Enhancements to the NFS Client

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 12/03 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The following enhancements have improved the performance of the NFS client:

• Restrictions on wire transfer sizes have been relaxed. Now, the transfer size is based on the capabilities of the underlying transport. For example, the NFS transfer limit for UDP is still 32 Kbytes. However, because TCP is a streaming protocol without the datagram limits of UDP, maximum transfer sizes over TCP have been increased to 1 Mbyte.

• Previously, all write requests were serialized by both the NFS client and the NFS server. The NFS client has been modified to permit an application to issue concurrent writes, as well as concurrent reads and writes, to a single file. You can enable this functionality on the client by using the forcedirectio mount option. When you use this option, you are enabling this functionality for all files within the mounted file system. You could also enable this functionality on a single file on the client by using the directio() interface. Note that unless this new functionality has been enabled, writes to files are serialized. Also, if concurrent writes or concurrent reads and writes are occurring, then POSIX semantics are no longer being supported for that file.

• The NFS client no longer uses an excessive number of UDP ports. Previously, NFS transfers over UDP used a separate UDP port for each outstanding request. Now, by default, the NFS client uses only one UDP reserved port. However, this support is configurable. If the use of more simultaneous ports would increase system performance through increased scalability, then the system can be configured to use more ports. This capability also mirrors the NFS over TCP support, which has had this kind of configurability since its inception.

For further information, see the System Administration Guide: Network Services.