Some more "benchmarks" on writing 1 gig files:

redhat es3: ibm / powevault 220s (scsi): 25s
solaris 10: sun4900 / S1 array (scsi): 30s
solaris 10: sun4900 / sata 3511 (fiber) w/ emulex HBA: 2min
solaris 10: sun4900 / sata 3511 (fiber) w/ qlogic HBA: 16s
solaris 10: sunv490 / internal chassis scsi: 37s
solaris 10: sunv490 / FC 3510 (fiber) w/ qlogic, fs=ufs: 13.5s
solaris 10: sunv490 / FC 3510 (fiber) w/ qlogic, fs=vxfs: 12.5s (posted 5:37 PM)  

Thumbs up to QLogic and Thumbs down to Emulex. Putting up some new hardware.... and doing some speed tests writing 1 gig files using:

dd if=/dev/zero of=1gigfile bs=1024 count=1000000

As a baseline:

IBM with SCSI attached: 25 seconds
Dell PE2850 with SCSI attached: 25 seconds
Sunfire E4900 with SCSI attached: 30 seconds (S1 array)

Now we're attaching a fiber Storedge 3511 (SATA) to a Sunfire E4900 using Emulex host bus adapters (HBAs) with two different volumes sliced: /tmp1 and /tmp2

Sunfire E4900 with 3511 Emulex HBA (/tmp1): 1minute
Sunfire E4900 with 3511 Emulex HBA (/tmp2): 3minutes

wtf?

A call to Sun's engineers say this is a known problem and to replace Emulex with QLogic

Sunfire E4900 with 3511 QLogic HBA (/tmp1): 15 seconds
Sunfire E4900 with 3511 QLogic HBA (/tmp2): 17 seconds

Ahhhh... :) And this is writing to SATA drives. Imagine the speed with the writes to a Storedge 3510 (fiber attached FC drives).

Just a quick little interesting find for the day. (posted 12:20 PM)