[Soekris] Using a 5501 as an NFS server

Sat Jun 7 15:03:03 UTC 2008

hey Ralph,

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:06:02PM -0700, Ralph Becker-Szendy wrote:
> Has anyone done some serious testing of using a 5501 as an NFS server,
> obviously of moderate performance (the interfaces are obviously limited
> to 10 MByte/s), but of largish capacity?

I despise NFS so I have not done any benchmarks on NFS, but I have
some highly scientific benchmarks (wel, eh running bonnie) on the disks
itself (elimitating the NFS protocol overhead)

> I ran a tiny little test a few days ago, configuring the OpenBSD on my
> 5501 as a NFS server (no tuning whatsoever), using a 5.4K laptop disk
> and the OpenBSD FFS with soft updates, and with a Linux NFS 2/3 client,
> and it worked fine, with a read bandwidth (large files, large IOs) of
> 9 MByte/s (the file was probably in cache on the server already), and
> a write bandwidth of only 3 MByte/s.  The limit doesn't seem to be CPU
> utilization, so most likely performance tuning (including suitable use
> of asynchronous writes) could bring the write bandwidth to near the
> 10 MByte/s limit too.
> 
> I was thinking of putting a 750 GB or even 1 TB SATA disk on my 5501
> (replacing the current small laptop disk), and use it as a file server
> for data that has to be available 24x7, but doesn't require great band-
> width.  Since the Soekris already has to be powered up 24x7 (it is
> the router, firewall, AP, and server for all network-related services),
> adding slow NFS to it seems like a reasonable idea.
> 
> Anyone see any problem with that?  Is there a problem with attaching
> really large SATA disks to the 5501?

the only problem running large disks on the 5501 is that they all suck
a lot of power (beeing 3.5"). But I've had success with the Western Digital
Green Power (sic) series. You can get them in 500 GB and 1 TB (wel, 931 GB)

http://soekris.kd85.com/images/20080603-DSC00002.JPG

I've been running a couple of test setups like this for 1.5 months now 
without problems. 5501-70 + CF + SATA disk are using a total of 18 Watt of
power.

pciide0 at pci0 dev 20 function 2 "AMD CS5536 IDE" rev 0x01: DMA, channel 0 wire
d to compatibility, channel 1 wired to compatibility
wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <WDC WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0>
wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA48, 953869MB, 1953525168 sectors
wd1 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 1: <SILICONSYSTEMS INC 2GB>
wd1: 1-sector PIO, LBA, 2001MB, 4098528 sectors
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 5
wd1(pciide0:0:1): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2
pciide0: channel 1 ignored (disabled)

              -------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
              -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
Machine    MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  /sec %CPU
         2000 18716 88.4 19689 33.6  8198 11.5 12251 79.1 24422 35.2 108.4  1.7

So far I've not succeeded in squeezing all of it in the standard green
case, due to the lack of a SATA cable with 2 right angle connectors, but
that is just a matter of finding a hammer :-)

http://soekris.kd85.com/images/20080603-DSC00004.JPG

It might be tad too hot for such a small case though...

Wim.