SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3 Result

Throughput (ops/sec) Response (msec) 4000 0.9 8003 1.2 12008 1.4 16019 1.7 20021 2.0 24036 2.4 28043 3.1 32044 4.1 36090 5.8 40011 10.0

Tested By	NetApp, Inc.
Product Name	FAS3140 (SATA Disks with Performance Acceleration Module)
Hardware Available	July 2008
Software Available	January 2009
Date Tested	December 2008
SFS License Number	33
Licensee Locations	Sunnyvale, CA USA

The NetApp® FAS3100 represents the midrange of the FAS family of storage systems with NetApp's unified storage architecture. It features three models: the FAS3140, FAS3160, and FAS3170. FAS3100 performance is driven by a 64-bit architecture that uses high throughput, low latency links and PCI Express for all internal and external data transfers. It's flexible enough to handle primary and/or secondary storage needs for NAS and/or SAN implementations. The FAS3100 system supports as many as 40 Fibre Channel ports or 36 Ethernet ports, including support for both 8Gb Fibre Channel and 10Gb Ethernet. The FAS3140 scales to a maximum of 420 disk drives and 420TB of capacity. Finally, the FAS3100 boasts an efficient, HA-ready 6U form factor which allows for a shared chassis and backplane for dual controllers by sharing of common system power resources.

The NetApp Performance Acceleration Module provides a new way to optimize performance. It is a combination of hardware and tunable caching software which reduces latency and improves I/O throughput without adding more disk drives. Depending on the storage system, up to five of these 16GB modules can be configured per controller as a unified 80GB read cache in the PCI Express slots. For the FAS3140 controller, up to two modules can configured as unified 32GB read cache per controller. The Performance Acceleration Module is optimized to improve the performance of random read intensive workloads such as file services.

Item No	Qty	Type	Vendor	Model/Name	Description
1	2	Storage Controller	NetApp	FAS3140A-IB-BASE-R5	FAS3140A,IB,ACT-ACT,OS,R5
2	1	Controller Chassis	NetApp	FAS3140A-CHASSIS-R5-C	FAS3140,ACT-ACT,Chassis,AC PS,-C,R5
3	8	Disk Drives w/Shelf	NetApp	DSX-7.0TB-R5-C	Disk Shelf,7.0TB,SATA,-C,R5
4	2	PAM Adapter	NetApp	X1936A-R5-C	ADPT,Perf Acceleration Module I,PCIe,-C,R5
5	2	FC-AL Adapter	NetApp	X2054B-R6	HBA,FC,4-port,PCIe,4Gb,R6
6	1	Software License	NetApp	SW-T3C-NFS	NFS Software,T3C
7	2	Software License	NetApp	SW-T3-FLEXSCALE-C	Perf Acceleration Module Software,T3,-C

OS Name and Version	Data ONTAP 7.3.1
Other Software	None
Filesystem Software	Data ONTAP 7.3.1

Name	Value	Description
vol options 'volume' no_atime_update	on	Disable atime updates (applied to all volumes)

Server Tuning Notes

N/A

Description	Number of Disks	Usable Size
500GB SATA 7200RPM Disk Drives	112	39.7 TB
Total	112	39.7 TB

Number of Filesystems	4
Total Exported Capacity	39.7 TB
Filesystem Type	WAFL
Filesystem Creation Options	Default
Filesystem Config	Each filesystem was striped across 28 disks
Fileset Size	4675.9 GB

The storage configuration consisted of 8 shelves, each wth 14 disks. Pairs of shelves were daisy-chained such that the outputs of the first shelf in the pair were attached to the inputs of the second shelf in the pair. Each shelf in each pair had two 2Gbit/s FC-AL loop connections, each connected to one of eight FC-AL ports (four integrated on the mainboard, four on the FC-AL HBA) on a different storage controller, creating four possible paths to access any disk in the two shelf pair. Logic in the shelf controller converts commands and data on the FC-AL loops to SATA, the interface on the disks. One half of the disks in each shelf pair were owned by each storage controller. Disks were organized into four pools or "aggregates", each consisting of 28 disks. Each aggregate was composed of 2 RAID-DP groups, each RAID-DP group was composed of 12 data disks and 2 parity disks. Two aggregates were owned by each storage controller. Within each aggregate, a flexible volume (utilizing DataONTAP FlexVol (TM) technology) was created to hold the SFS filesystem for that controller. Each volume was striped across all disks in the aggregate where it resided. Each controller was the owner of two volumes/filesystems, but the disks in each aggregate were dual-attached so that, in the event of a fault, they could be managed by the other controller via an alternate loop. A separate flexible volume residing in one of the aggregates owned by each controller held the DataONTAP operating system and system files.

