Slow TSAFS performance on XEN virtualized Servers

  • 7004467
  • 21-Sep-2009
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 2
Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 Service Pack 1 (OES 2) Linux

Situation

Backing up traditional Linux file systems (ReiserFS / EXT3) or Novell Storage Services (NSS) using TSAFS is very slow when the data is hosted on a virtualized XEN Open Enterprise Server or virtualized SuSE Linux Enterprise Server with Novell Storage Management Services (SMS) installed.

Slowness vary but testing with /opt/novell/sms/bin/tsatest this can be as slow as 1 - 5MB/Sec.

The slowness is only seen with TSAFS, all other file system access is normal.

Resolution

This is only seen with Virtual Machines having just over 4GB of memory assigned. A possible work around is to reduce the assigned memory to anything below 4GB.

This has been resolved with an updated libtsafs which will be included with Open Enterprise Server 2 Service Pack 2 (OES2SP2).