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16 Frequently Asked Questions Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: How does the X4500 scale as the workload increases?
A1: Testing was done to measure scalability by saturating each onboard GigE port in turn. Three Zpool configurations
were tested. The RAIDZ1-6Spares (14.3TB of usuable space) configuration is the configuration listed in the example
earlier in this guide. The RAIDZ1-NoSpares (16.9TB of usuable space) configuration is based on the default Zpool
configuration pre-installed at the factory. The Mirror-NoSpares (10.3TB of usable space) configuration is a Single Zpool
consisting of 22 mirrored pairs. Sufficient client load was generated to ensure each GigE interface could be fully
saturated at 1 Gigabit per sec. The test data consisted of 32 GB of large files on each client. As shown in the graph
below, the X4500 can deliver close to 350 MB/sec using the 4 onboard GigE ports. Also, the testing shows that at these
data rates Zpool configuration is not a driving factor for performance. The network/CPU load becomes the bottleneck
before the Zpool.
Q2: Has the configuration been tested with 10GB Ethernet?
X4500 NBU Scalability
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1 2 3 4
GigE Ports
MB/Sec
RAIDZ1-6Spares
RAIDZ1-NoSpares
Mirror-NoSpares