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File Storage NAS:FAQ about the performance of NAS file systems

Last Updated:Nov 01, 2024

This topic provides answers to some frequently asked questions (FAQ) about the performance of File Storage NAS (NAS) file systems. The Server Message Block (SMB) and Network File System (NFS) protocols are supported.

What is the read and write performance of a file system related to?

  • General-purpose NAS file systems

    The read and write performance (maximum throughput) of a file system is linearly proportional to the storage capacity of the file system. A higher capacity indicates a higher throughput. For more information, see General-purpose NAS file systems.

  • Extreme NAS file systems

    The read and write performance of a file system increases stepwise as the storage capacity increases. For more information, see Extreme NAS file systems.

What is IOPS? What are the relationships between IOPS and throughput, read and write block size, and latency?

IOPS is the number of input/output operations per second.

The following formulas show the relationships between IOPS and read and write block size, throughput, number of reads and writes, and latency:

Throughput = IOPS × Read and write block size. IOPS = Number of reads and writes/Overall latency

For example, if the write latency of a Capacity NAS file system is about 100 ms per 1 MiB, 15 ms per 8 KiB, and 10 ms per 4 KiB, you can send a maximum of 128 concurrent requests to the file system. If you want to write 1 MiB of data per second to the file system, you can use the solutions described in the following table.

No.

Read and write block size

Concurrency

Number of writes

Overall latency

IOPS

Throughput

Description

Solution 1

4 KiB

1

250

10 ms × 250 = 2.5s

250/2.5s = 100

4 KiB × 100 = 400 KiB/s

The small read and write block size and low concurrency result in poor throughput and high latency. In this case, the throughput cannot reach 1 MiB/s.

Solution 2

1 MiB

1

1

100 ms

1/0.1s = 10

1 MiB × 10 = 10 MiB/s

Compared with Solution 1, the read and write block size of Solution 2 is increased, and the throughput and latency performance are improved. The throughput can reach 1 MiB/s. However, the overall latency is high.

Solution 3

4 KiB

125

250

10 ms × (250/125) = 20 ms

250/0.02s = 12500

4 KiB/s × 12500 ≈ 49 MiB/s

Compared with Solution 1, the concurrency of Solution 3 is increased, and the throughput and latency performance are improved. The throughput can reach 1 MiB/s. The overall latency is low, but the IOPS reaches the upper limit of the file system.

Solution 4

8 KiB

125

125

15 ms × (125/125) = 15 ms

125/0.015s ≈ 8333

8 KiB/s × 8333 ≈ 65 MiB/s

Compared with Solution 1, the read and write block size and concurrency of Solution 4 are increased, and the throughput and latency performance are improved. The throughput can reach 1 MiB/s. The overall latency is the lowest among the four solutions, and the IOPS is low.

What happens if the read and write throughput of a request exceeds the threshold?

If the read and write throughput of a request sent by you or your application exceeds the threshold, NAS throttles the request. In this case, the latency increases.

For a General-purpose NAS file system, you can run the truncate command to increase the throughput threshold. For more information, see How do I increase the read and write throughput threshold of a General-purpose NAS file system?

For an Extreme NAS file system, you can scale up the file system to increase the throughput threshold. For more information, see Scale up an Extreme NAS file system.

For more information about the throughput thresholds of General-purpose NAS file systems and Extreme NAS file systems, see Performance metrics of General-purpose NAS file systems and Performance metrics of Extreme NAS file systems.

How do I increase the read and write throughput threshold of a General-purpose NAS file system?

The read and write throughput of a General-purpose NAS file system linearly increases with the storage capacity of the file system. For more information about the relationships between the read and write throughput and the capacity usage of a file system, see General-purpose NAS file systems.

You can increase the capacity of the file system by writing hole files to the file system or by running the truncate command to generate a file on the file system. Then, the read and write throughput of the file system is increased. You are charged for the space that is occupied by the hole files or the generated file in a NAS file system. For more information, see Billing of General-purpose NAS file systems.

For example, if you write a hole file of 1 TiB to a Capacity NAS file system, you can increase the read and write throughput of the file system by 150 MB/s. If you write a hole file of 1 TiB to a Performance NAS file system, you can increase the read and write throughput of the file system by 600 MB/s.

  • Linux

    If you use Linux, you can run the truncate command to generate a file on a file system to increase the read and write throughput of the file system.

    sudo truncate --size=1TB /mnt/sparse_file.txt

    In the preceding command, /mnt is the mount path of the file system on the compute node.

