cluster size

[Mike Brearley]

I set up a new server using 16k cluster size on the hard drive (raid 5 array
using Promise S150 SX4 and 4 WD120GB Sata drives.

Basically, the performance sucks! I'd like to know what would be a good
cluster size or any other tips as to how to improve performance.

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley (mike_brearley at hotmail dot com)

 

[Gerry Voras]

Depends on the file system. And I'd say from there that using the defaults
would be best for memory allocation purposes.

 

[Mike Brearley]

NTFS in Windows 2003. Running Exchange, IIS and acting as a file server.

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley

 

[Rick]

How are you determining that performance "sucks"?

 

[Gerry Voras]

My textbooks say that for your drive sizes, you should be using 64K clusters
in NTFS, and 128 sectors per cluster. I've never known anybody able to
override the default in the direction you went. I know this is a bit
wasteful, but for your purposes performance should be the key, not storage
space.

BTW, you've got way too much stuff running on your server. Typical setups
involve using seperate servers for each of the main fuctions you have
running (Exch, IIS, and fs).

 

[Mike Brearley]

When I copy a folder containing 8.78Mb of data in about 34 files from one
folder to another folder in the same partition, it takes over 5 minutes.
Now that sucks! :-(

Do you have any helpful information?

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley (mike_brearley at hotmail dot com)

 

[Mike Brearley]

You're easily able to change the cluster size, in both the array
configuration on the Raid card and when formatting the drive in Windows.
I'm obviously looking for performance instead of disk space and instead of
doing the research myself, I listened to a friend that said smaller cluster
size is better. I've let him know of his error.

As far as running too much on my server, well, that's what you get in the
realm of small businesses. They can't afford multple servers. I was
running all that on a 600Mhz system prior to upgrading to this server and
everything was running reasonably well (much faster disk access time than
with this new server setup the way it is now).

I'm not sure I want to know what the text books say, I want to know from
personal experience what people have found to be best for performance.

Thanks for the reply.

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley (mike_brearley at hotmail dot com)

 

[Dan Seur]

Mike - 5 mins for that op is outrageous. Thoughts:
- there's huge resource contention; there are too many access requests
from other sources
- the partition is hugely fragmented &/or right on the edge of total
capacity
- the pagefile placement &/or size &/or fragmentation is very bad
- there could even be some bad surface on the drive...retries for that
or some other reason
- there's file &/or structure corruption...run chkdsk /f /r

 

[Bob I]

Considering that all its doing is updating directories and the data
never moves I think you have a configuration problem.

 

[Mike Brearley]

I'm not moving a folder (that would be just updating folders), I'm copying
data. It makes a copy. i.e. the data is duplicated.

I know I have a configuration error, read my original post.

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley

 

[Gerry Voras]

Personal experience is a very specious thing to pursue. My idea of "fast"
is probably not yours. That's why IEEE, ANSI, ISO, etc have established
design standards for "average" best performance under a variety of
circumstances.

And even if you have a small business, legacy and off-lease server
equipment, especially in the P3/600 class you are working with, can be
obtained for under $500. Around here (colorado), I can obtain a bunch of
Compaq DL380 rack-mount RAID servers for $200 apiece. In fact, I just
equipped a 12-person real-estate office with a 36gig RAID server, Mail
server, web server, backup, switch, router, UPS, and half rack for under
$3000.

 

[Bob I]

Humm, I canceled that message, but it must have got away before I
clobbered it(for the reason you noted). :-(

 

[Mike Brearley]

Not a problem. It happens to everyone!

Humm, I canceled that message, but it must have got away before I
clobbered it(for the reason you noted). :-(