Samba speed

[Theodore Tso]

On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 10:21:14AM -0800, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> Here's a really interesting paper from Intel
> that they recently brought to my attention.
> 
> http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/windows-client-cifs-behavior-can-slow-linux-nas-performance
> 
> Looks like using XFS for your Linux Samba
> server, or setting "strict allocate = yes" can make
> a big difference due to sparse file issues.

Glibc 2.7 (as shipped in Ubuntu Hardy) has posix_fallocate wired up to
the fallocate system call, and ext4 supports delayed allocation as
well as preallocation.  There are number of userspace applications ---
rsync, samba, and most bittorrent applications come to mind --- where
use of fallocate would be a big win.

            	     	       	     	      - Ted