 Ext3 vs
Reiserfs
Or how we got
distracted while installing the new mail server...
July, 11 2002
Benchmarking
Software: PostMark -
Developed by Network Appliance. An excerpt from the PostMark
website:
PostMark was
designed to create a large pool of continually changing files and
to measure the transaction rates for a workload approximating a
large Internet electronic mail server.
PostMark
generates an initial pool of random text files ranging in size from
a configurable low bound to a configurable high bound. This file
pool is of configurable size and can be located on any accessible
file system.
Once the pool
has been created (also producing statistics on continuous small
file creation performance), a specified number of transactions
occurs. Each transaction consists of a pair of smaller
transactions:
- Create file
or Delete file
- Read file or
Append file
The incidence of
each transaction type and its affected files are chosen randomly to
minimize the influence of file system caching, file read ahead, and
disk level caching and track buffering. This incidence can be tuned
by setting either the read or create bias parameters to produce the
desired results.
When a file
is created, a random initial length is selected, and text from a
random pool is appended up to the chosen length. File deletion
selects a random file from the list of active files and deletes
it.
When a file
is to be read, a randomly selected file is opened, and the entire
file is read (using a configured block size) into memory. Either
buffered or raw library routines may be used, allowing existing
software to be approximated if desired.
Appending
data to a file opens a random file, seeks to its current end, and
writes a random amount of data. This value is chosen to be less
than the configured file size high bound. If the file is already at
the maximum size, no further data will appended.
When all of
the transactions have completed, the remaining active files are all
deleted (also producing statistics on continuous file
deletion).
Since we are going to use this machine as a mail server, this
software sounds about right. On with the testing.
Next - First Results
"Saving the world... one sys-admin at a time."
- Dax Kelson
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