Oracle Solaris 11.3: SMB 2.1 will it make a difference

As you will be aware Oracle Solaris 11.3 supports SMB 2.1 which brings improvements over SMB/Samba 3.6 version on Solaris 11.2:

• Reduces the previous number of SMB 1.0 commands and sub commands from over a hundred to just 19 commands.
  
• Supports a new caching model called Lease. This model enables the client to have multiple opens on a single file which helps in holding on to the cache.
  
• Provides more scalable performance for high-speed networks and includes the following performance benefits:
  
  • SMB payload requests can scale up to 1MB instead of 64K.
    
  • Reduces CPU utilization on the server and client.
    
  • SMB clients gain the performance benefit of not losing local caching when the same file is opened multiple times.
    

Comparing SMB versions(dialect):
SMB 3.02: Windows 2012 R2
SMB 3.00: Windows 2012    , Samba 4.1
SMB 2.10: Windows 2008 R2 , Solaris 11.3
SMB 2.00: Windows 2008    , Samba 3.6 (dialect=1.5)
SMB 1.00:                 , Solaris 11.2 (dialect=1.5)

I decided to run some test on Windows 7 clients using IOzone Filesystem Benchmark to measure file performance (What you're really testing is your system's buffer cache + disk cache + disk speed combo) using a collection of different servers.


Specifications of systems being tested:

X5-2 x64, 2xE5-2699, 128GB			DL380, 1xE5504, 12GB	X4170 M2, 1x6-Core X5675, 48GB	DL360 Gen9 E5-2630, 16GB
S11.3 SMB	S11.3 Samba 3.6	S11.2 SMB	W2008	S11.2 Samba 3.6	W2012R2
Solaris 11.3 (beta)	Solaris 11.3 (beta)	Solaris 11.2	Windows 2008 R2	Solaris 11.2	Windows 2012 R2
solaris-kz	solaris-kz	solaris-kz	Bare Metal	zone	Hyper V
12G memory	12G memory	12G memory	12G memory	40G memory	16G memory

Figure 1: Test used 10240 Kbyte file in 16 Kbyte records

- Izone throughput report Y-axis in MBytes/sec
- Type of test X-axis

Figure 1

- Solaris 11.3 SMB 2.1 gain over Solaris 11.2 and Samba 3.6
- Solaris 11.3 SMB 2.1 matches Windows 2008 R2 bare mental performance
- Solaris 11.3 SMB 2.1 overtakes Windows 2012 R2 Hyper V performance

Figure 2: Test used 10240 Kbyte file in 4 Kbyte records

- Izone throughput report Y-axis in MBytes/sec
- Type of test X-axis

Figure 2

- No difference in results with Figure 1

Figure 3: Test used 512 Kbyte file in 4 Kbyte records
 
- Izone throughput report Y-axis in MBytes/sec
- Type of test X-axis

Figure 3

- Initial write test show SMB 2.1 on all O/S very poor with this data set compared to the other 2 where large file sizes are used. No comment about this at this time
- Windows 2008 R2 system poor for "Reverse read test
- Solaris 11.3 SMB 2.1 gain over Solaris 11.2 and Samba 3.6 on all other tests
- Solaris 11.3 SMB 2.1 matches Windows 2008 R2 bare mental performance
- Solaris 11.3 SMB 2.1 matches Windows 2012 R2 Hyper V performance

Conclusion

It is no surprise that Solaris 11.3 with SMB 2.1 does give better performance, but it is good to see it. I should also look what is happening on the server during this time.