linux-ext4 - ext4 performance regression 2.6.27-stable versus 2.6.32 and later

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Message-ID: <4C508A54.7070002@uni-konstanz.de>
Date:	Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:51:48 +0200
From:	Kay Diederichs <Kay.Diederichs@...-konstanz.de>
To:	linux <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
CC:	Ext4 Developers List <linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org>,
	Karsten Schaefer <karsten.schaefer@...-konstanz.de>
Subject: ext4 performance regression 2.6.27-stable versus 2.6.32 and later

Dear all,

we reproducibly find significantly worse ext4 performance when our
fileservers run 2.6.32 or later kernels, when compared to the
2.6.27-stable series.

The hardware is RAID5 of 5 1TB WD10EACS disks (giving almost 4TB) in an
external eSATA enclosure (STARDOM ST6600); disks are not partitioned but
rather the complete disks are used:
md5 : active raid5 sde[0] sdg[5] sdd[3] sdc[2] sdf[1]
    3907045376 blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [5/5]
[UUUUU]

The enclosure is connected using a Silicon Image (supported by
sata_sil24) PCIe-X1 adapter to one of our fileservers (either the backup
fileserver, 32bit desktop hardware with Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.40GHz, or a production-fileserver 64bit Precision WorkStation 670 w/ 2
Xeon 3.2GHz).

The ext4 filesystem was created using
mke2fs -j -T largefile -E stride=128,stripe_width=512 -O extent,uninit_bg
It is mounted with noatime,data=writeback

As operating system we usually use RHEL5.5, but to exclude problems with
self-compiled kernels, we also booted USB sticks with latest Fedora12
and FC13 .

Our benchmarks consist of copying 100 6MB files from and to the RAID5,
over NFS (NVSv3, GB ethernet, TCP, async export), and tar-ing and
rsync-ing kernel trees back and forth. Before and after each individual
benchmark part, we "sync" and "echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches" on
both the client and the server.

The problem:
with 2.6.27.48 we typically get:
 44 seconds for preparations
 23 seconds to rsync 100 frames with 597M from nfs directory
 33 seconds to rsync 100 frames with 595M to nfs directory
 50 seconds to untar 24353 kernel files with 323M to nfs directory
 56 seconds to rsync 24353 kernel files with 323M from nfs directory
 67 seconds to run xds_par in nfs directory (reads and writes 600M)
301 seconds to run the script

with 2.6.32.16 we find:
 49 seconds for preparations
 23 seconds to rsync 100 frames with 597M from nfs directory
261 seconds to rsync 100 frames with 595M to nfs directory
 74 seconds to untar 24353 kernel files with 323M to nfs directory
 67 seconds to rsync 24353 kernel files with 323M from nfs directory
290 seconds to run xds_par in nfs directory (reads and writes 600M)
797 seconds to run the script

This is quite reproducible (times varying about 1-2% or so). All times
include reading and writing on the client side (stock CentOS5.5 Nehalem
machines with fast single SATA disks). The 2.6.32.16 times are the same
with FC12 and FC13 (booted from USB stick).

The 2.6.27-versus-2.6.32+ regression cannot be due to barriers because
md RAID5 does not support barriers ("JBD: barrier-based sync failed on
md5 - disabling barriers").

What we tried: noop and deadline schedulers instead of cfq;
modifications of /sys/block/sd[c-g]/queue/max_sectors_kb; switching
on/off NCQ; blockdev --setra 8192 /dev/md5; increasing
/sys/block/md5/md/stripe_cache_size

When looking at the I/O statistics while the benchmark is running, we
see very choppy patterns for 2.6.32, but quite smooth stats for
2.6.27-stable.

It is not an NFS problem; we see the same effect when transferring the
data using an rsync daemon. We believe, but are not sure, that the
problem does not exist with ext3 - it's not so quick to re-format a 4 TB
volume.

Any ideas? We cannot believe that a general ext4 regression should have
gone unnoticed. So is it due to the interaction of ext4 with md-RAID5 ?

thanks,

Kay
-- 
Kay Diederichs                http://strucbio.biologie.uni-konstanz.de
email: Kay.Diederichs@...-konstanz.de    Tel +49 7531 88 4049 Fax 3183
Fachbereich Biologie, Universität Konstanz, Box M647, D-78457 Konstanz.
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