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<TITLE>RE: NFS file server performance</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>You might be reducing your throughput by running three NICS on the same physical segment through the same switch. The bottleneck will be the I/O on the file server because it has to serve I/O through three NICS to get to the same set of disks.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Well, you might check to see if any logical subnets are set up (you know, are the computers in the cluster grouped together with diferent IP domains?). There may have been a reason for that.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Good luck.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>--Richard</FONT>
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<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>-----Original Message-----</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>From: Christian Storm [<A HREF="mailto:chr@kisac.cgr.ki.se">mailto:chr@kisac.cgr.ki.se</A>]</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 12:33 PM</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>To: beowulf@beowulf.org</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Subject: NFS file server performance</FONT>
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<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Hi,</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I just took over a Beowulf cluster and I'm having having a great time</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>reconfiguring everything ... :)</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>It is partly used on large databases (up to 20 GB). Local storage is</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>not possible therefore the databases reside on a disk of a dedicated</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>file server that is mounted on all nodes of the cluster.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Here are the questions:</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>1. To improve performance two additional networks card were put into the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>file server. Then the cluster was splitted in three networks (all sitting</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>on the same switch). Each subnetwork is mounting the file throw a</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>different NIC. These *seems* to work. But it is rather static and it is</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>not very elegant ... .</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>I experienced with the new 2.4 bridiging feature (by assigning all 3 NICs</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>to a bridge), but it just seems to add redundancy, not performance. I</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>assume some kind of channel bonding would be needed - as far as I know</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>supported by the network-cards (3c980) but not by the driver (3c90x).</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Anybody knows a solution ?</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>2. What would be good number of NFS Daemons to run on the file-server ?</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>(accessed by 12 nodes through 3 NICs, PIII500 system with SCSI)</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Currently I'm running 16 with socket input queue resized to 1MB.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Thanks in advance</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Christian</FONT>
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