RE: Re: [ot] one for the networking guru's

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxx>]

I'm with Paul on this one I have to say...

...I'm finding that running 10/100 switched is at times a complete PITA on
my servers when I'm copying around 6 or 7 Gb files.

Transfer speeds to/from good fast SCSI arrays can be pretty impressive - I
set one up a while ago with a mate who does a lot of contract database
design work on a machine he has at home and we were getting sustained
write=
s
in excess of 50Mbytes/sec and reads in excess of 74Mbytes/sec using (IIRC)
HDTach using an Adaptec U160 SCSI RAID controller and striped array of
10,000 rpm SCSI drives. Yes, it's noisy as buggery and gives of a lot of
heat but the access times and transfer rates are stunning!

Even on my DVD server I'm finding that the limiting factor for how many
movies can be played simultaneously is (at the moment) the 100Mbit link to
the switch which is saturating first - I currently have a RocketRAID404
car=
d
configured as RAID 0 (striped) with 8 x ATA133 drives which don't appear to
be getting hammered and the load on the server remains at less than 30%
(according to Win2k Server Task Manager).

If I could afford one I'd definitely look at a 24 x 10/100 + 2 x Copper
Gigabit switch...

Phil

> -----Original Message-----
> From: yhkeppy [mailto:keith@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 10 October 2003 09:00
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [ukha_d] Re: [ot] one for the networking guru's
>
>
> Paul,
>
> Try running a test yourself rather than relying on the manuf's
> numbers (though if you have this type of setup i doubt you'll find
> any book details). Use perfmon - i'd be interested in hearing the
> results (i normally work with large disk installations in SAN and
> DAS setups, so i'd be interested in seeing how your system measures
> up).
>
> Keith
>
> --- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Paul Gale" <groups@s...>
wrote:
> >
> > Ah, but I'm not talking about any old SCSI HDD's - I have a
> striped array of ultra fast SCSI LVD 160 HDD's - this is a
> requirement of my top end video edit station that can play THREE
> streams of D1 digital video SIMULTANEOUSLY in an edit!!! :)
> >
> > I'll need to check the max performance as I can't remember the
> speeds - but it's way over 20MB per sec.
> >
> > Paul.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: yhkeppy [mailto:keith@xxxxxxx...]
> > Sent: 09 October 2003 18:27
> > To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> > Subject: [ukha_d] Re: [ot] one for the networking guru's
> >
> > I agree with this. I'd also add that 100Mbps is actually quite
> fast
> > in comparison with current disk transfer rates. When you consider
> > that a really fast ATA100 disk can write sustained at around
> 35MB/s
> > (which really is disk to disk across the disk bus on the same
> > machine with no CPU intervention), when you then have to get that
> > read/write cycle across the disk bus and out onto the comms bus
> when
> > its not sustained either, that's going to go much over 15-20MB/s
-
> > and this is almost the same speed as a maxed out 100Mbps
network!!
> >
> > Sure gigabit network will remove A bottleneck, but I doubt it
will
> > be the killer in your scenario. You could put second 100Mbps
cards
> > into the machines, cross connect them and subnet them off.
> Assuming
> > they are also not connected together via a second network, you
> will
> > avoid routing loops and you should theoretically get the maximum
> > efficiency out of the link.
> >
> > By the way, SATA and SCSI are actually not a lot faster than
> modern
> > IDE - the latest IDE drives are right up there on performance,
and
> > SATA only improves this by a smallish margin. The real difference
> is
> > in big storage architectures, where you can just have more SATA
or
> > SCSI disk in a single store.
> >
> > Keith
> >
> > --- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Shaf Ali" <shaf@s...>
wrote:
> > > Mate be4 even considering this what is your current
throughput ?
> > Where are
> > > the bottlenecks ?
> > >
> > > I might be an idea to nail out your bottlenecks before
> > proceeding...
> > >
> > > An example : Is 1 minute to transfer a 700Meg DivX file not
fast
> > enough ?
> > > Why am I not transfering this fast already ?
> > >
> > > Think of the software a nd architecture first.
> > >
> > > Shaf
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Paul Gale" <groups@s...>
> > > To: <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
> > > Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 4:16 PM
> > > Subject: [ukha_d] [ot] one for the networking guru's
> > >
> > >
> > > Got a few PC's connected via 100Mbps LAN - want to connect
two
> of
> > my edit PC
> > > 's together via Gigabit networking to share very large video
and
> > audio files
> > > for edit. Can I add a second Ethernet card (gigabit) to each
so
> > that peer to
> > > peer traffic between them uses the faster link (they both
have
> > very fast
> > > disk IO - SCSI and SATA) and not the existing n/w
infrastructure?
> > >
> > > I guess this is a routing issue but how do you tell XP and
W2K
> to
> > do this?
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Paul.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > UKHA 2004: 15th and 16th May 2004
> > >
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> >
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