ZFS - Building, Testing, and Benchmarking
by Matt Breitbach on October 5, 2010 4:33 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Linux
- NAS
- Nexenta
- ZFS
Strictly from a price vs. performance standpoint, the OpenSolaris ZFS server is a huge success. The test of 4k random performance with 66% writes and 33% reads is one that really excites us. We have historically graphed a lot of performance data about our cloud environment using MRTG, and this test most accurately describes our real world access patterns in our web hosting environment. At a load of 33, OpenSolaris logged nearly triple the performance compared to the Promise M610i. If we can deploy the OpenSolaris box into production and actually see this level of performance, we will be thrilled.
We will obviously consider using Nexenta because Nexenta has the LED’s and notifications working. Nexenta did not deliver as much performance as OpenSolaris did. In the 4k random 66% write 33% read test, Nexenta Enterprise managed to deliver about 90% of the performance of unmodified OpenSolaris. In some 32k tests, Nexenta delivered even less performance. It is tough to justify the cost of the Nexenta Enterprise license when it performs slower than free OpenSolaris. If you need a support path, then Nexenta Enterprise may be worth it.
When we started this project, our goal was to build a ZFS based storage solution that could match the price of a Promise M610i
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vla - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Along the lines of the "Opensolaris is kind of dead" threads, I'd really like to see an article like this for BTRFS. It's about to become the standard filesystems for Fedora and Ubuntu in the near future, and I'd love to get some AnandTech depth articles about it.. what it can do, what it can't. How it compares to existing Linux filesystems, how it compares to ZFS, etc.andersenep - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
When btrfs is ready for production use, let me know. From what I have seen it is still very much experimental. When it's as stable and proven as ZFS, I would love to give it a try. I have severe doubts that Oracle will continue to invest in its development now that it owns ZFS.Khyron320 - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
I have never heard of any caching feature mentioned for BTRFS and it is not mentioned on the wiki anywhere. Is this a planned feature?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs#Features
Sabbathian - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
Only site where you can find articles like these.... thank you guys ... ;)lecaf - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
Hiwhy not do some extra testing with Windows Storage Server R2 (just released a few days ago)
I'm sure it would lag behind but it could be interesting to see how much.
Mattbreitbach - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
I do not believe that Windows Storage Server is an end-user product. I believe that it is only released to OEM's to ship on their systems. At this time we have no route to obtain Windows Storage Server.lecaf - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
True its OEM only and not public but "evaluation" version is available with Technet and MSDNWithout a license key you can run it for 180 days (like all new MS OS BTW)
but you can also try this
http://www.microsoft.com/specializedservers/en/us/...
Just a registration and you get the software. (Read license because benchmarking is sometimes prohibited)
Sivar - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
BSD supports ZFS as well, and it is far from dead.Of course, it's also far from popular.
Guspaz - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
"We decided to spend some time really getting to know OpenSolaris and ZFS."OpenSolaris is a dead operating system, killed off by Oracle. Points for testing Nexenta, since they're the ones driving the fork that seems to be the successor to OpenSolaris, but basing your article around a dead-end OS isn't very helpful to your readers...
Mattbreitbach - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
When this project was started, OpenSolaris was far from dead. We decided to keep using OpenSolaris to finish the article because a viable alternative wasn't available until three weeks ago. If we were to start this article today, it would be based on OpenIndiana. Some of our preliminary testing of OpenIndiana indicate that it performs even better than OpenSolaris in most tests.