StorNext File System Tuning

Distributed LAN Servers

Distributed LAN Servers

Distributed LAN Servers must have sufficient memory. When a Distributed LAN Server does not have sufficient memory, its performance in servicing Distributed LAN I/O requests might suffer. In some cases (particularly on Windows,) it might hang.

Refer to the StorNext Release Notes for this release’s memory requirements.

Distributed LAN Servers must also have sufficient bus bandwidth. As discussed above, a Distributed LAN Server must have sufficient bus bandwidth to operate the NICs used for Distributed LAN I/O at full speed, while at the same time operating their Fibre Channel HBAs. Thus, Quantum strong recommends using PCI Express for Distributed LAN Servers.

Note that a single slow Distributed LAN server can reduce overall throughput for all clients. The slow server will get some of the traffic from all clients and tend to reduce throughput across the board. An example would be a server with less disk bandwidth than the other servers, or a server with a slow network connection.

Windows Memory Requirements

Beginning in version 2.6.1, StorNext includes a number of performance enhancements that enable it to better react to changing customer load. However, these enhancements come with a price: memory requirement.

When running in the Windows environment on a machine with minimum memory (256 MB) the tuning parameters need to be adjusted or the machine will run out of memory. This can be seen by bringing up task manager and watching the Nonpaged tag in the Kernel Memory pane in the lower right hand corner. On a machine with 256 MB of memory this value must be less than 96 MB.

The problem will manifest itself by commands failing, messages being sent to the system log about insufficient memory, the fsmpm

StorNext File System Tuning Guide

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Quantum 6-01376-05 manual Distributed LAN Servers, Windows Memory Requirements