NFS Server Performance and Tuning Guide for Sun Hardware

Tuning to Improve NFS Performance

This chapter discusses tuning recommendations for these environments:

Attribute-intensive environments, in which primarily small files (one to two hundred bytes) are accessed. Software development is an example of an attribute-intensive environment.

Data-intensive environments, in which primarily large files are accessed. A large file can be defined as a file that takes one or more seconds to transfer (roughly 1 Mbyte). CAD or CAE are examples of data-intensive environments.

Check these items when tuning the system:

Networks
Disk drives
Central processor units
Memory
Swap space
Number of NFS threads in /etc/init.d/nfs.server
/etc/system to modify kernel variables

Once you have profiled the performance capabilities of your server, begin tuning the system. Tuning an NFS server requires a basic understanding of how networks, disk drives, CPUs, and memory affect performance. To tune the system, determine which parameters need adjusting to improve balance.

To Monitor and Tune Server Performance

Collect statistics. See Chapter 3, Analyzing NFS Performance.

Identify a constraint or overutilized resource and reconfigure around it.

Refer to this chapter and Chapter 3, Analyzing NFS Performance for tuning recommendations.

Measure the performance gain over a long evaluation period.

Balancing NFS Server Workload

All NFS processing takes place inside the operating system kernel at a higher priority than user-level tasks.

Note -

Do not combine databases or time-shared loads on an NFS server because when the NFS load is high any additional tasks performed by an NFS server will run slowly.

Non-interactive workloads such as mail delivery and printing, excluding the SPARCprinter (not supported in the Solaris 2.6 and later releases of the Solaris operating environment) or other Sun printers based on the NeWSprintTM software are good candidates for using the server for dual purpose (such as NFS and other tasks). If you have spare CPU power and a light NFS load, then interactive work will run normally.