ODX transfer speeds

Question

For those of you that have enabled ODX on your EqualLogic arrays, what speeds are you seeing? i'm a little disappointed so far - I'm only seeing about 200MB/s. Here is my configuration:

Server
- Dell R310
  - Latest BIOS
  - Onboard BCM5716C (2 ports)
  - HP 331T (4 Port) – two of these ports are used for iSCSI traffic
Switches
- 2 HP ProCurve 2910al, latest BIOS
  - Each switch is 1gb, 24 ports
  - VLAN 109 is set to Untagged for the iSCSI ports on both switches
  - Jumbo Frames is enabled on the iSCSI ports
  - Software flow control is enabled on the iSCSI ports
  - 10GB interconnect backplane between switches
SAN
- PS6100XS, 6.0.2 firmware (latest)

I'm testing by simply using Windows Explorer to copy at 45GB file. If I disable ODX by running the following in PowerShell:

Set-ItemProperty hklm:\system\currentcontrolset\control\filesystem -Name "FilterSupportedFeaturesMode" -Value 1

I get speeds of 110MB/s and the transfer takes 410 seconds

With ODX enabled, I get average speeds of about 240MB/s and it takes 200 seconds (3 mins 20 seconds).

Don't get me wrong, that's a big improvement, but articles like this one http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/business/solutions/whitepapers/en/Documents/microsoft-offloaded-data-transfer-equallogic.pdf led me to expect closer to 400MB/s speeds with ODX.

There are obviously other major benefits with ODX such as the near-zero network and CPU utilization, but I'm curious - what speeds are you seeing in your environment?

jakesterpdx · Answer

So during an ODX copy, the SAN is still actually doing the same work in the same way as a non-ODX transfer? For some reason I had thought that during an ODX transfer it was actually just essentially updating pointers to the data.

jakesterpdx · Answer

That's a really, really helpful explanation, and clearly illustrates why I would see about double the performance during my test copy. Thank you!

I'm still hoping to see some other people post their numbers.

martin7777 · Answer

We had 177mb/sec on a 2012 test VM. Having read this article, en.community.dell.com/.../offloaded-data-transfer-in-microsoft-windows-server-2012.aspx

I was expecting a lot higher. ODX disabled resulted in around 97.6mb/sec so whilst we saw a big improvement using ODX, it's still a far cry from Dell's own results.

jakesterpdx · Answer

Keep in mind that their speeds are on a 10gb network with a 10gb SAN. While the speed boost is nice, what's really nice about ODX is the near-zero draw on the network and cpu utilization during the transfer, which would otherwise saturate your network and cause substantial cpu load.

HSDTechDirector · Answer

Im seeing similar results on a single PS6100E array. However, my non-ODX file copies are about 200MBs whereas my ODX file copies are about 175MBs. I have another storage group with 2 PS6100XV (faster SAS drives) and the performance is even worse within the pool or cross pool (the switching network may be the limiting factor here).

EqualLogic

ODX transfer speeds

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