Optimising Gigabit ethernet speeds [Solaris]

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From: Dave on 4 Nov 2009 17:56

Seeing the other discussion on "solaris downloads much slower than linux" got me
thinking a bit. I decided not to hijack that thread, but start another thread.

I've got a new Sun Ultra 27 (Quad core Xeon 3.33 GHz, 12 GB RAM). Today I fitted
a Sun Quad GigaSwift Ethernet PCI adapter (X4444A) into my much older Blade 2000
( 2 x 1200 MHz, 8 GB RAM).

Is there anything that would be worth investigating tweaking to improve the
performance between these two machines? The only device in the middle is a
Netgear G5608 10/100/1000 8-port switch. One might reasonably assume that the
older card in the Blade 2000 is not going to be quite as good as a gigabit
Ethernet connector on a more modern machine.

BTW, if anyone wants an Sun Quad Gigabit PCI card (X4444A), you might want to
see if 'nanaman0_0' has any more of these. The card was up for #50.00 (UK
pounds), but I made an offer of #40.00 and it was accepted. In fact, soon after
offering #40 I was going to go back and pay the #50, but he had already accepted
#40!

That's pretty cheap for Sun Quad Gigabit cards on eBay. The card was brand new,
in the original unopened Sun box, complete with drivers, manuals, license etc.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemVersion&item=300360965215

(No, he is not a friend of mine, but I thought that was a reasonable buy. I've
seen quad 10/100 cards sell for more than that on eBay. I paid #10 a month or
two ago to get a Quad Fast Ethernet, but when I got the Ultra 27, I had more of
a reason to put a faster card in the Blade 2000).

Not that the Blade 2000 is going to get a lot of use now. The reduction in noise
and heat is very welcome. I expect my next electricity bill will be lower than
the last! Though the Ultra 27 has cost me about #4,000 with disks and RAM, so I
guess it will take some time to recover that amount of money.

Dave

From: Ian Collins on 5 Nov 2009 02:25

From: solx on 5 Nov 2009 03:52

Dave wrote:
> Seeing the other discussion on "solaris downloads much slower than
> linux" got me thinking a bit. I decided not to hijack that thread, but
> start another thread.
>
> I've got a new Sun Ultra 27 (Quad core Xeon 3.33 GHz, 12 GB RAM). Today
> I fitted a Sun Quad GigaSwift Ethernet PCI adapter (X4444A) into my much
> older Blade 2000 ( 2 x 1200 MHz, 8 GB RAM).
>
> Is there anything that would be worth investigating tweaking to improve
> the performance between these two machines? The only device in the
> middle is a Netgear G5608 10/100/1000 8-port switch. One might
> reasonably assume that the older card in the Blade 2000 is not going to
> be quite as good as a gigabit Ethernet connector on a more modern machine.
>
> BTW, if anyone wants an Sun Quad Gigabit PCI card (X4444A), you might
> want to see if 'nanaman0_0' has any more of these. The card was up for
> #50.00 (UK pounds), but I made an offer of #40.00 and it was accepted.
> In fact, soon after offering #40 I was going to go back and pay the #50,
> but he had already accepted #40!
>
> That's pretty cheap for Sun Quad Gigabit cards on eBay. The card was
> brand new, in the original unopened Sun box, complete with drivers,
> manuals, license etc.
>
> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemVersion&item=300360965215
>
>
> (No, he is not a friend of mine, but I thought that was a reasonable
> buy. I've seen quad 10/100 cards sell for more than that on eBay. I paid
> #10 a month or two ago to get a Quad Fast Ethernet, but when I got the
> Ultra 27, I had more of a reason to put a faster card in the Blade 2000).
>
> Not that the Blade 2000 is going to get a lot of use now. The reduction
> in noise and heat is very welcome. I expect my next electricity bill
> will be lower than the last! Though the Ultra 27 has cost me about
> #4,000 with disks and RAM, so I guess it will take some time to recover
> that amount of money.
>
> Dave

Hi Dave,

You might want to raise this in the OpenSolaris forums as suggestions
and changes could be incorporated which will ultimately feed into Solaris 11

From: Jim Leonard on 5 Nov 2009 10:44

On Nov 4, 4:56 pm, Dave <f...(a)coo.com> wrote:
> Is there anything that would be worth investigating tweaking to improve the
> performance between these two machines? The only device in the middle is a
> Netgear G5608 10/100/1000 8-port switch. One might reasonably assume that the
> older card in the Blade 2000 is not going to be quite as good as a gigabit
> Ethernet connector on a more modern machine.

Solaris by default sets the MSIX limit to 1 which limits hardware
interrupts to a single CPU. Something like "set
ddi_msix_alloc_limit=4" should allow each port to be handled by a
different CPU (assuming the 4-port card has four interrupts). The
OpenSolaris network tuning guide has other suggestions too, like
multiple soft queues.

From: Dave on 10 Nov 2009 06:58

Ian Collins wrote:
> Dave wrote:
>> Seeing the other discussion on "solaris downloads much slower than
>> linux" got me thinking a bit. I decided not to hijack that thread, but
>> start another thread.
>>
>> I've got a new Sun Ultra 27 (Quad core Xeon 3.33 GHz, 12 GB RAM).
>> Today I fitted a Sun Quad GigaSwift Ethernet PCI adapter (X4444A) into
>> my much older Blade 2000 ( 2 x 1200 MHz, 8 GB RAM).
>>
>> Is there anything that would be worth investigating tweaking to
>> improve the performance between these two machines? The only device in
>> the middle is a Netgear G5608 10/100/1000 8-port switch. One might
>> reasonably assume that the older card in the Blade 2000 is not going
>> to be quite as good as a gigabit Ethernet connector on a more modern
>> machine.
>
> The most effective options I have found are to increase the buffer sizes
> and enable jumbo frames (if the NICs and switch support them).
>

Thank you. I'll have to check the switch, as its only a cheap one (Netgear).
It's not going to have the reconfigurability of a Cisco!

--
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