[K12OSN] SL 6.1 NFS client for FC 14, performance issues?

[Roland Roberts]

Up until recently, my network was all Fedora 14. However, I turned on 
machine into SL 6.1 to act as an LTSP server. After doing so, I've run 
into some odd NFS performance issues.  They show up as simply slow 
performance when doing builds, and I can't track down why. This is not 
really an LTSP issue, but I thought I'd check here since I thought 
people here might be more likely to have a larger heterogeneous network 
than the Fedora groups.  I'll probably post there as well to see if 
anyone can give me some clues.

For example, I when I did an RPM build of the 64-bit Sun Java 1.6.0.26 
package, it consistently takes 16-18 minutes when running on my LTSP 
server from my home directory with my NFS mounted home directory. The 
NFS server shows no significant load, the client (which is the LTSP 
server) also shows little load but top report about 50% wait times.

If I run the build using a directory local to the LTSP server, the time 
drops to 2-3 minutes.

The LTSP server is a Core2 Quad 3.0 GHz host running SL 6.1. The NFS 
server is a Core2 Quad 2.4 GHz running Fedora 14

I have a second Core2 Quad 3.0 GHz host running SL 6.1.  If I do the 
same set of tests there, the local file system build drops to under a 
minute, and the NFS build to 2-3 minutes. Clearly I get a performance 
hit going over the network, but the hit on the SL 6.1 LTSP server is 
rough to take.

Does anyone here use NFS extensively for the LTSP and have encountered 
any performance problems?

roland

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