[THIN] Re: Citrix - Harddisk Specification
- From: "Stefan Timmermans" <stefan.timmermans@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:34:19 +0100
Dear Toby,
Working for a hardware vendor I would certainly say it will increase
performance....
However: To what extend ? Before investing in the material and work, I would
spend some time in getting some windows performance data from
perfmon/perflogs.
If the disksubsystem is really your problem/bottleneck (eg avg
diskqueueLength, %disktime, Avg Disk Sec / Transfer)
Try to figure out too if you have enough memory, since this could increase
paging activity. Check the % your page file is in use lets say
1 hour after the start of the day for your office users, that would
probably give the highest load in terms of userlogons on your farm.
Then if its clear that bad performance is due to your disksubsystem, spend
some money and split indeed the pagefile from your OS/applications.
Worth consideration is also to consider another stripe size on your hardware
controller and/or NTFS format level. IF the average io block size is
gathered
around 16KB for your applications then an clustersize (NTFS blocksize) of
4KB might not be optimal. Consider formatting your volumes with the adequate
stripe size.
Also I discourage using software Raid (striped volumes in Windows).
Of course disks with 15krpm are quicker in seeking data. then 10krpm disks
are. But I would figure it to be a very modest increase in speed. I consider
that
Splitting of a heavily paged servers would make a bigger difference but I'm
afraid only a modest increase.
Generally speaking though, I do not think there is a real good chance your
problems will be eradicated just by going for this option (using Acronis or
ghost or alike tools)
To get the job hasslefree done.
I've only seen that Database servers are benefitting of reorganising data,
logs, pagefile , to separate disks or opting for other cluster/stripe sizes
never seen any other system taking real advantage of it apart from these
type of servers.
If it's a clear case of a diskbottleneck then ok but don't expect any
miracles neither.
RAID 5 performs well if the % reading is above 2/3 of times. RAID 5 performs
even better the more disks you have too (So Raid 5 with 4 disks is better
off then
Raid 5 with 3 disks)
Regards,
Stefan Timmermans
_____
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Toby
Sent: vrijdag 19 december 2008 11:08
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Citrix - Harddisk Specification
Hi List,
Would there be a noticeable performance increase if we purchased 4 x 72gb
SAS 15k disks, RAID 1 for the OS, with a page file on each of the other two
disks, or 3 x 146gb SAS 10k disk, RAID 1 for the OS, and a single disk for a
single page file?
Two questions really;
Would you recommend 72gb 15 k or 146gb 10k?
Two page files per Citrix server with two physical disks or 1 page file with
one physical disk?
Many thanks,
Toby
Other related posts:
