Gentles,

Does anyone have a strong feeling of performance improvement from Ontap 5 (latest) to Ontap 6? We're so conservative on upgrading Ontap that we make Orrin Hatch blush, so we've so far only put Ontap 6 on some newly built boxes (an 840 and a 760), and our in-production 760s and 840s remain running Ontap 5 for the time being.

I've noticed considerably lower CPU loads for our Ontap 6 840s vs our Ontap 5 840s, running basically the same mix of traffic.

Here's Ontap NetApp Release 6.0.1R1: Tue Dec 12 00:47:55 PST 2000

CPU NFS CIFS HTTP Net kB/s Disk kB/s Tape kB/s Cache in out read write read write age 74% 3233 0 0 2027 11555 2757 0 0 0 10 26% 3000 0 0 1803 11035 2342 6799 0 0 10 17% 3101 0 0 1456 12189 2452 0 0 0 10 21% 2912 0 0 1356 10535 1639 4121 0 0 10 16% 3174 0 0 1394 12795 1321 0 0 0 10 22% 3585 0 0 1370 8783 1910 3497 0 0 10 20% 3715 0 0 2662 12548 1288 0 0 0 10 19% 3308 0 0 2527 10930 1270 0 0 0 10 21% 2810 0 0 1083 6527 1950 5810 0 0 10 15% 2572 0 0 2060 7238 1022 0 0 0 10 20% 2870 0 0 1298 6752 2038 4061 0 0 10 14% 2574 0 0 1467 7172 1145 0 0 0 11 25% 3090 0 0 2658 10669 3763 4245 0 0 11 21% 3578 0 0 2825 10741 2437 0 0 0 11 26% 2908 0 0 2678 7955 2462 6448 0 0 10 18% 3065 0 0 2453 9017 889 0 0 0 11

Avg 23.4%, 3093 ops/sec

Here's similar traffic for NetApp Release 5.3.6H1: Wed Aug 9 00:23:38 PDT 2000

CPU NFS CIFS HTTP Net kB/s Disk kB/s Tape kB/s Cache in out read write read write age 28% 2488 0 0 2472 2711 2172 1620 0 0 15 27% 2704 0 0 1337 5290 3895 0 0 0 15 35% 2581 0 0 1370 4852 5829 5544 0 0 15 31% 3071 0 0 1759 6377 4670 0 0 0 15 38% 3022 0 0 1522 4599 5330 4600 0 0 15 30% 3064 0 0 1875 4401 3005 0 0 0 15 24% 2598 0 0 1175 3102 2148 0 0 0 15 34% 2698 0 0 1508 2284 3664 5015 0 0 15 26% 2759 0 0 1883 2531 1324 0 0 0 15 33% 2554 0 0 1500 2798 4093 4958 0 0 15 24% 2618 0 0 1742 2557 1231 0 0 0 15 30% 2503 0 0 1043 2538 3376 2337 0 0 15 27% 2684 0 0 1559 2760 2228 2577 0 0 15 22% 2408 0 0 1180 2828 1830 0 0 0 15 31% 2523 0 0 1257 2663 3332 4098 0 0 15 25% 2724 0 0 1442 3015 1699 0 0 0 15

avg 29.1%, 3687 ops/sec

(Those are 'sysstat 10's)

Has anyone else observed similar performance improvements? I expect to have better data when we upgrade an existing heavily-trafficed box from 5 to 6 so there's a true apples-to-apples comparison...

--DRS