[comp.unix.wizards] Ultrix 2.0/disk i/o

paul@phoenix.PRINCETON.EDU (Paul Lansky) (07/17/87)

----------------------------------
What are people's experience with disk throughput under Ultrix 2.0?
Does the Generic File System, speed things up, slow things down,
or what.  We've been hearing some disturbing reports about slower
throughput, but cant confirm much yet.

Paul Lansky
.....princeton!winnie!paul

pavlov@hscfvax.UUCP (840033@G.Pavlov) (07/17/87)

In article <449@phoenix.PRINCETON.EDU>, paul@phoenix.PRINCETON.EDU (Paul Lansky) writes:
> What are people's experience with disk throughput under Ultrix 2.0?
> Does the Generic File System, speed things up, slow things down,
> or what.  We've been hearing some disturbing reports about slower
> throughput, but cant confirm much yet.
> 
  I posted the same question apx. a week ago, but no one replied.

  We have uVAX II's.  The configuration on each machine is a pair of Fuji 
  M2333K disks, each on its own Emulex QD32.

  All we have really looked at is sequential access (cp, cat, etc, as well as
  several of our own programs).  For activities involving the movement of data
  from one disk to another, throughput appears to be roughly the same.  For
  data transfers within a single disk (e.g., cp ./a ./b), throughput appears to
  be roughly 25-30% lower than with Ultrix 1.2.  

  DEC's response has been that they have not seen this nor have they had report
  about this.  They state that they have seen a decent performance improvement
  in systems utilizing RD5n series disks.

  PLEASE !!!!

  Please post if you can shed any light on the above.  In particular, it would
  be good to hear from those who have upgraded and are using RD5n and RA81
  series drives. 

                          ----------------------------

  Two more notes:

  1. Even though throughput is slower, there is a slight increase in cpu utili-
     zation efficiency (kilobytes/cpu time).
  2. One possibility is a problem between the new driver and the QD32 control-
     ler.  This would explain our situation, since the QD32 has a relatively
     small command buffer.

       many thanks,  greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny