) next week. I hope to get all kinds of useful info on what's available to measure, what things to look for for trouble, etc. Will report back at the end of July...
Last Thursday and Friday I attended the 2-day NetApp 202 "Advanced Administration and Troubleshooting" class. Overall, this was an okay class: not extremely useful, but not a total waste of time. (N.B.: I have almost 3 years experience dealing with filers, with NFS and CIFS, in a performance heavy environment; this class seemed targeted to someone with 1-2 years who has a good grasp of the basics but not too much experience dealing with bugs, problems, and performance issues. I wish I had taken the course about a year ago!)
There was heavy coverage of a lot of the rc_toggle_basic commands. The most useful things I got out of it were things to look for with the `wafl_susp` and `statit` commands. The discussions about RAID group sizes, consistency points, and WAFL design goals were a good, coherent reminder of questions and topics mostly covered here on the list in the past. (Sifting through and remembering them is the hard part!)
Being able to play with a non-critical filer in the numerous hands-on labs was excellent! There were 6 or 8 F740's with a shelf of disks on each upon which the students practiced their recently learned witchcraft. Hand editing disk labels, normally a harrowing prospect, was dangerously easy. Doing a WAFL_check [0] involved neither trembling fingers nor a sweaty brow. It's really amazing how easy administering a filer is...when it's not your data, when you don't have responsibility for it, and when your boss or your whole company isn't banging on the server room door demanding to know what's wrong.
Lunch was not provided. Lame. The party favors...ah, I mean, parting gifts were these self-foldup bags. Lame. (I can't even *give* this bag away.) Give us something we can actually use, like a T-shirt, or an FCAL disk. There were rumblings of a coup towards the end, to knock out and tie down the instructor, and then raid [1] the lab equipment, so each person could take home either a filer head or a shelf of disks, but the instructor was such a nice guy, we couldn't do it. (Hi, Stefan! Do you know how close you came to waking up late Friday night with a bump on your head in a darkened broom closet in a mass of duct tape and tie wraps? ;)
I am now ready to attack with confidence my filers when next they get beat into the ground with thousands more ops/s than they are rated for, which should be just...about...now....
[0] What happened to the cool, fun names, like "wack," "wackz," "wacky"? WAFL_check is so....sterile and fuddy-duddy. [1] do I even need to say it?
Until next time...
The Mathworks, Inc. 508-647-7000 x7792 3 Apple Hill Drive, Natick, MA 01760-2098 508-647-7001 FAX tmerrill@mathworks.com http://www.mathworks.com ---
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Gregory T Rotunda -
Stephen J. Wilcox -
Todd C. Merrill