dbench scalability testing

[Nathan Dabney]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 11:01:53AM +1100, Anton Blanchard wrote:
>  
> >   The problem is, using a single kernel image (2.2.18) on the same hardware
> >   without any other system activity I can't get reliable results.
> 
> At this point, testing on 2.4 would be better. Most of us are working there
> and not on 2.2.

I am starting with 2.2. to get more of a baseline to compare the 2.4 improvements to.  That and to get some standard tests developed.

I should have some 2.4 numbers on the 4 and 8way boxes available before the end of the day.

> I have been able to get reliable results with recent 2.4 kernels. For
> benchmarking purposes, increasing the async and sync flush points helps:

Thank you for the suggestions, now are these changes good for getting reliable results only, or also for improving performance?

Do you have any other changes you implement for performance testing?

> Netbench is such a bogus benchmark but we are stuck with it and we can
> optimise for it nicely :)

I love this game.

> Excellent, I've been doing samba/linux performance work but at this point
> I only have a quad cpu machine. Can your network cards do zero copy? I
> have a few samba patches including making samba use sendfile which could
> help when you get around to doing netbench runs.

If not, then we can get some.  Suggestions?  I will have to look into what we have (the lab is still in the last parts of the install phase so I don't have a solid handle on the various hardware platforms yet).

-Nathan