[linux-lvm] What is a good stripe size?

[Steven Lembark]

>> On Sat, Jun 16, 2001 at 03:29:16PM +0200, Urs Thuermann wrote:
>> > Using the PVs on sda2 and sdb2 I created a single VG and I want to
>> > create striped LVs on it now.  My questions is, how large should I
>> > choose the stripe size to achive optimal performance.  If I choose it
>> > too large, I will probably loose the win of striping.
>
>> You lose the advantage of striping if the stripe size is on the order
>> of the file size.  You want stripes which will be narrower than most
>> of the files you will be using.
>
> I wonder if you are looking at a single file or general
> throughput here.
>
> For a single file you may gain reading speed (writing is less
> critical as it is buffered); however with a stripe size below
> file size you will need to move the heads of both (or even
> more) disks, increasing latency[1], effectively slowing down
> reads unless you have fairly large files.

Assumes that the stripe blocks are not adjacent on their
respective disk drives.  The smaller stripe may have no
penalty if the logical blocks are adjacent on the disk.

One of the main resons for using LVM at all is to avoid
having to worry about any of this.  If raw speed is a major
consideration then use hardware RAID5 w/ strip size ==
I/O block size (e.g., 4 disks w/ 1K chunk and 4K filesystem
block on linux).  This avoids the "extra read" penalty and
gives nice, distributed reads.

> [1] Your seek time rises -- on the average -- the more heads
>     are in use.  With one head you get 1/3 full-seek time for
>     a random head and file locations.  With two heads you need
>     to move both heads, chances are that one of them has a
>     longer way than the other.

One advantage of striping is that the seek latency of one
drive can be used for data I/O on another drive.  If the LVM
system does any sort of double-buffering then the striped
system can negate/reduce the seek time.

This also leaves out the issue of journaled file systems, which
may have data (or just meta-data) spread out all over the
place -- leaveing you with fragmented reads even in the case
of a small file.


Net result is that depending on CPU, bus, controller and
disk hardware and their interactins with the file systems
and particular type of I/O being performned the answer
becomes "It Depends" :-)

In 15 years the only method I've found that works consistently
is to try however many of the recommendations you can before
comitting to any one of them.  Benchmark them under realistic
condidtions and one will usually be a bit better.  At that point you
can 'reverse engineer' why your particular conditions match
that particular theory -- and probably learn a bit about how to
improve your system as a result.




> [4] all disks are 'single point of failure'.  Most file systems
>     do not like loosing spots all over the place.  But then you
>     do backup religiously, test your backups and have recovery
>     plans in place, yes?

Ah, but it's so much more fun to fiture out how it all works at
3 in the morning with 20 users breathing fire down your back!