Issue

Satellite 6 is highly dependent on fast performing IO to ensure proper operations throughout the system. Database queries, file copies, API traffic and more are all greatly effected by the storage configured in Satellite 6.

The primary partition that has the largest effect are the directories in /var, as outlined in the Installation Guide:

Installation Guide 6.3

Having poorly performing IO can cause:

• High load averages
• Slow to exceedingly slow content operations such as synchronizations, Content View publish and promote.
• Long running API queries: API queries that query the database may take extra time to complete, causing unexpected consequences
• Client Initiated API throughput issues: If you are seeing a growing number of Actions::Katello::Host::* API tasks taking longer than expected and backing up in the queue, you may want to investigate your IO

Satellite 6 requires disk IO to be at or above 60-80 Megabytes per second of average throughput for read operations. Anything below this value can have severe implications for the operation of the Satellite.

As we will outline below, this value is not particularly hard to achieve if you are using local spinning HDD technology and easily achievable with local SSDs.

The difficulty is when using Satellite 6 with network attached storage, especially on 1G or slower networks which can quickly become over-saturated and unable to provide the performance necessary for proper Satellite 6 operations.