Benchmark of FreeNAS 0.7 and a single SSD

As you can read in my previous blog post, I have a SuperTalent Ultra Drive ME MLC 64GB. I am interested about the performance of this little drives. So here is what I've found out...

First of all I've installed this SSD into a server for doing tests.

Server hardware specs

• CPU Intel Core2Quad Q6000 (2.4 GHz)
• 8 GB RAM
• Mainboard Intel DG965WH
• Network Card Intel Pro/1000 PT

FreeNAS 0.7 RC2 (AMD64, rev. 4744)

I've tuned the system a little bit :-)

-> Network|Interfaces|LAN -> Advanced Configuration -> MTU 9000

-> System|Advanced ->Tuning -> Enable tuning of some kernel variables

And -> System|Advanced|sysctl.conf

hw.ata.to = 15
# ATA disk timeout vis-a-vis power-saving

kern.coredump = 0
# Disable core dump

kern.ipc.maxsockbuf = 16777216
# System tuning - Original -> 2097152

kern.ipc.nmbclusters = 32768
# System tuning

kern.ipc.somaxconn = 8192
# System tuning

kern.maxfiles = 65536
# System tuning

kern.maxfilesperproc = 32768
# System tuning

net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack = 0
# System tuning

net.inet.tcp.inflight.enable = 0
# System tuning

net.inet.tcp.path_mtu_discovery = 0
# System tuning

net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_auto = 1
# http://acs.lbl.gov/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html

net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_inc = 524288
# http://fasterdata.es.net/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html

net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max = 16777216
# http://acs.lbl.gov/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html

net.inet.tcp.recvspace = 65536
# System tuning

net.inet.tcp.rfc1323 = 1
# http://acs.lbl.gov/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html

net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_auto = 1
# http://acs.lbl.gov/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html

net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_inc = 16384
# http://fasterdata.es.net/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html

net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max = 16777216
# http://acs.lbl.gov/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html

net.inet.tcp.sendspace = 65536
# System tuning

net.inet.udp.maxdgram = 57344
# System tuning

net.inet.udp.recvspace = 65536
# System tuning

net.local.stream.recvspace = 65536
# System tuning

net.local.stream.sendspace = 65536
# System tuning

net.inet.tcp.hostcache.expire = 1
# http://fasterdata.es.net/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html

Protocol, Client and benchmark programm

I've used AFP (Apple File Protocol), my new MacBook Pro (15", Core2Due 2.4 GHz, 4GB RAM, Unibody late 2008, I've lost my old one) and IOZONE.

IOZONE (Version 3.323 from macports)

Iozone is a w

onderful tool to benchmark filesystems, but it is also a feature monster. After some investigation I've found some useful options for my tests.

iozone -e -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 64k -s8g -t2 -c -x

• -e -- Include flush (fsync,fflush) in the timing calculations
• -i0 -- Test write/rewrite
• -i1 -- Test read/reread
• -i2 -- Test random read/write
• -+n -- Disable retests
• -r 64k -- Record or block size
• -s8g -- Size of the file to test (2x RAM of the client)
• -t2 -- number of threads
• -c -- Include close() in timing calculations
• -x -- Turn of stone-walling (I've received slightly better results with turned this off, see iozone manpage for details)

First impression

The first tests didn't showed me the results I've expected! Diskinfo showed good resutls (140 MB/s read, low latency) but over the GBE-Network I was not able to get mor than 60 MB/s read and 80 MB/s write!

Troubleshooting

I've identified that the network switch I have here (Longshine LCS-GS8208A) was not able to deliver more speed. This is the reason why I've connected the MBP direct to the FreeNAS Server.

Screenshots

Write Performance - Traffic graph

A peak traffic of 890 Mbps isn't too bad for a single HDD

Read performance - Traffic graph

The read performance shows nearly constant bandwidth of more that 910 Mbps

IOZONE results

iozone -e -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 64k -s8g -t2 -c -x

Iozone: Performance Test of File I/O
Version $Revision: 3.323 $
Compiled for 32 bit mode.
Build: macosx

Contributors:William Norcott, Don Capps, Isom Crawford, Kirby Collins
Al Slater, Scott Rhine, Mike Wisner, Ken Goss
Steve Landherr, Brad Smith, Mark Kelly, Dr. Alain CYR,
Randy Dunlap, Mark Montague, Dan Million, Gavin Brebner,
Jean-Marc Zucconi, Jeff Blomberg, Benny Halevy,
Erik Habbinga, Kris Strecker, Walter Wong, Joshua Root.

Run began: Tue Jun 23 15:47:17 2009

Include fsync in write timing
No retest option selected
Record Size 64 KB
File size set to 8388608 KB
Include close in write timing
Stonewall disabled
Command line used: iozone -e -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 64k -s8g -t2 -c -x
Output is in Kbytes/sec
Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds.
Processor cache size set to 1024 Kbytes.
Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes.
File stride size set to 17 * record size.
Throughput test with 2 processes
Each process writes a 8388608 Kbyte file in 64 Kbyte records

Children see throughput for 2 initial writers = 79800.84 KB/sec
Parent sees throughput for 2 initial writers = 78177.66 KB/sec
Min throughput per process = 39088.91 KB/sec
Max throughput per process = 40711.93 KB/sec
Avg throughput per process = 39900.42 KB/sec
Min xfer = 8388608.00 KB

Children see throughput for 2 readers = 107705.98 KB/sec
Parent sees throughput for 2 readers = 107705.48 KB/sec
Min throughput per process = 53852.83 KB/sec
Max throughput per process = 53853.15 KB/sec
Avg throughput per process = 53852.99 KB/sec
Min xfer = 8388608.00 KB

Children see throughput for 2 random readers = 56735.84 KB/sec
Parent sees throughput for 2 random readers = 56735.20 KB/sec
Min throughput per process = 28367.65 KB/sec
Max throughput per process = 28368.19 KB/sec
Avg throughput per process = 28367.92 KB/sec
Min xfer = 8388608.00 KB

Children see throughput for 2 random writers = 24004.56 KB/sec
Parent sees throughput for 2 random writers = 23958.08 KB/sec
Min throughput per process = 11979.05 KB/sec
Max throughput per process = 12025.51 KB/sec Avg throughput per process = 12002.28 KB/sec
Min xfer = 8388608.00 KB

iozone test complete.

Conclusion

You can see in the results a constant bandwidth of 77 MByte/s write and 105 MByte/s read performance which is IMHO quite good for a single HDD. I am not sure about the random read write performance. I need to digg a bit deeper into this :-)

P.S.
Maybe you want to know 'Why AFP?' First of all, I use Apple Computers at home and it showed me the best throughput compared to NFS or Samba