[OpenIndiana-discuss] CIFS performance issues

[Open Indiana]

A very stupid answer, but have you looked at the bios and inspected the
settings of the network devices and /or PCIx ? How is your bios setup (AHCI
or raid or ??) ?

Do you see any error in the system logs?

To my opinion your system swallows in the datatransfers. Either on the
NIC<->montherboard side or at the montherboard <-> harddiskcontroller side.
Do your extra NIC's and the LSI share the same PCI-x settings? Do they both
support all settings?

B,

Roelof
-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Axelsson [mailto:gu99roax at student.chalmers.se]
Sent: zondag 22 januari 2012 19:38
To: OpenIndiana-discuss at openindiana.org
Subject: [OpenIndiana-discuss] CIFS performance issues

In the past, I used OpenSolaris b134 which I then updated to OpenIndiana
b148 and never did I experience performance issues related to the network
connection (and that was when using two of the "infamous"
RTL8111DL OnBoard ports). Now that I have swapped the motherboard and the
hard drive and later added a 2-port Intel EXPI9402PT NIC (because of driver
issues with the Realtek NIC that wasn't there before), I performed a fresh
install of OpenIndiana.

Since then I experience intermittent network freeze-ups that I cannot link
to faults of the storage pool (iostat -E returns 0 errors). I have had this
issue both with the dual port Intel controller as well as with a single port
Intel controller (EXPI9400PT) and the Realtek 8111E OnBoard NIC. The storage
pool is behind an LSI MegaRAID 1068e based controller using no port
extenders.

In detail (9400PT+8111E):
-------------------------
I was running a Virtual Machine with VirtualBox 3.2.14 with (1) a bridged
network connection and was accessed over the network using (2) VBox RDP
connection and (3) a ZFS based CIFS share to be accessed from a Windows
computer over the network. These applications were administrated both over
(4) SSH (port 2244) and (5) VNC (using vncserver). A typical start of the VM
was done with 'screen VBoxHeadless --startvm ...'

I assigned the network ports the following way:

e1000g: VBox RDP, VNC, SSH
rge0: Virtual Machine Network Connection (Bridged)

I tried various combinations but the connection froze intermittently for all
applications. The bridged network connection was worst. When I SSHed over
rge0, the connection was frequently severed which is was not over e1000.

So I pulled the plug on the rg0 and let everything go through the e1000
connection. freeze-ups became more frequent and it seemed like the Bridged
connection was causing this issue because the connection didn't freeze like
that when the VM wasn't running.

Note that I didn't assign the CIFS share to any particular port but calls to
<computername> were assigned to the e1000 port in the /etc/inet/hosts file.
-------------------------

In detail (9402PT):
-------------------
In this setup I run essentially the same applications but all through the
9402PT which has two ports (e1000g1 and e1000g2). So I assign the
applications the following way:

e1000g1: VBox RDP, SSH, <computername> (in /etc/inet/hosts)
e1000g2: Bridged connection to the virtual machine

So while running the virtual machine on the server, having an open SSH
connection to it and a command prompt pointing (cd x:\) at the CIFS share
(which is mapped as a network drive, say "X:") I started a media player and
played an audio file over the CIFS share which made the connection freeze.

The freezing affected the media player and the command prompt but the RDP
connection worked and access to internet inside the VM was flawless.
The SSH connection was frozen as well. After a few minutes it became
responsive and iostat -E reported no errors. The command prompt and the
media player were still frozen but "ls <path to CIFS shared contents>"
worked fine over the SSH connection. Shortly after that the CIFS connection
came back and things seem to run ok.

So in conclusion the freeze-ups are still there but less frequent. I have
tried VirtualBox 4.1.8 but the ethernet connection is worse with that
version which is why I downgraded to 3.2.14 (which was published _after_
4.1.8).
-------------------

These issues occur on server grade hardware using drivers that are/were
certified by Sun (as I understand it). Moreover, CIFS and ZFS are the core
functionality of OpenIndiana so it is quite essential that the network works
properly and is stable.

I'm sorely tempted to issue a bug report but I would want some advice on how
to troubleshoot and provide relevant bug reports. There are no entries in
the /var/adm/messages that are related to the latest freeze-up mentioned
above and I couldn't find any when running the prior setups. These
freeze-ups don't happen all the time so it isn't easy to consistently
reproduce them.

Robin.




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