SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3 Result

Throughput (ops/sec) Response (msec) 6154 0.8 12312 0.9 18496 1.3 24672 1.5 30844 1.7 37074 1.8 43234 2.0 49475 2.2 55764 2.6 61497 3.9

Tested By	LSI Corp.
Product Name	COUGAR 6720
Hardware Available	August 2008
Software Available	August 2008, September 2010
Date Tested	November 2010
SFS License Number	3634
Licensee Locations	Milpitas, CA

The Cougar 6000 represents LSI ONStor's family of scalable clustered NAS gateway systems targeted at high-end enterprise file serving environments. Cougar 6000 systems are available in two models: Cougar 6720 & Cougar 6520. These systems are based on 64-bit, multi-core network processors which feature system-on-a-chip design, with integrated i/o and hyper-transport interconnects for high data throughput at significantly lower power consumption. Each Cougar 6000 system supports up to eight 4Gb Fibre Channel and eight Gigabit Ethernet ports in a highly available configuration within a compact 2U form factor. Cougar 6000 systems are architected to scale out to multiple NAS gateways in a single cluster and deliver high performance and capacity scaling across a broad range of storage systems.

Item No	Qty	Type	Vendor	Model/Name	Description
1	1	NAS Gateway	LSI ONStor	Cougar 6720	18 core Cougar with 18 GB RAM
2	2	Storage System	LSI	7900	Storage array with 2 controllers, 160 drives, 4 FC 4 Gb ports
3	1	SAN Switch	QLogic	5600	SAN switch with 4Gb FC ports (16 ports utilized)

OS Name and Version	Everon OS R4.0.2.20
Other Software	LSI 7900 Controller Module firmware 07.60.39.00
Filesystem Software	StorFS

Name	Value	Description
read ahead in filer dcache	off	Anticipatory reads of storage by filer

Server Tuning Notes

none

Description	Number of Disks	Usable Size
73GB FCAL 15K RPM Disk Drives	320	21.2 TB
Total	320	21.2 TB

Number of Filesystems	16
Total Exported Capacity	9.877 TB
Filesystem Type	StorFS
Filesystem Creation Options	Default
Filesystem Config	Each of the 16 filesystems was striped over 20 drives utilizing RAID-0
Fileset Size	7201.0 GB

Two standard LSI 7900 storage systems were utilized. Included in each was a 7900 controller module and 10 shelves of 16 Fibre Channel drives (15K RPM). Each array had 8 filesystems, each striped over its own set of 20 disks. Four file systems were assigned to controller A and four were assigned to controller B. While both Cougar blades could access either controller of either storage system for failover purposes, each blade was assigned to its own 7900 during the SPEC test. Storage settings included read ahead off, read cache enabled, write cache enabled, and 128 KB stripe size,

Item No	Network Type	Number of Ports Used	Notes
1	Gigabit Ethernet	8	Four GbE ports per Cougar 6720 blade. The 4 ports were aggregated into 1 logical port.

Network Configuration Notes

A Cisco Catalyst 2960G ethernet switch (48 ports) was utilized. The network interfaces used standard frames.

The Cougar 6720 was connected to the Cisco switch via GbE connections (8 ports). The connections were organized into 2 groups of 4. Each group of 4 was aggregated at the switch and the Cougar blade. Each of the 8 clients was connected to the Cisco switch with a 1 GbE connection.

Item No	Qty	Type	Description	Processing Function
1	4	CPU	900 MHz Broadcom SiByte 1480 (4 cores)	TCP/IP, NFS, CIFS protocol, filesystem
2	2	CPU	600 MHz Broadcom 1125	management

Processing Element Notes

Each Cougar 6720 contains two processing blades. Each blade has 2 physical processors (Broadcom SiByte 1480 - four processing cores per chip) for data path processing (TCP/IP, NFS, CIFS, filesystem) and 1 physical processor (Broadcom SiByte 1125 - one processing core per chip) for operating system management and control, four Gigabit Ethernet ports and four 4Gb/s Fibre Channel ports.

Description	Size in GB	Number of Instances	Total GB	Nonvolatile
DDR2 RAM (Cougar)	1	18	18	V
NV RAM (LSI XBB2 control module)	1	16	16	NV
Grand Total Memory Gigabytes			34

Memory Notes

Each Cougar 6720 NAS blade has 8 GB of memory for the data path (protocol and file system operations) and 1 GB of memory for operating system management and control.

The NAS system under test includes the Cougar 6720 gateway and LSI 7900 storage. Only the LSI 7900 storage system has stable storage. The LSI 7900 stable storage consists of disk drives and DDR2 RAM with a backup system utilizing batteries and USB-based flash drives. In the event of power failure, the battery backed system writes cache data to flash drives. If the batteries are not charged, then the storage system operates in pass-through mode with the disk drives being considered the only stable storage. Data is stored in stable storage before NFS stable write and commit operations are acknowledged. Note that the USB flash drives are implicitly included in the NV RAM line in the Memory table.

The test configuration used dedicated resources (network switch, SAN switch, storage).

Standard LSI storage default settings were utilized.

Item No	Qty	Vendor	Model/Name	Description
1	8	Dell	PowerEdge 1850	Dell load generator client
2	1	Cisco	Catalyst 2960G switch	48 port switch

LG Type Name	LG1
BOM Item #	1
Processor Name	Intel Xeon
Processor Speed	3.0 GHz
Number of Processors (chips)	2
Number of Cores/Chip	2
Memory Size	2 GB
Operating System	Red Hat REL4 2.6.9-5.ELsmp
Network Type	Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection

Benchmark Parameters

Network Attached Storage Type	NFS V3
Number of Load Generators	8
Number of Processes per LG	32
Biod Max Read Setting	2
Biod Max Write Setting	2
Block Size	AUTO

Testbed Configuration

LG No	LG Type	Network	Target Filesystems	Notes
1..8	1	1	vol1-vol8, vol101-vol108	None

Load Generator Configuration Notes

None

Thirty-two processes were utilized on each load generating client. The LSI ONStor Cougar 6720 Gateway had two blades, each running 1 virtual server and 8 file systems. Each blade was configured with 1 logical interface to the clients (an aggregation of four GbE interfaces). To satisfy the uniform access rule, each client used 32 mount points, 2 for each of the 16 file systems in the Cougar 6720 Gateway. Thus each client's load was evenly distributed over the 16 file systems and the 2 network interfaces. On the storage side, each virtual server could access any of the raid groups via either of the 2 storage systems.

None

• Cougar6720-7900.jpg