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From: gavin@durban.vector.co.za (Gavin Maltby)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: ISP hardware/software choices (performance comparison)
Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix
Date: 17 Jan 1996 09:20:39 GMT
Organization: The Vector Group
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Terry Lambert (terry@lambert.org) wrote:
: If this is true (it is disabled on the machine I can get access
: to, and I rememebr specifically disabling it -- it may have been
: enables by one of three other people), then I will retract my
: reliability claim made on the basis of assuming server cacheing.
Perhaps you assume too much and should really use the OS before
shredding it.
: I'll assume that it's true, since my main exposure to SVR4 is
: by way of USL, and I have intentionally avoided Solaris after
: my investigation of it at the 2.3 level. This may or may not
: weaken the "at no time" argument, above.
2.3 was a fine release, but far from perfect. 2.4 was much better still,
and 2.5 continues the trend. I'd say it's worth trying it again after
opening your mind to all possibilities.
: Stipulating this, however, I once again request proof that the
: 5.x implementation is higher performance than the 4.x, and
: further that any performance difference is not simply the result
: of the 4.x driver's misue of the Lance buffers, as described in
: the Solaris 1.x->2.x upgrade/release notes.
Empircal proof is not hard to come up with. As a real NFS server
to many clients on many subnets Solaris 2 copes admirably where SunOS
4 just murdered the CPU. Besides that (a benefit of streamlining and
multithreading) one can also tune various parameters in Solaris 2 to
really maximise performance, where these paramters were difficult or
impossible to change with SunOS 4. 4.x had a lot of problems with the
le driver, but they don't account for the difference in NFS performance.
: I find anything other than a marginal performance claim to be
: difficult to support without resorting to server caching or
: some other "speedup" technique which requires violation of
: the protocol spec (like the 4.x and 5.x client caching).
NFS read performance is excellent in 2.x, but write performance can only be
enhanced by speeding async writes to the disk (prestoserve, ufs logging can
help). But what many people refer to as "better NFS performance" means
sustaining the maximum that SunOS 4 could give to 1 client to many clients
before significant performance hits occur. By client caching are you referring
to the cachefs filesystem in 2.x? That is one way to improve NFS
speed (page from the local cache), but 2,x NFS *server* performance is still
faster than that of 4.x
Gavin
: ---
: Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
: or previous employers.
--
.
/| The
/ | Vector
/ | Group ---------------------------------------
/\ |____ Gavin Maltby, Vector Durban
/ \/| | Email: Gavin.Maltby@durban.vector.co.za
\ \| | Tel: INT+ 27 31 266 9948
\ | / Fax: INT+ 27 31 266 0811
\ | / Note: I speak for myself, and not
\ | / necessarily for Vector or Sun!
\|/ --------------------------------------
" Sun Partner in South Africa