caching server bottleneck...?

[Ashleyyyy]

so i set up a caching server on my main file server, but i think i'm bottlenecking somewhere...

i'm getting about 30 mb/s, which isn't a lot... 

 

my setup is as follows:

the server is a HP ProLiant ML350 G5

the cache is a single 500GB 5200rpm laptop hdd

it's running Ubuntu Linux

and it has other stuff running on it like a minecraft server and it acts as my main file server. 

 

it has a Xeon 5130 and 6gb ram... 

 

where is the bottleneck here? 

[AbsoluteFool]

15 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

so i set up a caching server on my main file server, but i think i'm bottlenecking somewhere...

i'm getting about 30 mb/s, which isn't a lot... 

 

my setup is as follows:

the server is a HP ProLiant ML350 G5

the cache is a single 500GB 5200rpm laptop hdd

it's running Ubuntu Linux

and it has other stuff running on it like a minecraft server and it acts as my main file server. 

 

it has a Xeon 5130 and 6gb ram... 

 

where is the bottleneck here? 

Not to be the biggest ass hole here. But what do you expect from a 5200rpm drive? 100Mb? 200Mb?

Minecraft does use drive read/write and so do all other things the server are doing at the time. In short.. Your drive is the bottleneck as far as i can see.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Not to be the biggest ass hole here. But what do you expect from a 5200rpm drive? 100Mb? 200Mb?

more than 30...

 

1 minute ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Minecraft does use drive read/write and so do all other things the server are doing at the time. In short.. Your drive is the bottleneck as far as i can see.

all the other stuff is running on different drives in the server. so that doesn't affect the cache. 

[AbsoluteFool]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

more than 30...

 

all the other stuff is running on different drives in the server. so that doesn't affect the cache. 

So, what exactly is using the cache drive?

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, AbsoluteFool said:

So, what exactly is using the cache drive?

the caching server... 

 

the server is runnign multiple servers if that makes sense. the caching server just runs in a docker container and is using that hdd. 

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

the caching server... 

 

the server is runnign multiple servers if that makes sense. the caching server just runs in a docker container and is using that hdd. 

Internet caching? Like Squid or NGINX?

 

5200RPM disks are pretty slow though, especially ones from laptops.

[Ashleyyyy]

Just now, leadeater said:

Internet caching? Like Squid or NGINX?

 

5200RPM disks are pretty slow though, especially ones from laptops.

i'm using this: https://github.com/steamcache/generic

 

i'd expect more than 30mb/s though... 

 

does my server being 11 years old (introduced in 2007) have anyhting to do with it maybe? or that it has a lreally low end cpu for the time? 

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01464093

it has the xeon 5130 in it.. pretty low end even for the time. 

[AbsoluteFool]

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

i'm using this: https://github.com/steamcache/generic

 

i'd expect more than 30mb/s though... 

 

does my server being 11 years old (introduced in 2007) have anyhting to do with it maybe? or that it has a lreally low end cpu for the time? 

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01464093

it has the xeon 5130 in it.. pretty low end even for the time. 

From my knowledge caching servers don't really need much CPU. However RAM and disk speed matters alot. I hope Leadeater can correct me here if i'm wrong.

[Ashleyyyy]

Just now, AbsoluteFool said:

From my knowledge caching servers don't really need much CPU. However RAM and disk speed matters alot. I hope Leadeater can correct me here if i'm wrong.

i don't know what the sata speed is on the server... maybe its really old sata i dunno... 

[AbsoluteFool]

This is what i can find on the server.

 

STORAGE CONTROLLER

• Interface Type
  Serial ATA-150 / SAS
• Storage Controller Name
  Smart Array E200i
• Buffer Size
  128 MB

Source: https://www.cnet.com/products/hp-proliant-ml350-g5-xeon-e5440-2-83-ghz-monitor-none-series/specs/

I guess you have the lowest end of CPUs in yours. I'm not sure how this server compares to Dell PowerEdge 2950 that i'm more known with. But that server don't have problems with steam cache. 