  • Windows

    If you use Windows, you can write hole files to a file system to increase the read and write throughput of the file system.

    fsutil file createnew Z:\sparse_file.txt 1099511627776

    In the preceding command, Z:\ is the mount path of the file system on the compute node.

How do I increase the throughput of accessing NAS on Linux?

  • Solution 1: Configure the nconnect parameter to increase the throughput of a single ECS instance to access NAS

    The nconnect parameter is an option for mounting an NFS file system on a Linux ECS instance. You can use this parameter to establish more TCP connections between the NFS client and the ECS instance to increase the throughput. The test indicates that the nconnect parameter can increase the throughput of a single ECS instance to access NAS by 3 to 6 times, reaching 3 GB/s.

    Scenarios

    Multiple concurrent reads and writes are performed on a single ECS instance (more than 16 concurrent reads and writes).

    Prerequisites

    The Linux kernel version is 5.3 or later.

    Procedure

    Add the nconnect parameter to the mount command. We recommend that you set the nconnect parameter to 4. The following command provides an example:

    sudo mount -t nfs -o vers=3,nolock,proto=tcp,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,hard,timeo=600,retrans=2,noresvport,nconnect=4 
    Important

    The nconnect parameter increases the throughput of a single ECS instance to access NAS, but does not increase the throughput threshold of the NAS file system. If you enable the nconnect parameter for single concurrency, small data blocks, and latency-sensitive services, the latency increases. We recommend that you do not enable the nconnect parameter for such services.

  • Solution 2: Modify sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries to increase the throughput of a single ECS instance to access NAS

    sunrpc in the Linux kernel determines the number of communication slots within a single NFS link. Different Linux versions adopt different sunrpc configurations. If the slot configuration is high, the latency may increase. If the slot configuration is low, the throughput may be insufficient. If you require high throughput, we recommend that you set the slot quantity to 128. If you require low latency, we recommend that you set the slot quantity to 16 or less.

    Note

    The effect of configuring the sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries parameter is far worse than that of the nconnect parameter. We recommend that you reconfigure the nconnect parameter for Linux kernel 5.3 and later.

    Scenarios

    Multiple concurrent reads and writes on a single ECS instance are performed. The Linux kernel version is earlier than 3.10.

    Procedure

    For more information, see How do I change the maximum number of concurrent NFS requests from an NFS client?

Why does NGINX require a long period of time to write logs to a file system?

  • Background information

    You can use the following two commands to specify NGINX logs: The log_format command specifies the log format. The access_log command specifies the log storage path, format name, and cache size.

  • Issue

    NGINX requires a long period of time to write logs to the file system, which reduces the performance of the file system.

  • Cause

    The path that is specified in the access_log command contains variables. Each time NGINX attempts to write logs to the file system, the destination files are opened. After the logs are written, the files are closed. To ensure data visibility, NAS writes the data back to the NAS server when the files are closed. This reduces the performance of the file system.

  • Solution

    • Solution 1: Delete the variables in the access_log command and store the logs in a fixed path.

    • Solution 2: Run the open_log_file_cache command to cache the file descriptors of frequently used logs. This improves the performance of log storage to the path that contains the variables. For more information, see open_log_file_cache.

      Recommended configurations:

      open_log_file_cache max=1000 inactive=1m valid=3m min_uses=2;

Why are I /O operations delayed on an SMB file system?

  • Issue

    If you access an SMB file system by using a mount target, you must wait for several minutes before you can perform I/O operations on the file system.

  • Cause

    • You must wait for several minutes because an NFS client is installed but not used.

    • The Internet file server fails to access the SMB file system because the WebClient service is enabled.

    • The files in the file system cannot be opened because Nfsnp is included in the value of the ProviderOrder key.

  • Solution

    1. The first time you access an SMB file system, we recommend that you ping the domain name of the mount target to check the network connectivity between the compute node and the file system and check whether the latency is within the allowed range.

      • If the ping command fails, check your network settings and make sure that the network is connected.

      • If the latency is high, run the ping command to ping the IP address of the mount target. If the latency of accessing the IP address is less than the latency of accessing the domain name, check the configurations of the Domain Name System (DNS) server.

    2. If an NFS client is installed but not used, we recommend that you delete the NFS client.

    3. Disable the WebClient service.

    4. Check the Registry key in the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\Order\ProviderOrder. If the value of the ProviderOrder key contains Nfsnp, remove Nfsnp and restart the ECS instance on which the file system is mounted.

