Hi all,
I am attempting to tune a (RedHat 7.3) Linux box running samba 2.2.8a. This
application is serving files to PC clients via samba, and the PC clients are
uploading files to the server via ftp.
Now for the specifics...
These files are mpeg2 encoded video with bit rates ranging from 3Mbit/s -
20Mbit/s. When there is zero write activity against the disks I can kick off
multiple concurrent streams (wrong terminology, but what the office refers to
opening a mpeg over the network) to different PCs and the video plays without
issue. (I forgot to mention that minimum file size is 500MB.)
If I start an upload via samba/ftp while I am watching a stream the server seems
to buffer arround 100MB with no problem, at that point data is written to disk
and both the ftp upload and the stream pause for 5 seconds and then continue.
(This is output from vmstat streaming a video)
procs memory swap io system cpu
r b w swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id
0 0 0 0 59804 215000 691484 0 0 0 0 1110 226 0 1 99
0 0 0 0 58776 215000 692512 0 0 1028 0 1158 234 1 0 100
0 0 0 0 58776 215000 692512 0 0 0 0 1116 226 0 1 99
0 0 0 0 57748 215000 693540 0 0 1028 0 1134 230 0 9 91
0 0 0 0 57748 215000 693540 0 0 0 0 1134 228 0 1 99
0 0 0 0 56720 215000 694568 0 0 1028 0 1126 224 0 0 100
(These two are examples of pauses)
0 0 0 0 8588 215096 740216 0 0 0 188 4222 4848 0 4 96
1 1 1 0 8568 215100 737652 0 0 0 23916 4175 4810 0 5 96
0 0 0 0 9580 215100 739964 0 0 1028 732 2825 2753 0 16 84
0 0 0 0 9584 215104 740092 0 0 0 220 5036 5036 0 4 96
0 0 0 0 404192 215460 345348 0 0 0 188 4205 4811 0 3 97
0 1 0 0 393496 215468 348440 0 0 1032 11968 3463 3183 1 6 94
1 0 0 0 397652 215468 351916 0 0 1028 2132 4247 3678 0 5 95
0 0 0 0 394508 215472 355064 0 0 0 188 4516 4674 0 5 95
This box is a 2.4GHz Xeon w/ 1GB of RAM. There are two 36GB SCSI disks with an
MD Raid 1 mirror across them for OS and Swap. The main storage system is 8
Western Digital 200GB IDE disks connected to a 3ware 7508 Raid controller
configured in Raid5.
How do I approach tuning this configuration. I can sacrifice upload speed, but I
absolutely have to eliminate stalls in the video streams.
Thanks in advance,
Max