Linux vs. Solaris file IO performance

[Tom Varga]

I've been a linux user for about a decade and have always been amazed at how
much faster file IO is on my linux box than on Solaris boxes that I have to use
at work.

For example, if I have a large directory structure on a local partition with
say thousands of files that I need to delete, I do the following :

rm -r directory

On my linux box, this happens nearly instantaneously whereas on a Solaris box,
it can take minutes or more.  I can hear the disk head going crazy as if each
and every file needs to be individually deleted.

Another example would be doing a 'tar xvfz' of a large tarball.  On the linux
machine it happens as fast as the listing can go by on the terminal.  Later I
can hear the disk being efficiently flushed.  On the Solaris box, again I hear
the disk head going crazy and I don't get back my prompt until each and every
file has been written to disk individually.

Does anybody know what settings could be tweaked on a Solaris box so that it
would do file IO more efficiently like a linux box?  I don't think that this
is NFS related because we're dealing with local partitions.  I'm trying to
convince our IT people that we're dealing with an incredible inefficiency with
file IO on Solaris boxes, but I don't know what to suggest that they do to
improve the situation.

Thanks,
-Tom