NFS v3 versus v4

I am wondering why NFS v4 would be so much faster than NFS v3 and if there are any parameters on v3 that could be tweaked.

I mount a file system

sudo mount  -o  'rw,bg,hard,nointr,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,vers=4'  toto:/test /test

and then run

 dd if=/test/file  of=/dev/null bs=1024k

I can read 200-400MB/s but when I change version to vers=3, remount and rerun the dd I only get 90MB/s. The file I'm reading from is an in memory file on the NFS server. Both sides of the connection are Solaris and have 10GbE NIC. I avoid any client side caching by remounting between all tests. I used dtrace to see on the server to measure how fast data is being served via NFS. For both v3 and v4 I changed:

 nfs4_bsize
 nfs3_bsize

from default 32K to 1M (on v4 I maxed at 150MB/s with 32K)
I've tried tweaking

• nfs3_max_threads
• clnt_max_conns
• nfs3_async_clusters

to improve the v3 performance, but no go.

On v3 if I run four parallel dd's the throughput goes down from 90MB/s to 70-80MBs which leads me to believe the problem is some shared resource and if so, then I'm wondering what it is and if I can increase that resource.

dtrace code to get window sizes:

#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s
#pragma D option quiet
#pragma D option defaultargs

inline string ADDR=$$1;

dtrace:::BEGIN
{
       TITLE = 10;
       title = 0;
       printf("starting up ...\n");
       self->start = 0;
}

tcp:::send, tcp:::receive
/   self->start == 0  /
{
     walltime[args[1]->cs_cid]= timestamp;
     self->start = 1;
}

tcp:::send, tcp:::receive
/   title == 0  &&
     ( ADDR == NULL || args[3]->tcps_raddr == ADDR  ) /
{
      printf("%4s %15s %6s %6s %6s %8s %8s %8s %8s %8s  %8s %8s %8s  %8s %8s\n",
        "cid",
        "ip",
        "usend"    ,
        "urecd" ,
        "delta"  ,
        "send"  ,
        "recd"  ,
        "ssz"  ,
        "sscal"  ,
        "rsz",
        "rscal",
        "congw",
        "conthr",
        "flags",
        "retran"
      );
      title = TITLE ;
}

tcp:::send
/     ( ADDR == NULL || args[3]->tcps_raddr == ADDR ) /
{
    nfs[args[1]->cs_cid]=1; /* this is an NFS thread */
    this->delta= timestamp-walltime[args[1]->cs_cid];
    walltime[args[1]->cs_cid]=timestamp;
    this->flags="";
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_FIN ) ? "FIN|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_SYN ) ? "SYN|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_RST ) ? "RST|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_PUSH ) ? "PUSH|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_ACK ) ? "ACK|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_URG ) ? "URG|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_ECE ) ? "ECE|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_CWR ) ? "CWR|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags == 0 ) ? "null " : ""),this->flags);
    printf("%5d %14s %6d %6d %6d %8d \ %-8s %8d %6d %8d  %8d %8d %12d %s %d  \n",
        args[1]->cs_cid%1000,
        args[3]->tcps_raddr  ,
        args[3]->tcps_snxt - args[3]->tcps_suna ,
        args[3]->tcps_rnxt - args[3]->tcps_rack,
        this->delta/1000,
        args[2]->ip_plength - args[4]->tcp_offset,
        "",
        args[3]->tcps_swnd,
        args[3]->tcps_snd_ws,
        args[3]->tcps_rwnd,
        args[3]->tcps_rcv_ws,
        args[3]->tcps_cwnd,
        args[3]->tcps_cwnd_ssthresh,
        this->flags,
        args[3]->tcps_retransmit
      );
    this->flags=0;
    title--;
    this->delta=0;
}

tcp:::receive
/ nfs[args[1]->cs_cid] &&  ( ADDR == NULL || args[3]->tcps_raddr == ADDR ) /
{
    this->delta= timestamp-walltime[args[1]->cs_cid];
    walltime[args[1]->cs_cid]=timestamp;
    this->flags="";
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_FIN ) ? "FIN|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_SYN ) ? "SYN|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_RST ) ? "RST|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_PUSH ) ? "PUSH|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_ACK ) ? "ACK|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_URG ) ? "URG|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_ECE ) ? "ECE|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags & TH_CWR ) ? "CWR|" : ""),this->flags);
    this->flags= strjoin((( args[4]->tcp_flags == 0 ) ? "null " : ""),this->flags);
    printf("%5d %14s %6d %6d %6d %8s / %-8d %8d %6d %8d  %8d %8d %12d %s %d  \n",
        args[1]->cs_cid%1000,
        args[3]->tcps_raddr  ,
        args[3]->tcps_snxt - args[3]->tcps_suna ,
        args[3]->tcps_rnxt - args[3]->tcps_rack,
        this->delta/1000,
        "",
        args[2]->ip_plength - args[4]->tcp_offset,
        args[3]->tcps_swnd,
        args[3]->tcps_snd_ws,
        args[3]->tcps_rwnd,
        args[3]->tcps_rcv_ws,
        args[3]->tcps_cwnd,
        args[3]->tcps_cwnd_ssthresh,
        this->flags,
        args[3]->tcps_retransmit
      );
    this->flags=0;
    title--;
    this->delta=0;
}

Output looks like ( not from this particular situation):

cid              ip  usend  urecd  delta     send     recd      ssz    sscal      rsz     rscal    congw   conthr     flags   retran
  320 192.168.100.186    240      0    272      240 \             49232      0  1049800         5  1049800         2896 ACK|PUSH| 0
  320 192.168.100.186    240      0    196          / 68          49232      0  1049800         5  1049800         2896 ACK|PUSH| 0
  320 192.168.100.186      0      0  27445        0 \             49232      0  1049800         5  1049800         2896 ACK| 0
   24 192.168.100.177      0      0 255562          / 52          64060      0    64240         0    91980         2920 ACK|PUSH| 0
   24 192.168.100.177     52      0    301       52 \             64060      0    64240         0    91980         2920 ACK|PUSH| 0

some headers

usend - unacknowledged send bytes
urecd - unacknowledged received bytes
ssz - send window
rsz - receive window
congw - congestion window

planning on taking snoop's of the dd's over v3 and v4 and comparing. Have already done it but there was too much traffic and I used a disk file instead of a cached file which made comparing timings meaningless. Will run other snoop's with cached data and no other traffic between boxes. TBD

Additionally the network guys say there is no traffic shaping or bandwidth limiters on the connections.