Thanks, Ulrich.

That made me do a bit searching, there's a nice summary of some of the ext4 performance options here:
http://blog.smartlogicsolutions.com/2009/06/04/mount-options-to-improve-ext4-file-system-performance/

Definitely cool ideas (but more academic for us specifically) - I'd be a bit nervous to use those options in our XenServer (with local disks) VM environment, when looking to only gain some %s in ext4 performance. 

Andrew Eross
CTO
Locatrix Communications
Office: +61 7 3123 1469
Mobile: +55 37 9858 9815
eross@locatrix.com


On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 5:21 AM, Ulrich Windl <Ulrich.Windl@rz.uni-regensburg.de> wrote:
Hi!

Another suggestion: Dependingon your secondary storage you could experiment with mount option barrier=0: If you have a RAID controller with battery backed-up cache (that guarantees that any data confirmed "written" to the host will acually be written in the end) it makes no sense to force the controller to flush the cache before the host may continue. Especially if you have big shared SAN storage system...

For plain local disks you are putting data integrity at risc, especially for journaled filesystems in you skip barrieres. Still if you plan a repeatable initial database load, you could disable barriers temporarily. In case of a system crash, you probably have to re-load all your data...

Ulrich

>>> Andrew Eross <eross@locatrix.com> schrieb am 06.02.2014 um 16:59 in Nachricht
<CAL_tfFdS4suKqn7ZFSkFGQ1rE7qEhsyyGOs0RqV_Ow71J_Ri8Q@mail.gmail.com>:
> Hi guys,
>
> Ulrich - thanks for the suggestions - btrfs in particular is certainly
> worth a shot.
>
> Quanah - very cool to hear about the 12.04 kernel and ext2 suggestions.
> thanks!
>
> I've just run some new tests on a similar machine with 12.04.4 LTS and a
> newly installed 3.11.0-15-generic x86_64 kernel.
>
> Exact same testing method as before, 10K records, etc:
>
> Running on an ext4 partition:
>
> Base-line, no extra options: 5m14s
> With "writemap" enabled: 9m40s
> With "writemap+mapasync" enabled: 4m35s
>
> Overall, about the same as 10.04 for me.
>
> I created a new ext2 partition to give that a shot on the 12.04 box.
>
> Base-line, no extra options: 1m31s
> With "writemap" enabled: 1m33s
> With "writemap+mapasync" enabled: 1m41s
>
> Ahah! I'd say that's the killer answer.
>
> Summary for future generations who may see this thread:
>
> 1) Using ext2 for your db directory (on Ubuntu at least) is waay faster
> than ext4 (~2-3x as fast according to my tests). This is the secret as far
> as I'm concerned since you can use this while still using the most
> conservative DB options that don't risk your data.
> 2) Using "dbnosync+checkpoint" with mdb is the absolute fastest method, but
> at the cost of risking data loss
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Ulrich Windl <
> Ulrich.Windl@rz.uni-regensburg.de> wrote:
>
>> >>> Andrew Eross <eross@locatrix.com> schrieb am 05.02.2014 um 16:30 in
>> Nachricht
>> <CAL_tfFf2qW5BcT=Xs4uFOSUO=wL0AN=9CyfS+D-XYPLitMZ_aw@mail.gmail.com>:
>> > Hi Quanah,
>> >
>> > Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
>> > Linux 2.6.32-43-generic-pae #97-Ubuntu SMP Wed Sep 5 16:59:17 UTC 2012
>> i686
>> > GNU/Linux
>> > The latest OpenLDAP 2.4.39
>> > All of those tests done with the mdb backend, of course, and the actual
>> > file system is ext4
>>
>> Did you try btrfs? I'd guess it could be faster for massive random writes.
>>
>> >
>> > It's a fairly stock 10.04 system, no special config/kernel changes.
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Andrew
>> >
>> > On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Quanah Gibson-Mount <quanah@zimbra.com
>> >wrote:
>> >
>> >> --On Tuesday, February 04, 2014 6:52 PM -0200 Andrew Eross <
>> >> eross@locatrix.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>> Thanks, Dieter, Quanah.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> I've been doing some experimenting with those mdb options.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> I ran a few tests with inserting 10,000 records, wiping the DB in
>> >>> between, and changing just the one option at a time:
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> Base-line, no extra options: 4m8sWith "writemap" enabled: 8m55s
>> >>>
>> >>> With "writemap+mapasync" enabled: 5m12s
>> >>> With "dbnosync+checkpoint 0kb/1min": 0m14s
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> I know you answered some of this before, but please update with:
>> >>
>> >> What kernel?
>> >> What OpenLDAP version?
>> >> What Ubuntu release?
>> >> What filesystem for the LDAP DB?
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >>
>> >> Quanah
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >>
>> >> Quanah Gibson-Mount
>> >> Architect - Server
>> >> Zimbra, Inc.
>> >> --------------------
>> >> Zimbra ::  the leader in open source messaging and collaboration
>> >>
>>
>>
>>
>>