 

Do you have another drive laying around you can mount and try as the cache? Perhaps a 15k SAS drive?

[Ashleyyyy]

Just now, AbsoluteFool said:

STORAGE CONTROLLER

• Interface Type
  Serial ATA-150 / SAS

150mb/s then... that would saturate gigabit right? or no?

 

2 minutes ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Do you have another drive laying around you can mount and try as the cache? Perhaps a 15k SAS drive?

i do have a 60gb ssd in it, so i could try that... not long term though, it's way too small for cache. 

[AbsoluteFool]

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

150mb/s then... that would saturate gigabit right? or no?

 

i do have a 60gb ssd in it, so i could try that... not long term though, it's way too small for cache. 

I don't have the Mb/mb formula in the top of my head. I don't know how that server play with SSD's but it's probably worth a try as it should be better than the 5200RPM drive you have now.

[mariushm]

1 gbit when it comes to network is ~ 125 MB/s

 

Just because the SATA interface can do 150 MB/s , doesn't mean the hard disk can sustain speeds anything close to that.

A 500 GB hdd, especially a laptop one, would probably sustain around 40-80 MB/s if there's a single big file read or written to. If multiple files are read or written, speed drops.

 

Your minecraft server may write to disk constantly (logs, database updates, whatever), maybe your server's ram is full so files are not cached in ram, therefore hdd is also it by requests for files etc etc

That could explain hdd being slower at reading and writing.

 

 

 

 

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

1 gbit when it comes to network is ~ 125 MB/s

 

Just because the SATA interface can do 150 MB/s , doesn't mean the hard disk can sustain speeds anything close to that.

A 500 GB hdd, especially a laptop one, would probably sustain around 40-80 MB/s if there's a single big file read or written to. If multiple files are read or written, speed drops.

 

Your minecraft server may write to disk constantly (logs, database updates, whatever), maybe your server's ram is full so files are not cached in ram, therefore hdd is also it by requests for files etc etc

That could explain hdd being slower at reading and writing.

just checked, it's using 2.3gb of ram out of 6gb. 

 

the minecraft server is running on the server's boot disk, a 240gb ssd. so that shouldn't affect the cache speed. 

[AbsoluteFool]

4 minutes ago, mariushm said:

1 gbit when it comes to network is ~ 125 MB/s

 

Just because the SATA interface can do 150 MB/s , doesn't mean the hard disk can sustain speeds anything close to that.

A 500 GB hdd, especially a laptop one, would probably sustain around 40-80 MB/s if there's a single big file read or written to. If multiple files are read or written, speed drops.

 

Your minecraft server may write to disk constantly (logs, database updates, whatever), maybe your server's ram is full so files are not cached in ram, therefore hdd is also it by requests for files etc etc

That could explain hdd being slower at reading and writing.

 

 

 

 

Makes alot of sense. I have a laptop drive as cache in my unraid machine that is just for files. And i get 40-60MB/s read/write. 

[Salv8 (sam)]

it could also be that the drive is slowing itself down to extend it's lifespan (SSD's do this as well), usually a Smart report can report the health of the drive, if it's got issues with reading or writing to the sectors, then thats why

my main server is using a HDD from 2008 (do not do this, i don't have much else on hand, also all of my crap is backup-ed to my desktop as a precaution) and it's slow as balls, taking 20-30 mins for windows server to get to the logon screen and another 15 to get onto the desktop

i know it's because the drive has a lot of bad sectors and it's having what i like to call "hardware fragmentation" software can't fix it as it can't allocate the data to sectors that are faster as they are dead

most servers that have a cache use an SSD or very fast HDD that can access loads of data quickly with little delay. you don't have that and thats the bottleneck

take my advice, get a faster drive instead of using the current one, it's going to be easier down the road then this crap...