[OpenIndiana-discuss] CIFS performance issues

[Open Indiana]

Ok,

So if I read it correct your virtual machine is playing an audio file and
then the server stops responding. That could mean the hardware that
virtualbox uses to play the soundfile if flooded or that the drivers of the
soundcard in your server/PC are not working very well?
What soundcard are you using?


-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Axelsson [mailto:gu99roax at student.chalmers.se]
Sent: zondag 22 januari 2012 23:38
To: openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org
Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] CIFS performance issues

I don't understand what you mean with PCI-x settings and where to check them
out. The hardware is not PCI-X, it is PCIe. The affected LSI HBA is a
discrete PCIe card that operates in IT-mode. As in system logs I assume you
mean /var/adm/messages and I could not find anything there.

If this was only a hard disk controller issue (I made sure that there are
enough lanes for it) then I wouldn't expect applications such as SSH to be
affected by it.

The settings of the Intel NIC card is not in the BIOS, at least not what I
can see (i.e. there is no visible BIOS of the discrete NIC like it is for
the LSI SAS controller during POST). So, I'm not entirely sure what settings
for the NIC you are referring to.
Robin.


On 2012-01-22 20:28, Open Indiana wrote:
> 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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> .
>



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