[DRBD-user] DRBD via (Infiniband) SDP: fine-tuning (my experience)

Igor Neves igor at 3gnt.net
Tue Aug 16 17:35:10 CEST 2011

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


Hi,

I never messed with this options and don't have that bad results.

You have so low write performance withr 16 spindles. You should try to 
change your controller, I have better write performance with half of the 
spindles. Try areca controller, that's what we use.

Regarding to Infiniband, in the next cluster setup, I will mess up with 
this options and share my results.

Thanks,

On 29-07-2011 12:50, Cédric Dufour - Idiap Research Institute wrote:
> Hello DRBD users,
>
> I wanted to share my experience with DRBD being used over (Infiniband) 
> SDP, for I obtained results that may be interesting to some of you.
>
> I first started very frustated by the fact that while SDP 
> (re-)synching performances were better than TCP's (~5%), general write 
> operations (e.g. bonnie++ or dd if=/dev/zero ...) were horrible - 
> ~50MB/s (SDP) vs. ~170MB/s (TCP) - the relevant DRBD configuration being:
>
>   net {
>     max-buffers 8192;
>     max-epoch-size 8192;
>     sndbuf-size 1024k;
>   }
>
> After much playing around, I found that two parameters affect write 
> performances drastically:
>
> 1. DRBD's 'sdnbuf-size' parameter
> While 'sdnbuf-size' does not affect TCP performances when set above a 
> value of 1024k, it does so sensibly for SDP connections.
> The more you increase the 'sndbuf-size' value, the more SDP 
> performances increase: write (cf. dd if=/dev/zero ...) jumping from 
> ~50MB/s (sndbuf-size=1024k) to ~120MB/s (sndbuf-size=10240k; the 
> maximum allowed).
> Fortunately, increasing this parameter does not affect small writes 
> performances (cf. bonnie++ -n ... ), neither when using TCP or SDP.
>
> 2. SDP module's (ib_sdp) 'recv_poll' parameter
> The 'recv_poll' parameter (default: 700usec) also affects SDP 
> performances sensibly.
> I lowered it (step-by-step) down to 100usec and finally got ~230MB/s 
> raw write performances (cf. dd if=/dev/zero ...) and bonnie++ write 
> performances that are 10-15% above TCP performances.
> Fortunately again, lowering this parameter does not affect small 
> writes performances (cf. bonnie++ -n ... ) nor general TCP-via-SDP 
> performances (iperf being stable at 9.1GBit/s via SDP vs. 3.2GBit/s 
> via TCP).
> Also, CPU usage remains the same.
> Finally, nothing amiss shows up in the kernel log.
>
> In the end, I obtained performances that are consistent with what the 
> backing RAID array allows me to expect.
>
> I hope this may be of interest to some of you.
> If someone knowledgeable of DRBD and/or Infiniband modules parameters 
> were to read this post, I would happily have a feedback about why 
> those parameters affect DRBD (write) performances (but not (re-)synch's).
> Eventually, maybe those results are only valid for the particular 
> hardware and/or software versions I have been playing with.
>
> Speaking of...
>
> Software version:
>  - Debian Squeeze 6.0.2 64-bit (kernel 2.6.32)
>  - Custom-built OFED 1.5.3.2 kernel modules (including patch related 
> to http://bugs.openfabrics.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2240)
>  - Custom-built DRBD 8.3.11 kernel module (along with re-packaged DRBD 
> 8.3.11 user-space utilities)
>
> Hardware:
>  - Motherboard: Supermicro X7DWN+
>  - CPU: Intel Xeon L5410 (2x) [HT disabled, VT enabled]
>  - RAM: 32GB DDR2-667 (16x2GB)
>  - NIC: Mellanox MT25204 [InfiniHost III Lx HCA] (ib_rdma_bw ~1.5GB/s; 
> ib_rdma_lat ~2usec)
>  - HD/RAID: ICP 5165BR with 16x1TB HDs (RAID-6 - LVM2 - DRBD)
>
> Cheers
>
> -- 
>
> Cédric Dufour @ Idiap Research Institute
> "No complaint is enough praise"
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> drbd-user mailing list
> drbd-user at lists.linbit.com
> http://lists.linbit.com/mailman/listinfo/drbd-user

-- 
Igor Neves<igor.neves at 3gnt.net>
3GNTW - Tecnologias de Informação, Lda

  SIP: igor at 3gnt.net
  MSN: igor at 3gnt.net
  JID: igor at 3gnt.net
  PSTN: 00351 252377120

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linbit.com/pipermail/drbd-user/attachments/20110816/359b9fcd/attachment.htm>


More information about the drbd-user mailing list