Starwind target with Starport : Performance issue

Software-based VM-centric and flash-friendly VM storage + free version

Moderators: anton (staff), art (staff), Max (staff), Anatoly (staff)

Post Reply
alexwu
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jan 23, 2007 8:26 am

Tue Jan 23, 2007 11:15 am

Hello,

I am evaluating Starwind and Starport performance. Below is the configuration.

Target:
- P4 3.0 (HT)
- Intel 865 chipset
- 1G DDR 400
- 40G ATA133 7200 RPM 8M cache (delicate for iscsi share)
- Intel Pro/100
- OS: Windows 2003 SP1 on another 40G ATA133 7200RPM
- Starwind 3.2.1

Client:
- P4 2.8 (no HT)
- Intel 865 chipset
- 1G DDR 333
- 40G ATA133 8M cache (formatted to 64k allocation unit size)
- Intel Pro/100
- Winidows XP SP2
- Starport 3.2

Switch:
- 8 port gigabit
- No Jumbo Frame Support

The LAN evironment has been optimized (only TCPIP and no other protocol in windows LAN setting) and the 4 registry values has also optimized to that posted in the forum.

I use IOmeter (32k block size) to check the speed but the range is just 6.3MB/s to 7.2MB/s.

Windows performance monitor in client shows the disk queue length is over 90 but CPU loading is pretty low, around 12%.

Is there any update/tunning I need to optimize the queue or I/O requests size? I expect iscsi should have performance over NAS.

I tested using NAS (window file share) result is around 8.2 MB/s to 8.7MB/s and queue length is below 10. I expect iSCSI should have 10MB/s.

Please help!!
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:40 pm

Hi,

What type of iSCSI target do you use for your tests? (SPTI, ImageFile, etc)

The SPTI mode is synchronous, so it can be slower than other StarWind target types and NAS access.

Have you tried creating an ImageFile target in async mode and test the same with it?

A RamDisk target can be used to test the maximum througput of your network.
Best regards,
Valeriy
alexwu
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jan 23, 2007 8:26 am

Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:43 am

Hi,

RAMDisk of 9.49MB/s. For ImageFile target, using IOmeter, the first minutes of test it can reach 9.46MB/s but it gradually drop. It drops to 5.48MB/s after 3 minutes. From Perfmon, I found that the disk avg. queue length is almost 100 while CPU load remind ~ 11% still.

It seems the disk IO cannot handle even ImageFile target act like buffer for the first minutes. I tried with SATA 3G harddisk but the result is similar. Is there parameter to improve this? I heard that increase IO requests size can improve performance, is that true and how?
Harddisk is in 64k allocation unit size.

Bests,

Alex
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Wed Jan 24, 2007 11:52 am

alexwu wrote:Hi,

RAMDisk of 9.49MB/s. For ImageFile target, using IOmeter, the first minutes of test it can reach 9.46MB/s but it gradually drop. It drops to 5.48MB/s after 3 minutes. From Perfmon, I found that the disk avg. queue length is almost 100 while CPU load remind ~ 11% still.

It seems the disk IO cannot handle even ImageFile target act like buffer for the first minutes. I tried with SATA 3G harddisk but the result is similar. Is there parameter to improve this? I heard that increase IO requests size can improve performance, is that true and how?
Harddisk is in 64k allocation unit size.
Hi Alex,

Try to use the following test setting for IOmeter:
1) Read 100%, request size 64K, queue length = 50
2) The same with Write 100%
3) The same with R/W 50/50%

With raw RamDisk it is able to reach full bandwidth of 1GbE if the hardware allows that.

For ImageFiles please check whether the file is non-fragmented and defragment the volume if it does. Use 'plain' images (default settings) instead of 'sparse' ones.
Best regards,
Valeriy
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Wed Jan 24, 2007 12:41 pm

...and the best way would be to use GbE NICs. Cheap Realtek-based ones are less then $25 today and it's a good investment. At least 30-35 MB/sec would be reached. 100 megabit is history. At least for SANs.
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
alexwu
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jan 23, 2007 8:26 am

Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:12 am

Hi,

I just swap to intel pro/1000 gt today. The IOMeter result is about 20MB/s to 25MB/s, still slower than NAS of 27MB/s. The avg. disk queue length is still almost 100!!
Is there any setting in windows can boost up the performance? such as parameter for IO requests/queue size, queue length.....etc.
The PC configuration is the 40 PCs in my company and I want to see whether I can deploy in my current environment. Change NIC is the most I can do.

Bests,

Alex
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:30 am

What test do you run to measure NAS performance?
alexwu wrote:Hi,

I just swap to intel pro/1000 gt today. The IOMeter result is about 20MB/s to 25MB/s, still slower than NAS of 27MB/s. The avg. disk queue length is still almost 100!!
Is there any setting in windows can boost up the performance? such as parameter for IO requests/queue size, queue length.....etc.
The PC configuration is the 40 PCs in my company and I want to see whether I can deploy in my current environment. Change NIC is the most I can do.

Bests,

Alex
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
Post Reply