Help with IO performace on Desktop Hardware

[ayron]

Hello everyone, I need some advices about my current hardware to increase io performace

I have an HA cluster over 3 proxmox nodes with version 3.4, the hardware of these proxmox are the same:

Motherboard: Foxconn H61MXV
RAM: 8GB DDR3-1333
CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K
HDD: 1x 500 GB SATA2 for hypervisor
NIC: 1x 1GBit/s

and I have 1 desktop pc as a NAS with openmediavault installed:

Motherboard: Foxconn H77M-S
RAM: 4 GB DDR3-1333
CPU: Intel Core i5-3470
HDD: 1x 80GB SATA2 for OS
2x 1TB SATA3 7200 rpm in RAID0 for storage virtual disks over nfs share
NIC: 1x 1Gbits/s

1 switchs 24 ports gigabits (no professional)

I have created some KVM windows guest over nfs share storage with qcow2 format and i have installed all virtio driver successfully in all of them, most of these VMs have installed MS SQL 2008 R2 and the rest other services like DCs and MS Exchange Servers. These VMs give services almost 100 user for 12 hours by day.

Any new ideas are welcome always.

Ayron

 

[drzoidberg33]

Are you using soft raid on the OMV box? Why RAID0?!

What does your backup solution look like?

What's the purpose of having three nodes?

 

[adamb]

If you need IO performance then use raw disks. That should help some.

 

[LnxBil]

Hi Ayron,

You want advice on IO performance with two disks? It's simple: buy more! Have you got any budget left? Buy SSDs for the storage, but not the cheapest ones. Use a Crucial M500 or Samsung 840 Pro (these are older models and maybe a little bit cheaper than the new ones. Do not buy used ones!) which are one of the best consumer SSD available and exceeding their DWPD in long run tests. Going on enterprise SSD will probable cost more than everything you've spent up to now.

Further tweaks:
- Use dedicated network to storage, do not share network connection.
- Try to work through NFS tweaking guides to get the most out of the storage. Raw disks (using LVM) will improve throughput, yet you'll loose qcow2 snapshot ability.

What fencing mechanism are you using with desktop hardware?

Best,
LnxBil