CIFS file server protocol ()

Chuck McIntyre | 1 Mar 2007 17:55

Re: Re: CIFS/NFS performance of netapp filer vs local dir

On 3/1/07, Matt Seitz <seitz@...> wrote:

> I would be interested in seeing your results.  I suspect what you are seeing is
> either a) poor application design, b) poor CIFS client design, or c) use of
> features that are simply not supported by NFS.

Have you seen the post I made to cifs-protocol in the thread entitled
"Problem - CIFS network throughput vs. NFS"?

I used bonnie++ from sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bonnie/ (a disk load benchmarking
application on CIFS vs. NFS) to generate results from the same client
against the same server just mounted in two different ways. The
results are staggeringly bad for CIFS vs. NFS. I get similar results
if I use the SMBFS client as I do with the CIFS client. I also get a
similar performance characteristic against a totally different CIFS
server. As you mention, it could be the CIFS client implementation, as
opposed to something inherent in the protocol, but I am having a hard
time believing it since it would also have to be something in the
SMBFS client.

Can you recommend a "good" CIFS client that I can run the same
benchmark against?

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Matthew Seitz | 1 Mar 2007 18:46

Re: Re: CIFS/NFS performance of netapp filer vs local dir

Chuck McIntyre wrote:
> On 3/1/07, Matt Seitz <seitz@...> wrote:
> Have you seen the post I made to cifs-protocol in the thread entitled
> "Problem - CIFS network throughput vs. NFS"?
> 
> I used bonnie++ from sourceforge:
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/bonnie/ (a disk load benchmarking
> application on CIFS vs. NFS) to generate results from the same client
> against the same server just mounted in two different ways. The
> results are staggeringly bad for CIFS vs. NFS. 

Yes, I did.  Unfortunately, that doesn't answer the question of why there is 
such a performance difference.  It could be the CIFS client, it could be the 
server has better NFS server software than CIFS server software (you don't 
mention what the server software is).  If this is not an isolated network, it 
could be an interaction with other clients or network traffic.

> As you mention, it could be the CIFS client implementation, as
> opposed to something inherent in the protocol, but I am having a hard
> time believing it since it would also have to be something in the
> SMBFS client.

It would be curious what the results would be with a Windows client with the 
same hardware accessing a Windows server.

Of course, even that would not necessarily be proof.  What is really needed is 
an examination of a network trace and client and server logs to determine what 
is causing the performance difference, and then determining whether that was 
something inherent in the protocol, or a limitation of the client or server 
implementation.

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