[ofw] SMB/CIFS over SDP or alternative fileserver

[Sebastian Schmitzdorff]

Hi Tzachi,

I was considering an FTP Server at first, but it is not the right tool 
for the job.
The Situation is the following. It is a multimedia/video editing company.
They need to access raw HDTV material from their windows workstations 
for editing
and playback. So FTP is not an option in this case because FTP requires 
a full download to local memory.

SMB/CIFS, NFS and maybe similar protocols seem to be the only options 
for real time playback and editing.

Today I have tried tweaking the Windows XP TCP/IP settings by setting 
the Tcp1323Opts option
and raising the TcpWindowSize to 512k. There was a little bandwidth 
increase but still not enough.
If I am not mistaken using IPoIB on windows will not bring me near my 
performance expectations(300MB/s) at the moment.

I will start trying the NFS(nfsaxe) over the SDP provider from Mellanox 
today.
My biggest concern at the moment is that the Server is a 64bit Windows 
XP and the nfsaxe server application
is a 32bit executable. If I read and understood the SDP Documentation 
correctly you can not use a 32bit application
with SDP on a 64bit Windows?

thank you
sebastian


So they need to work on parts

Tzachi Dar wrote:
> Hi, the SDP provider that is provided by mellanox only works for user 
> mode applications. The cifs client/servers that come with windows are 
> kernel components and therefore can not use it.
>  
> It seems that nfsaxe client and server are user mode and therefore 
> they should work, but this will have to be checked.
>  
> Another question that I have is this: Do you realy need to access the 
> files as Fileserver? That is, do you need to work on part of the 
> files, or a solution that will copy the files enough? To make this 
> more clear, will it be enough for you to have an FTP client/server 
> working?
>  
> Thanks
> Tzachi
>
>  
> On 3/13/07, *Sebastian Schmitzdorff* 
> <sebastian.schmitzdorff at hamburgnet.de 
> <mailto:sebastian.schmitzdorff at hamburgnet.de>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     I have two Windows XP 32bit Workstations and one Windows XP 64bit
>     Server.
>     Both are using 4x mellanox hca's.
>     The Server is supposed to function as a Fileserver and is required to
>     deliver High Bandwidth.
>     Around 300MB/s is required.
>
>     Using IPoIB, measuring with various tools(iperf,netper), the machines
>     achieve a poor IP performance,
>     between 90MB/s and 150MB/s.
>
>     I'm looking for alternative ways to get more bandwidth. SDP seems just
>     right for the task.
>     I will look into running a windows based nfs server (nfsaxe) and hope
>     that it can be run using SDP.
>     NFS is not my protocol of choice though. Do you know of any
>     alternative
>     Fileserver that can be run via SDP and
>     comparable to SMB/CIFS? Or is it even possible to run SMB/CIFS
>     over SDP?
>
>
>     best regards
>     sebastian
>
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>


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