[Chester LUG] ISCSI boxes

[Les Pritchard]

On 29 August 2011 00:06, Stuart Burns <stuart.james.burns at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

Ah yes, I've come across plenty of those! Sort of a software on hardware
raid!

You can also give FreeNAS a go, that will do ZFS and iSCSI, however they're
not as closely linked as the iSCSI isn't part of their ZFS implementation.
Nexenta also offers all the de-dupe & compression options.


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