Item No	Network Type	Number of Ports Used	Notes
1	Jumbo Frame Gigabit Ethernet	4	Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet controller

Network Configuration Notes

There were two gigabit ethernet network interfaces on each storage controller. The interfaces were configured to use jumbo frames (MTU size of 9000 bytes). All network interfaces were connected to a Cisco 6509 switch, which provided connectivity to the clients.

An MTU size of 9000 was set for all connections to the switch. Each load generator was connected to the network via a single 1 GigE port, which was configured with 4 separate IP addresses on separate subnets.

Item No	Qty	Type	Description	Processing Function
1	2	CPU	2.4GHz Dual-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2216, 512K L2 cache	Networking, NFS protocol, WAFL filesystem, RAID/Storage drivers

Processing Element Notes

Each storage controller has one physical processor with two processing cores.

Description	Size in GB	Number of Instances	Total GB	Nonvolatile
Storage controller mainboard memory	4	2	8	V
Performance Acceleration Module memory	16	2	32	V
Storage controller integrated NVRAM module	0.5	2	1	NV
Grand Total Memory Gigabytes			41

Memory Notes

Each storage controller has main memory that is used for the operating system and for caching filesystem data. A separate, integrated battery-backed RAM module is used to provide stable storage for writes that have not yet been written to disk.

The WAFL filesystem logs writes and other filesystem modifying transactions to the integrated NVRAM module. In an active-active configuration, as in the system under test, such transacations are also logged to the NVRAM on the partner storage controller so that, in the event of a storage controller failure, any transactions on the failed controller can be completed by the partner controller. Filesystem modifying NFS operations are not acknowledged until after the storage system has confirmed that the related data are stored in NVRAM modules of both storage controllers (when both controllers are active). The battery backing the NVRAM ensures that any uncommitted transactions are preserved for at least 72 hours.

The system under test consisted of two FAS3140 storage controllers housed in a single 6U chassis and 8 storage shelves, each with 14 500GB SATA disk drives. The two controllers were configured in an active-active cluster configuration using the high-availability cluster software option in conjunction with an InfiniBand cluster interconnect on the backplane of the shared chassis. A Performance Acceleration Module was present in a PCI-e expansion slot and enabled with default settings on each storage controller. An FC-AL host bus adapter was present in a PCI-e expansion slot on each storage controller. Each storage shelf had one 2Gbit/s FC-AL loop connection to each storage controller, as well as two FC-AL connections daisy-chaining it to another shelf. The system under test was connected to a gigabit ethernet switch via 4 network ports (two per storage controller).

All standard data protection features, including background RAID and media error scrubbing, software validated RAID checksumming, and double disk failure protection via double parity RAID (RAID-DP) were enabled during the test.

Item No	Qty	Vendor	Model/Name	Description
1	25	IBM	IBM eServer Bladecenter (14-blade chassis)	Server blade with 2GB RAM and Linux operating system
2	1	Cisco	6509	Cisco Catalyst 6509 Ethernet Switch

LG Type Name	LG1
BOM Item #	1
Processor Name	Dual-Core AMD Opteron Processor 2216 HE
Processor Speed	2.4 GHz
Number of Processors (chips)	1
Number of Cores/Chip	2
Memory Size	2 GB
Operating System	RHEL4 kernel 2.6.9-55.0.2.ELsmp
Network Type	1 x Broadcom NetXtreme II Gigabit Ethernet BCM5706 1000Base-SX (A2)

Benchmark Parameters

Network Attached Storage Type	NFS V3
Number of Load Generators	25
Number of Processes per LG	20
Biod Max Read Setting	8
Biod Max Write Setting	8
Block Size	AUTO

Testbed Configuration

LG No	LG Type	Network	Target Filesystems	Notes
1..25	LG1	1	/vol/vol1 /vol/vol2 /vol/vol3 /vol/vol4	N/A

Load Generator Configuration Notes

All filesystems were mounted on all clients, which were connected to the same physical and logical network.

Each load-generating client hosted 20 processes. The assignment of processes to filesystems and network interfaces was done such that they were evenly divided across all filesystems and network paths to the storage controllers. The filesystem data was striped evenly across all disks and FC-AL loops on the storage backend.

Other test notes: None.

NetApp is a registered trademark and "Data ONTAP", "FlexVol", and "WAFL" are trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners and should be treated as such.

• Config Diagram