On Thu, 3 Nov 2005, Stewart Williams wrote:
Hi,
I am looking for a bit of advice on performance issues serving files with my
FC4 samba server.
The specs of my server are: 2.8ghz cpu, 1gb mem, IDE udma 100 (raid mirror),
100Mbit NIC & Network.
I am serving 4 users and and a few gigabytes of data, which includes:
A 300mb QuickBooks file (in constant use)
2 users' Outlook .pst file @ about 1gb each (in constant use)
2 users' Outlook Express files at about 1gb each (in constant use)
Various files including some photoshop files @ around 40-50mb each
When all 4 users are working, the file access performance reduces
dramatically, and is very slow.
The probable bottlenecks given your specs:
1) 100 mbit ethernet is probably too slow. A *saturated* 100 mbit
connection is only going to move 10-12 megabytes of data per second. Go to
gigabit.
2) Disk I/O. If you want to get performance from the disks, use RAID10
with at least 6 disks (and a couple of extra controller cards capable of
133Mhz operation to get you down to 1 bus per physical drive or
alternatively a 3ware board). Or carve up multiple disks so that your
Quickbooks file is one physical disk array, your Outlook files are on a
different disk array and your 'various' files are on a third disk array
(again making sure you keep to the 'one drive, one bus' rule).
3) Disk cache. Add more memory. Try to get at least 2 Gigabytes of RAM
installed. It can help hide many sins of disk performance.
4) Make sure you have everyone connected via an ethernet *switch*, not a *hub*.
What I am asking for is a bit of advice as to whether I am try to serve to
much data from the one PC.
You can probably handle that load - as long as you eliminate the bottlenecks.
Also is there anyway to monitor or find statistics of the amount of data
being served or the performance of the network card?
sar -n DEV
--
Benjamin Franz
The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.
- Donald E. Knuth
