[ale] Mounting /home and /data with cifs on a server?

Robert L. Harris robert.l.harris at gmail.com
Sun Oct 25 23:01:59 EDT 2009


   My environment is all linux and I'm using 32768 for my rsize and 
wsize values.  I was
using UDP, a while back I had read it was better performance but it 
could easily have
been wrong, obviously.  I have a dedicated gig network just for my 
storage network
traffic.  It should be using nfs-v4 if not 3, I believe it defaulted to 
4 I saw in a log.

   Most of my problem is the nfs server is a coraid CLN system which has 
a considerable
problem with IO wait but it is atrocious on reading directory listings 
for huge directories.
An "ls -la" on a directory with 50k files can take a minute and a half 
to return.

Robert




On 10/25/09 6:55 PM, scott wrote:
> NOTE:  I do NAS (NFS/CIFS/iSCSI) for a living.  I do ALOT of it.
>
> Ok. I have been following the thread remotely since I have been at the
> BarCampATL3 and then I had work to do.
>
> If you are having performance issues with NFS, then one of few things
> are the culprit:
> * using a Window Server (or desktop) as the NFS server (they can do
> NFS but not that well)
> * using UDP for NFS instead of TCP.  Please o Please use TCP based
> NFS, it is much much better.  Trust me.
> * your NFS server is over whelmed.
> * your network is having some sort of bandwith issue or latency issue.
>
> Looking at the two protocols, NFS (v3) and CIFS, the NFS protocol is a
> LOT less chatty on the wire.  CIFS is approximately 20-30x more chatty
> (all depends on size of files, larger the files the less chatty it
> is).   Also you are now you are probably asking why I specified v3.
> Well v2 is UDP only and that introduces a whole slew of other issues.
> And v3 has been the default for a long time now.  There is a v4 but
> most people are not using it yet.  As far as my testing (not live
> production experience) that v3 and v4 performance is the same.
>
> I would suspect that you are not using NFS over tcp.  It is easy to
> do. add the "tcp" option in the options section of the fstab.  Also
> you will want to set your read/write buffer size.  Otherwise they are
> small.  Do at least 16k but not more than 32k.  Getting too large will
> also give performance problems.  My sweet spot that I have found (and
> it works most places) is 32k.
>
> Now to your question, about userids != the uids being used.  That is a
> very common problem.  What you will have to do, is setup AD (active
> directory) and add the extra fields used by linux into it.  Then use
> AD for  ALL AUTHENICATIONS for all hosts (linux via pam_* and
> Windows).  Then you have to fudge around with a bunch of things.  It
> will take weeks worth of work if you work on it 8+ hours a day.  And
> it isnt very well documented.
>
> The other thing is let it use the uid of the single user.  Sucks but
> it works.
>
> for your information, in my house, I have a single windows box (I play
> games on it and only that), several Macs (yes, I am a mac guy) and
> many many linux machines (some physical some virtual).  I run NFS
> between all the Linux hosts.  I have samba running CIFS on a single
> linux host sharing out a single folder to my windows box.  Macs I used
> ExanDrive to mount drives via ssh.  I could do NFS via the cli.  So
> 99% of my traffic/usage is NFS or SSH (more of the former over the
> later).  Especially since the window machine isnt ever on unless I am
> gaming.
>
> If you ever want to talk about the NFS performance issues, please let
> me know.
>
>
> On Oct 25, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Robert L. Harris wrote:
>
>    
>>    Has anyone mounted /home or /data (random dir containing user data)
>> from a CIFS
>> mount instead of NFS?  I'm looking at some performance issues with a
>> NAS
>> server
>> and it appears CIFS is more repsonsive.  The only problem is if I
>> mount
>> /home
>> with:
>>
>> //lincoln/home          /home   cifs
>> credentials=/root/samba-creds.txt,workgroup=foobar      0       0
>>
>> and use the creds of root to mount the dirs, then any files I create
>> as
>> user "robert" end
>> up created owned by user root on the server, and thus user root on the
>> clients hosing
>> up /home, etc.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>    Robert
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> :wq!
>> ====================================================================
>> Robert L. Harris                     | GPG Key ID: E344DA3B
>>                                           @ x-hkp://pgp.mit.edu
>> DISCLAIMER:
>>        These are MY OPINIONS             With Dreams To Be A King,
>>         ALONE.  I speak for              First One Should Be A Man
>>         no-one else.                       - Manowar
>>
>>
>>
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-- 

:wq!
====================================================================
Robert L. Harris                     | GPG Key ID: E344DA3B
                                          @ x-hkp://pgp.mit.edu
DISCLAIMER:
       These are MY OPINIONS             With Dreams To Be A King,
        ALONE.  I speak for              First One Should Be A Man
        no-one else.                       - Manowar




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