FAS 2020 performance.

[andris_petris]

Hi,

i`m a bit confused on this problem, it isn`t like a big deal for now, but as we are planning on putting some business machines on it might start to be.

Till now the system was mainly like backup as it is snapmirroring between our FAS 2040 and also have 3 machines on it which also are not on high I/O, but even then the load is quite high.

Sysstat -x 2 shows following.

51%     0     0     0       3    58     3   8588   3942     0     0    30s  99%  91%  Zf  72%      0     3     0     0    13     0

51%     0     0     0       9    91     3   6936   2730     0     0    32s  99%  93%  Zf  78%      0     9     0     0    86     0

36%     0     0     0       9    99     3   6860   2778     0     0    29s  99%  89%  Zf  71%      0     9     0     0    93     0

31%     0     0     0      26   139    54   5678    734     0     0    28s  99%  15%  Z   58%      0    26     0     0   129    27

28%     0     0     0      10    59     4   4980      0     0     0    25s  99%   0%  -   58%      0    10     0     0    55     0

26%     0     0     0      11    39     2   4994      0     0     0    22s  99%   0%  -   60%      0    11     0     0    37     0

29%     0     0     0       3     8     1   7312   1798     0     0    25s  99%  40%  Zv  63%      0     3     0     0     7     0

system is Fas 2020,  NetApp Release 7.3.2P4, and 24 DISK drives (300 GB 10k RPM), 1 aggr. 2 raid groups 16 and 7,

As i Understand one of bottle necks is that i`ve 7 disks on raid group, this one i`m planing to add 4 more as i`ve 4 free slots.

But is there any other tweaks to improve performance for Vmware VM.

Maybe some suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

[ADAM_SEKORA]

Hi Andris,

Welcome to the forums.

The sysstat output you provided isn't all that helpful in determining a problem. As its limited to less than 15 seconds worth of data, its hardly a look at your average performance. I would recommend increasing the interval or providing more intervals (preferrably as an text attachment) and please include column headers (I had to log into a filer and run sysstat -x to make out your output 😃 ). One thing I do note off the sysstat output it the Z CP's, but with such a short time range they may just be snapshots writing out.

You certainly don't have CPU contention based on the output, but it does look like your disks have somewhat higher util.

I would recommend upgrading ONTap as a general recommendation. I would say that adding 4 additional disks is a great first step, I feel this will be the surest route for improving your performance. As a side note, the 2020 has the smallest amount of RAM and NVRAM of all filers curently produced, don't be surprised if it gets less performance than other filers in your environment even with the same disk configuration and similar workloads, its simply can't cache the reads or writes like higher end filers can.

Curiously, you say you have 4 slots free... what do you mean by this? I'm confused because the 2020 only has 12 internal disks, combined with an additional disk shelf of 14 disks this comes to 26 disks total (not the 24 you indicated earlier.) 26 minus the 23 you have in use means you have 3 disks/slots available. Could you clarify if you have a 2020 and how many shelves you have in what configuration?

Specifically for improving performance of VMs, one of the easiest and most important ways to increase performance is to make sure the IO is aligned properly. Here is a link to a great TR on the subject that should answer any questions you may have: http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3747.pdf. And a link to a very good blog post: http://communities.netapp.com/community/netapp-blogs/virtualstorageguy/blog/2011/04/08/current-status-an-update-and-a-look-to-the-future-of-alignment

Best Regards,

Adam S.

[andris_petris]

Hi Adam,

first thanks for your response.

I `ll add file a bit later as i tried to turn on deduplication on volume which has Virtual machines i`m not sure if it was a good or bad idea

Sure i understand that 2020 isn`t a ferrari but i have much also fas 270 running in on of my locations and 2040C also. OK as i found out i can increase RAm to 2 GB.

About disks - i have 28 bays as previously it was 250 shelve with 14 bays in which i inserted 2020 controller and attached additional shelve which makes 24 disks( 1 spare ) i`m not sure if i typed it correctly.

Ok i will check allignment on those few machines that are running there.

what are your suggestion on upgrade ONTAp, as i read 8.x is not supported and also as we have 270 snapmirroring to 2020 it`s not a possibility.

Message was edited by: Andris Petris Here is a file 🙂

[akw_white]

Hi Andris

FAS2020 and 270 will both support the latest version of ONTAP 7.3 (currently 7.3.6). I would recommend upgrading to at least 7.3.4 but as Adam S pointed out, the most important thing is probably block alignment.