[Gluster-devel] Performance as compared to NFS

[Paul Jochum]

Hi All:

   Time to move from functionality (i.e. it is working), to performance 
(need to speed it up now).

   Basically, I have a one server that can run NFS and gluster, and one 
client that can access that server (either NFS or Glusterfs).  In a 
simple set of tests (time of rsyncs, and then time of rm's), I see the 
following:

For NFS:  rsync time is 0m52.304s and rm time is 0m12.615s

For Glusterfs: rsync time is 1m29.312s and rm time is 0m33.901s
(these were the fastest gluster times, slowest for the rsync was 
5m23.9s, depending on the perfomance translators I used)

So, how do I improve Gluster, which is running about twice as slow as NFS?

Here is my background info

*Gluster Server:*
No messages in the log files (either gluster's log file or 
/var/log/messages)

glusterfsd -V
glusterfs 1.3.1

spec file:
volume brick
 type storage/posix
 option directory /nfs/gluster
end-volume
volume server
 type protocol/server
 option transport-type tcp/server
 subvolumes brick
 option auth.ip.brick.allow *
end-volume

machine's OS = Scientific Linux SL release 3.0.8 (SL)
2.4.21-47.0.1.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu Oct 19 10:38:33 CDT 2006 x86_64 x86_64 
x86_64 GNU/Linux

Gluster Client:
No messages in the log files (either gluster's log file or 
/var/log/messages)

glusterfs -V
glusterfs 1.3.1

fuse version is fuse-2.7.0-glfs3

spec file:
volume client
 type protocol/client
 option transport-type tcp/client     # for TCP/IP transport
 option remote-host 135.1.29.152       # IP address of the remote brick
 option remote-subvolume brick        # name of the remote volume
end-volume
#### Add readahead feature
volume readahead
 type performance/read-ahead
 option page-size 128KB     # unit in bytes
 subvolumes client
end-volume
### Add IO-Threads feature
volume iothreads
 type performance/io-threads
 option thread-count 4         # deault is 1
 option cache-size 64MB
 subvolumes readahead
end-volume

machine's OS = CentOS release 5 (Final)
2.6.18-2.6.18-8.1.8.el5.028stab039.1.prj4 #1 SMP Mon Aug 13 16:31:27 CDT 
2007 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

thanks,

Paul Jochum