Re: XFS drops create/delete files to 6.6% of EXT3 (software raid) and to 0.6% of EXT3 (3ware hardware raid)

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen@sandeen.net>]

Michael Darling wrote:
> I am preparing a new server, and benchmarking EXT3 against XFS, both using
> software RAID and hardware RAID using a 3ware 9650SE-4LPML.
> 
> Using bonnie++ as a benchmark, I am seeing significant performance boosts in
> my block sequential reads and writes moving from EXT3 to XFS.  I am aware
> that XFS won't create and delete files as quickly as EXT3, however I am
> seeing drops from 29455/second to 1957/second using software RAID, and from
> 32524/second to 189/second using hardware RAID.  I'm not sure if when using
> software raid, if creating and deleting files should drop to 6.6% of EXT3.
> But, what I'm pretty sure of, is when using hardware raid, that creating and
> deleting files shouldn't drop to 0.6% of EXT3.

So I played with this a little on 2.6.25, on plain partitions.

I saw similar numbers; for example, sequential creates:

ext3:		23698/s
xfs:		  319/s
xfs,nobarrier:	 4478/s


then on a whim I tried an external log on a devicemapper zero target :)

xfs,fakelog:	15156/s

Others can probably wax eloquent as to why xfs is slower on this test,
but it's not unique to your setup, at least.

-Eric