[Nbd] Optimal block size for nbd+squashfs.

[Dean Montgomery <dmonty@...954...>]

I'm looking for recommendations for block sizes for NBD + SQUASHFS.

Running 300 diskless clients off of one server.

  Server <=4G bond0=> core-switch <=1G=> lab-switch <=100M=> clients.

Majority of files during boot & app-launch are less than 64K uncompressed.

I'm looking to optimize the network traffic a bit more by using squashfs + nbd for ro folders like /usr and /opt.  Are there any recommendations for block size optimizations (nfs+nbd)?  I may just have to do my own bench marks.

nbd-client:  -block-size <block_size> Use a blocksize of "block size". Default is 1024; allowed values are either 512, 1024, 2048 or 4096

mksquashfs:  -b <block_size> set data block to <block_size>.  Default 131072 bytes


With the current NFS file system the majority of files are less than 64K so 64K rsize & wsize was found to give optimal performance.  32K or 64K++ degrade NFS performance for diskless clients.  64K was the best for uncompressed NFS.

Thanks.

-- 
Dean Montgomery
Network Support Tech./Programmer
School District #73