Load problem on disk usage DL 585

[Igor Ajdisek]

Hello,

We noticed strange behavior running our new servers ProLiant DL585 4 of them. When copying files this is what happens example:

if we want to copy 2Gb file on the same File system the Load of the server goes up way to much example:

#we create 2Gb big file:
dd if=/dev/zero of=test.file bs=1024 count=2048000

#we look at the load (the server is not doing anything)
cat /proc/loadavg
0.24 1.21 1.22 1/1423 6644

#then we copy the file a few times over and over and check load between:
cp -a test.file test.me
cat /proc/loadavg
3.93 1.92 1.45 1/1756 7117
cp -a test.file test.me
cat /proc/loadavg
9.50 4.06 2.23 1/3159 8845
cp -a test.file test.me
cat /proc/loadavg
16.05 7.92 3.81 2/5269 11406
cp -a test.file test.me
cat /proc/loadavg
14.16 9.32 4.64 1/5293 11768
cp -a test.file test.me
cat /proc/loadavg
14.58 11.03 5.72 1/5268 12187

As you can see load is going up way too much! We tried the same test with HP DL 360 with 1Gb Memory and Single processor 32Bit and the result is:

cat /proc/loadavg
2.19 1.78 1.26 2/109 24104
cp -a test.file test.me
cat /proc/loadavg
2.74 2.06 1.42 2/108 24343
cp -a test.file test.me
cat /proc/loadavg
3.21 2.44 1.62 1/115 24834
cp -a test.file test.me
cat /proc/loadavg
3.66 2.92 1.89 1/109 26202
cp -a test.file test.me
cat /proc/loadavg
3.13 2.92 2.01 1/115 26472

As you can see it is much better then the 64Bit server with 4 Processors and 16Gb Memory is this normal?

Please help us find the solution.

If you need any more info or output from diagnostics i will provide it.

Data about servers:

ProLiant DL585 G1
4x processors 2.8Ghz
16Gb Memory
3x disk SCSI 320 300Gb / RAID 5

SuSE Enterprise Server 9
Kernel: 2.6.5-7.252-smp
Partition 550Gb EXT3 + 1Gb swap

Thank You!