Re: XFS filesystem performance drop in kernels 2.6.16+

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen@sandeen.net>]

Igor A. Valcov wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> For one of our projects we have a test program that measures file
> system performance by writing up to 1000 files simultaneously. After
> installing kernel v2.6.16 we noticed that XFS performance dropped by a
> factor of 5 (tests that took around 4 minutes on kernel 2.6.15 now
> take around 20 minutes to complete). 

Ouch.

> We then checked all kernels
> starting from 2.6.16 up to 2.6.19-rc5 with the same unpleasant result.
> The funny thing about all this is that we chose XFS for that
> particular project specifically because it was about 5 times faster
> with the tests than the other file systems. Now they all take about
> the same time.
> 
> I also noticed that I/O barriers were introduced in v2.6.16 and
> thought they may be the cause, but mounting the file system with
> 'nobarrier' doesn't seem to affect the performance in any way.
> 
> Any thoughts on the matter are appreciated.

Can you provide the test?

-Eric