From debian-user  Thu May 05 15:53:36 2011
From: "Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." <bss () iguanasuicide ! net>
Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 15:53:36 +0000
To: debian-user
Subject: Re: file systems
Message-Id: <201105051053.37256.bss () iguanasuicide ! net>
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In <4DC286BF.3060400@hardwarefreak.com>, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>On 5/4/2011 6:44 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
>> In<4DC1E009.30209@hardwarefreak.com>, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>>> On 5/2/2011 4:02 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
>>>> They are also essential for any journaled filesystem to have correct
>>>> behavior in the face of sudden pwoer loss.
>>>=20
>>> This is true only if you don't have BBWC.
>>=20
>> No.  It is true even with BBWC.
>
>No, it's not.  Sorry I didn't find any Debian documentation to prove my
>point.  I'll use Red Hat docs:
>
>http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Storage_=
Ad
>ministration_Guide/writebarrieronoff.html
>
>"For devices with non-volatile, battery-backed write caches and those
>with write-caching disabled, you can safely disable write barriers at
>mount time using the -o nobarrier option for mount. However, some
>devices do not support write barriers; such devices will log an error
>message to /var/log/messages (refer to Table 17.1, =E2=80=9CWrite barrier =
error
>messages per file system=E2=80=9D)."
>
>"Write barriers are also unnecessary whenever the system uses hardware
>RAID controllers with battery-backed write cache. If the system is
>equipped with such controllers and if its component drives have write
>caches disabled, the controller will advertise itself as a write-through
>cache; this will inform the kernel that the write cache data will
>survive a power loss."

I stand corrected.

>>>> Even with a a battery-packed RAID cache, like I have in my desktop,
>>>> executing without barrier can result in extra data loss that executing
>>>> with a barrier prevents.
>>>=20
>>> Then I'd say you have a problem with your BBWC RAID controller in your
>>> desktop.  Which BBWC RAID card do you have?
>>=20
>> Areca ARC-1160.
>
>Can you kindly point me to your past posts where you discussed this
>'extra data loss' problem you experienced?

I didn't experience data loss and I didn't mean to imply that I had been th=
e=20
victim of my RAID card.

>>>>> The nobarrier results are far more relevant than the barrier results,
>>>>> especially the 16 and 128 thread results, for those SAs with high
>>>>> performance persistent storage.
>>>>=20
>>>> I disagree entirely.  You should be looking at the threaded results,
>>>> probably 128 threads (depending on what the server does), but you shou=
ld
>>>> also be using barriers.
>>>=20
>>> You just said you "disagree entirely" and then say 128 threads, same
>>> thing I said.  But then you recommend barriers, which is the
>>> disagreement.
>>=20
>> You said 128 threads unconditionally, I admitted that there are certain
>> workloads where 16 threads is a more correct model.
>
>The multi-thread tests are simply used to show how each filesystem
>scales with parallel workloads.  Some servers will never see 16 parallel
>IO streams, such as most SOHO servers.  Some servers will see thousands
>of simultaneous IO streams, such as the Linux kernel archives servers.
>There is no "correct model".

Agreed.
=2D-=20
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.                   ,=3D ,-_-. =3D.
bss@iguanasuicide.net                   ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy         `-'(. .)`-'
http://iguanasuicide.net/                    \_/

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