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Lower than expected iSCSI throughput

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Applies to

  • Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)
  • iSCSI
  • MPIO

Issue

  • Observing ~100 MB/s (LVM) to 200 (Single LUN) MB/s instead of expected ~1GB/s throughput in application and verified for application agnostic occurrence with performance testing tool fio after LUN migration to new storage system in an LVM (striping) configuration.
  • LVM
fio -thread -rw=readwrite -rwmixread=50 -bs=64k -size=20G -name=mytest --filename=/xxx/xxx/test1/file1
READ: bw=93.7MiB/s (98.3MB/s), 93.7MiB/s-93.7MiB/s (98.3MB/s-98.3MB/s), io=10.0GiB (10.7GB), run=109260-109260msec
WRITE: bw=93.7MiB/s (98.2MB/s), 93.7MiB/s-93.7MiB/s (98.2MB/s-98.2MB/s), io=9.00GiB (10.7GB), run=109260-109260msec
 
  • Single LUN
fio -thread-rw=readwrite -rwmixread=50 -bs=64k -size=20G -name=mytest --filename=/xxx/xxx/test2/file1
READ: bw=207MiB/s (217MB/s), 207MiB/s-207MiB/s (217MB/s-217MB/s), io=10.0GiB (10.7GB), run=49574-49574msec
WRITE: bw=207MiB/s (217MB/s), 207MiB/s-207MiB/s (217MB/s-217MB/s), io=9.00GiB (10.7GB), run=49574-49574msec

 
 
  • Affected configuration (multipath -ll ):
xxxxxxxxxxxxx dm-8 NETAPP ,LUN C-Mode
size=400G features='4 queue_if_no_path pg_init_retries 50 retain_attached_hw_handle' hwhandler='1 alua' wp=rw
|-+- policy='service-time 0' prio=50 status=active
| |- 4:0:0:5 sdab 65:176 active ready running
| |- 2:0:0:5 sdac 65:192 active ready running
| |- 7:0:0:5 sdad 65:208 active ready running
| `- 5:0:0:5 sdar 66:176 active ready running
`-+- policy='service-time 0' prio=10 status=enabled
|- 0:0:0:5 sdf 8:80 active ready running
|- 1:0:0:5 sdl 8:176 active ready running
|- 3:0:0:5 sdam 66:96 active ready running
`- 6:0:0:5 sdav 66:240 active ready running
 
  • When tracing, the following tcpdump filters capture drops:
    • tcpdump:

# tcpdump -i ibft0 -w [path]ibft0.pcap

  • Selective Acknowledgements:

tcp.options.sack.count > 0

  • Duplicate Acknowledgements, (Fast) Retransmissions, Out-Of-Order frames:
tcp.analysis.duplicate_ack || tcp.analysis.retransmission || tcp.analysis.fast_retransmission || tcp.analysis.out_of_order
  • On UCS CLI (nxos) the command show queuing interface ethernet x/xx (affected interfaces for involved LUNs respectively) indicates inbound drops, which indicates NIC buffer exhaustion:
ucs-sas-A(nxos)# sh queuing interface ethernet 1/14

Ethernet1/14 queuing information:
[...]
RX Queuing
[...]

    qos-group 4
    q-size: 29760, HW MTU: 9216 (9216 configured)
    drop-type: drop, xon: 0, xoff: 29760
    Statistics:
        Pkts received over the port             : 16504320
        Ucast pkts sent to the cross-bar        : 16453589
        Mcast pkts sent to the cross-bar        : 0
        Ucast pkts received from the cross-bar  : 10259502
        Pkts sent to the port                   : 10259502
        Pkts discarded on ingress               : 50731
        Per-priority-pause status               : Rx (Inactive), Tx (Inactive)
 
    qos-group 5
    q-size: 29760, HW MTU: 9216 (9216 configured)
    drop-type: drop, xon: 0, xoff: 29760
    Statistics:
        Pkts received over the port             : 50303345
        Ucast pkts sent to the cross-bar        : 49818733
        Mcast pkts sent to the cross-bar        : 0
        Ucast pkts received from the cross-bar  : 2162905
        Pkts sent to the port                   : 2162905
        Pkts discarded on ingress               : 484613
        Per-priority-pause status               : Rx (Inactive), Tx (Inactive)

 

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