My disk I/O testing methods for FreeBSD 5.3 ...

Nick Pavlica linicks at gmail.com
Thu Feb 3 15:48:26 PST 2005


Jeff,
  One of the tests where I saw a large difference was in DD.  I did a
quick test on a server that was brought up to RELENG_5 via cvsup on
2/2/05.

The Test:
-bash-2.05b$ time dd bs=1024 if=/dev/zero of=tstfile count=1M
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
1073741824 bytes transferred in 74.402757 secs (14431479 bytes/sec)

real    1m14.498s
user    0m0.550s
sys     0m8.838s


The vmstat -1 info is attached.


Thanks!
--Nick



On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 17:59:30 -0500 (EST), Jeff Roberson
<jroberson at chesapeake.net> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 3 Feb 2005, Nick Pavlica wrote:
> 
> > All,
> >    I would like to share the methods that I have been using in my disk
> > I/O testing. The detailed results of these tests have been posted to
> > the performance and questions mailing lists under the title " FreeBSD
> > 5.3 I/O Performance / Linux 2.6.10 | Continued Discussion".  I
> > originally started this testing as due diligence in an up coming
> > project.  As a result of this testing I discovered an elegant
> > operating system that I enjoy working with.
> 
> Nick, first, I'd like to thank you for your efforts so far.  I think your
> tests have been very informative.  I'd like to see what we can do to get
> to the bottom of the differences.  Can you perform one test which varied
> greatly between 5.x and 4.x and collect some data for us?  To start with,
> the output of vmstat 1 piped to a file would be informative.  Do you have
> any indication that 5.x is actually cpu bound in a case where 4.x is not?
> I'm wondering if this is a latency issue or a cpu utilization issue.
> 
> I intend to backport some code that lets me graph system activity into
> RELENG_5.  Are you setup to cvsup to this tag?  Would it be convenient for
> you to do so?
> 
> Thanks,
> Jeff
> 
> >
> > Intent Of This Testing:
> > 1)To measure the disk I/O performance of various operating systems for
> > use as a production database server.
> > 2)Help improve the disk I/O performance of FreeBSD 5.x and greater by
> > assisting the FreeBSD development team in identifying possible
> > performance issues, and provide them with data to measure the success
> > of various changes to the operating system.
> >
> > Operating Systems tested:
> > Fedora Core 3 with EXT3, and XFS.  I tested with and with out patches.
> > SUSE Enterprise Server 9 with Riser FS.
> > FreeBSD 4.11R
> > FreeBSD 5.3R, RELENG_5_3, RELENG_5
> > NetBSD 2.0R
> > OpenBSD 3.6R
> >
> > Test Hardware:
> > Compaq DeskPro,  PIII 800, 384Mb Ram, 10Gb IDE HD.
> > Dell PE 2400, Dual PIII 550, 512Mb Ram, (2)10K,LVD SCSI, RAID 1, PERC
> > 2SI controller with 64Mb ram.
> > Dell PE SC400, 2.4Ghz P4, 256MB Ram, 40Gb IDE HD.
> > Dell 4600, 2.8 Ghz P4 with HT, 512MB Ram, 80GB IDE HD.
> >
> > Installation Notes:
> >   It's my intention to test these Operating Systems using as many of
> > the default installation options as possible with no special tuning.
> > The only deviations in my previous testing were as follows: The #linux
> > xfs option was used when installing Fedora so that I could use XFS,
> > and a special test where I installed  5.3R with UFS instead of UFS2 (I
> > didn't see any improvement when using UFS).  I installed FreeBSD using
> > the standard install option, and used the auto allocate features for
> > partitioning and slicing.  I installed Fedora with the stock server
> > packages and created a 100Mb /boot, 512Mb swap, and allocated the
> > remaining space to /.  I tested FreeBSD5.3R and FC3R with and without
> > updates.  I used cvsup to update FreeBSD and yum update to update
> > Fedora.  I didn't do any updating to FreeBSD4.11R, NetBSD2.0, and
> > OpenBSD3.6.
> >
> > I used the following utilities/tools in my testing:
> > DD
> > CP
> > IOSTAT (iostat -d 2)
> > Bonnie++
