[Chester LUG] ISCSI boxes

[Stuart Burns]

HIya,

I did actually change from blockio to fileio and that brought the speed
issue under better control.

Just before you posted I am moving my important vms from the san to local
storage. At that point I am going to blow away the SAN and reinstall it with
Nexenta.

To reduce the overhead I am tempted to try NFS also.

It will take about several hours to copy the 500 GB vm image across.

What is interesting is that Nextenta actually mention this box as a soho
san, but when you have your DC, VCenter and additional VM, the IO seems to
swamp the processor. I can only think it may be the linux software raid.

I did try the onboard raid, but Linux ignored it completely ;). Tried it on
basis that hardware raid (or hardware assisted raid) may reduce IO commands
on processor.

Anyhows, will report back.....



On 28 August 2011 23:28, Thomas Prophett <thomas at thomasprophett.co.uk>wrote:

> Hi Stuart,
>
> I'm using the community edition of nexentastor 3.1.1 & its currently
> connected to a ESXi cluster via iSCSI. The "community" edition has a few
> limitations around iSCSI but it works fine for a Lab.
>
> In theory you should see adequate read performance with 8GB ram coupled
> with the zfs adaptive read cache.
>
> I guess just try it and see, load 3.1.1 & bonnie.
>
> All the best,
>
> Thomas.
>
> On 28 August 2011 19:58, Les Pritchard <les.pritchard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ah yes, now I remember!
>>
>> I've double checked and the community edition does offer iSCSI (and fibre
>> if you wish!). A quick look online I see a few results showing Nexenta is
>> faster than OpenFiler on the iSCSI. After all it is ZFS under the hood, so
>> it's professional level from the ground up.
>>
>> Nexenta (and any ZFS based systems) recommend you don't use hardware raid
>> so you won't be missing anything by not having a card.
>>
>>
>> On 28 August 2011 19:49, Stuart Burns <stuart.james.burns at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> I didn't think Nexenta did ISCSI.
>>>
>>> This box has 8 GB ram also, so I think just cpu is letting it down. Shame
>>> really. Speeds are terrible.
>>>
>>> On 28 August 2011 19:47, Les Pritchard <les.pritchard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> What was the reason you're not able to use Nexenta? You did mention
>>>> something but I can't remember!
>>>>
>>>> Would be interesting to see how it would compare in speed.
>>>> On Aug 28, 2011 6:18 PM, "Stuart Burns" <stuart.james.burns at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > Hi Everyone,
>>>> >
>>>> > After ramming my little Proliant N36L full of Disks (8 TB total) and
>>>> using
>>>> > it as an ISCSI target on Openfiler, the performance when using SW raid
>>>> is
>>>> > absolutely appalling. My CPU load is 4.5+ (when running 3 vms with
>>>> little
>>>> > traffic)
>>>> >
>>>> > I suspect the 2 * 1.3 GHz CPUs are just not up to the job.
>>>> >
>>>> > Therefore, I am wondering, either new box with Openfler or an ISCSI
>>>> drobo or
>>>> > similar. Anyone got any recommendations.
>>>> >
>>>> > Stu
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > --
>>>> > Stuart Burns
>>>> > E: stuart.james.burns at gmail.com
>>>> > M: [redacted]
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Chester mailing list
>>>> Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk
>>>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Stuart Burns
>>> E: stuart.james.burns at gmail.com
>>> M: [redacted]
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
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>


-- 
Stuart Burns
E: stuart.james.burns at gmail.com
M: [redacted]
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