[Gluster-devel] possible feature page for small-file performance

[Xavier Hernandez]

On Thursday 02 October 2014 15:25:09 Ben England wrote:
> Here is a candidate feature page for small-file performance in Gluster. 
> This is my first feature page so I'm a newbie, have mercy ;-)
> 
> http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Features/Feature_Sm
> allfile_Perf

Very interesting indeed.

I would add another approach to speed up small file access and metadata in 
general. The approach would be something based on delegations (also known as 
leases or oplocks in some contexts).

This should dramatically reduce the number of network requests for normal 
workloads and give faster answers (less latency) to many requests.

Also, if this is combined with samba, for example, the perceived speed from 
the user side would be really good, specially with small files and directory 
browsing (AFAIK samba supports leases and oplocks to further extend this 
approach to the client workstation).

The limitations of this approach will be scenarios where multiple clients 
access the same files, or O_DIRECT/O_SYNC access is needed. In any case, I 
think this is complementary to the other proposed solutions, and combined with 
them could bring quite a good throughput to gluster.

Xavi