> > TOP
> > SQL,PL, PSQL
> > Postgresql 8.0
> >
> > DD Example Tests:
> > - #time dd bs=1024 if=/dev/zero of=tstfile count=1M
> > - #time dd bs=1024 if=/dev/zero of=tstfile count=2M
> > - #time dd bs=1024 if=/dev/zero of=tstfile count=3M
> >
> > Bonnie++ Example Tests:
> > #bonnie++ -u root -s 1024 -r 512 -n 5
> > #bonnie++ -u root -s 2048 -r 512 -n 5
> > #bonnie++ -u root -s 3072 -r 512 -n 5
> >
> > CP  Example Tests:
> > #time cp tstfile tstfile2
> >
> > SQL, PL, PSQL Example Tests:
> >
> > CREATE TABLE test1 (
> >     thedate TIMESTAMP,
> >     astring VARCHAR(200),
> >     anumber INTEGER
> > );
> >
> > CREATE FUNCTION build_data() RETURNS integer AS '
> >     DECLARE
> >         i INTEGER DEFAULT 0;
> >         curtime TIMESTAMP;
> >     BEGIN
> >         FOR i IN 1..1000000 LOOP
> >             curtime := ''now'';
> >             INSERT INTO test1 VALUES (curtime, ''test string'', i);
> >         END LOOP;
> >         RETURN 1;
> >     END;
> > ' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';
> >
> > SELECT build_data();
> > Then the following script is run under the time program to ascertain
> > how long it takes to run:
> > CREATE TABLE test2  (
> >     thedate TIMESTAMP,
> >     astring VARCHAR(200),
> >     anumber INTEGER
> > );
> > CREATE TABLE test3 AS SELECT * FROM test1;
> > INSERT INTO test2 SELECT * FROM test1 WHERE ((anumber % 2) = 0);
> > DELETE FROM test3 WHERE ((anumber % 2) = 0);
> > DELETE FROM test3 WHERE ((anumber % 13) = 0);
> > CREATE TABLE test4 AS
> >  SELECT test1.thedate AS t1date,
> >         test2.thedate AS t2date,
> >         test1.astring AS t1string,
> >         test2.astring AS t2string,
> >         test1.anumber AS t1number,
> >         test2.anumber AS t2number
> >  FROM test1 JOIN test2 ON test1.anumber=test2.anumber;
> > UPDATE test3 SET thedate='now' WHERE ((anumber % 5) = 0);
> > DROP TABLE test4;
> > CREATE TABLE test4 AS SELECT * FROM test1;
> > DELETE FROM test4 WHERE ((anumber % 27) = 0);
> > VACUUM ANALYZE;
> > VACUUM FULL;
> > DROP TABLE test4;
> > DROP TABLE test3;
> > DROP TABLE test2;
> > VACUUM FULL;
> >
> > Example FS TAB:
> >
> > minime# cat /etc/fstab
> > # Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
> > /dev/ad0s1b             none            swap    sw              0       0
> > /dev/ad0s1a             /               ufs     rw              1       1
> > /dev/ad0s1e             /tmp            ufs     rw              2       2
> > /dev/ad0s1f             /usr            ufs     rw              2       2
> > /dev/ad0s1d             /var            ufs     rw              2       2
> > /dev/acd0               /cdrom          cd9660  ro,noauto       0       0
> >
> > Verification Of Test:
> >    I have been able to get consistent results in all of my testing.
> > However, I think the best verification would be to have as many people
> > as possible test the disk I/O performance on a range of hardware,
> > testing methods, and configurations.
> >
> > Summary Of Results:
> >   The results of my testing have consistently demonstrated that
> > FreeBSD5.3+ has dramatically slower disk I/O performance than all of
> > the other operating systems that were tested.  FreeBSD 4.11R was the
> > performance leader followed by Fedora C3 with XFS.  All of the BSD
> > distributions, with the exception of 5.3+, were able to consistently
> > demonstrate a throughput of 56-58Mb/s sustained throughput, while 5.3+
> > consistently demonstrated a throughput of 12-15Mb/s (58 -15 = 43 ?).
> >
> > Please let me know if you need any additional details.
> >
> > Thanks!
> > --Nick Pavlica
> > _______________________________________________
> > freebsd-performance at freebsd.org mailing list
> > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-performance
> > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-performance-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> >
>
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