Note
  • You can use the fio tool to check the performance of the file system.

    fio.exe --name=./iotest1 --direct=1 --rwmixread=0 --rw=write --bs=4K --numjobs=1 --thread --iodepth=128 --runtime=300 --group_reporting --size=5G --verify=md5 --randrepeat=0 --norandommap --refill_buffers --filename=\\<mount point dns>\myshare\testfio1
  • We recommend that you perform read and write operations based on large data blocks. Small data blocks consume more network resources. If you cannot change data block sizes, you can construct the BufferedOutputStream class to write data to a specified output stream with a specified buffer size.

Why are I/O operations on Windows SMB clients delayed?

  • Cause

    By default, the large mtu option is disabled on Windows SMB clients. This limits the I/O performance of Windows SMB clients.

  • Solution

    You can enable the large mtu option by modifying the Windows registry. The registry key is stored in the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters.

    Create a key of the DWORD data type and name the key DisableLargeMtu. Set the value of the key to 0. Restart the ECS instance on which the file system is mounted to validate the key.

How can I improve the performance of access from IIS to NAS?

  • Cause

    When Internet Information Service (IIS) accesses a file in the shared directory of a NAS file system, the backend of IIS may access the shared directory multiple times. When you access the NAS file system, you must interact with the network at least once. This is different from the scenario in which you access a local disk. Although each access request does not take a long time, the client may take a long time to respond if multiple access requests are sent.

  • Solution

    1. Use the SMB Redirector component to optimize the performance of SMB file systems. For more information, see SMB2 Client Redirector Caches Explained.

      Modify the registry keys in the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters. Change the values of the following three keys to 600 or higher:

      • FileInfoCacheLifetime

      • FileNotFoundCacheLifetime

      • DirectoryCacheLifetime

      Note

      If none of the preceding keys exists, perform the following steps:

      1. Make sure that the file system uses the SMB protocol.

      2. Check whether the Windows version supports the keys. If the Windows version supports the keys but the keys do not exist, create the keys. For more information, see Performance tuning for file servers.

    2. If IIS frequently accesses these files, we recommend that you store the web-related files such as JS and CSS files to local disks.

If the read and write performance of IIS cannot meet your business requirements, contact NAS technical support.

Why does a file system give a slow response or does not respond when I run the ls command?

  • Issue

    When you traverse a directory of a file system, the file system gives a slow response or does not respond. For example, when you run an ls command that contains the asterisk (*) and question mark (?) wildcards, run the rm -rf command, or call the getdents operation.

  • Cause

    • The directory is being modified. For example, a directory is being created or deleted, or a file in the directory is being renamed. This leads to slow responses due to frequent cache invalidations.

    • The data size of the directory is too large. This causes slow responses due to cache eviction.

  • Solution

    • Limit the number of files stored in the directory. Store less than 10,000 files in a single directory.

    • Do not frequently modify the directory when you traverse the directory.

    • If you store more than 10,000 files in the directory and the directory does not need to be frequently modified, you can accelerate the traversal process to some extent. In this case, you must make sure that you mount the file system by using the NFSv3 protocol and use the nordirplus parameter. For more information, see Mount parameters.

How do I improve the NFS sequential read performance on Linux kernel 5.4 or later?

The read_ahead_kb parameter of NFS defines the size (in KB) of data to be read in advance or prefetched by the Linux kernel during a sequential read operation.

For Linux kernel versions earlier than 5.4.*, the value of the read_ahead_kb parameter is determined by multiplying NFS_MAX_READAHEAD and rsize (the size of data read by the client specified in the mount option). From Linux kernel version 5.4.*, the NFS client uses the default value of the read_ahead_kb parameter, which is 128 KB. Therefore, we recommend that you increase the value of the read_ahead_kb parameter to 15 MB when you use the recommended mount option.

After the file system is mounted, you can run the following commands to reset the value of the read_ahead_kb parameter. In the commands, replace nas-mount-point with the local path of the mounted file system and replace read-ahead-kb with the size (in KB) of the data to be read in advance or prefetched.

device_number=$(stat -c '%d' nas-mount-point)
((major = ($device_number & 0xFFF00) >> 8))
((minor = ($device_number & 0xFF) | (($device_number >> 12) & 0xFFF00)))
sudo bash -c "echo read-ahead-kb > /sys/class/bdi/$major:$minor/read_ahead_kb"

The following commands provide an example of using /mnt as the local path of the mounted file system to set the value of the read_ahead_kb parameter to 15 MB (size of the data to be read in advance or prefetched):

device_number=$(stat -c '%d' /mnt)
((major = ($device_number & 0xFFF00) >> 8))
((minor = ($device_number & 0xFF) | (($device_number >> 12) & 0xFFF00)))
sudo bash -c "echo 15000 > /sys/class/bdi/$major:$minor/read_ahead_kb"