12-02-2009
Benchmarking a new Solaris, with four different clients
Good morning,
for the impatient: I have a new backup-server and need to monitor, what the machine can do, what's the best way of finding that out?
I will tell the story right from the beginning, so you have a clue about what's going on:
I have a setup of three machines:
A new backup-server with Solaris 10/Intel, two bundled 1Gbit connections to a Netgear switch and fourteen 1,5T hard drives building a zraid with two groups a 7 drives.
Then I started rsync/scp processes from three different machines each after the other, now running simultaneously:
First one is a freshly installed FreeBSD 7.2 in a probuilt NAS case, two bundled 1Gbit connections to the very same switch and an internal 8-port raid. The controller splits the 3,5T in two junks, which I connected via ccd.
I started (on the backupserver) an rsync -varu in a screen session to it and it has by now transferred, according to du -sh, 330G of data in 17 hours.
Second is our primary fileserver. Debian Linux, 3ware Raid-Controller with 16 disks a 500G, Raid 5, six 1Gbit connections to the same switch as the backup server. It is running idle during the night and has transferred approx. in 17 hours.
Third one is a really old fileserver with Debian Linux, 4T Raid 5 and 1Gbit connection. It has transferred 40G in 100 minutes!
So, how do I monitor those machines? Most important would be to monitor the Solaris server, how fast it is able to write and read data. I think the filesystem should outrun the network connection by lightyears, true? But how can I monitor the network interfaces and how much spare bandwidth they could handle?
The third one is, well, a lemon and it is running along "for fun". But the primary fileserver should be replaced with a new Solaris machine. Yet, 330G in 17 hours is crap in an idle network on two idle machines.
I have to add of course, the files transmitted range from rather big chunks of 4G to tiny 50k files. Nevertheless, shouldn't the machines handle much more in such a long time. I need to find the bottleneck, is there something else but trying to flood the machine with twenty others?
PS: Is it normal for ZFS to cache data before writing to the disks (compression is on)? I noticed when I started the second scp, that the fileservers disks LEDs are flashing like crazy, but the backupserver's are dark for about 20 seconds, then some three second fireworks with disk activity, 20 seconds dark etc...
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timed(8) System Manager's Manual timed(8)
Name
timed - time server daemon
Syntax
/usr/etc/timed [ -i | -n network ][ -E ][ -M ][ -t ]
Description
The daemon synchronizes a host's time with the time of other machines in a local area network running It is normally invoked at boot time
from the file.
Servers running slow down the clocks of some machines and speed up the clocks of others to bring them all to the average network time. The
average network time is computed from measurements of clock differences with the Internet Communication Message Protocol (ICMP) timestamp
request message.
The service provided by is based on a master-slave scheme. When is started on a machine, it asks the master for the network time and sets
the host's clock to that time. After that, it accepts synchronization messages periodically sent by the master and calls the or routine to
perform any corrections on the host's clock.
It also communicates with the command to set the date globally, and with the control program, If the machine running the master crashes,
then the slaves elect a new master from among slaves running with the flag set. The flag provides time synchronization on any attached
networks where no current master server is detected. Such a server propagates the time computed by the top-level master. At least one
daemon on each network must run with the option set to allow it to become a master.
Options
-E Overrides the input of slaves. Use the flag in conjunction with the flag. It specifies that a master should not average the times
of the slaves to calculate the network time but should distribute the time of its local host as the network time. This flag allows
a master to distribute time to a network while the network time is controlled by an outside agent such as the Network Time Protocol.
[-i | -n] network
-i Specifies a network to ignore. Each network that appears as an argument to the flag is added to the list of networks that
will ignore. If the flag is used, accesses all networks to which the host is connected except for those networks specified
as arguments to the flag.
-n Specifies a network to use. When the is started, it gathers information about all the network devices connected to the local
host. If neither the flag nor the flag is used, tries to access all the network devices connected to the local host. The
network argument to the flag is the name of a network that should access.
If the switch is used, only those networks specified by the flag are accessed.
Do not use the and flags together.
-M Allows a slave time server to become a master time server if the master server crashes. A system running the daemon without the
flag set remains a slave. The daemon checks for a master time server on each network to which it is connected. It requests syn-
chronization service from the first master server it locates.
-t Enables to trace the messages it receives in the file Tracing can be enabled or disabled with the program.
Restrictions
Any system running with the and options set is eligible to become the master, and distribute its local time to all systems running on its
network. Run the Network Time Protocol daemon, instead of to prevent this behavior.
Files
Invokes the daemon each time the system boots
Tracing file for
Log file for master
See Also
date(1), adjtime(2), gettimeofday(2), networks(5), ntpd(8), timedc(8)
Introduction to Networking and Distributed System Services
timed(8)