A little background:
FreeNAS 9.10 installed on a custom desktop PC
16GB RAM
4x 2TB SATA 7200rpm drives in Raidz2
MB: Asus P8H61-M LX2 (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8H61M_LX)
CPU: Pentium G620 (http://ark.intel.com/products/53480/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G620-3M-Cache-2_60-GHz)
I've setup a FreeNAS device to be used as storage device for backups for VMWare Images. I have a script that runs every night, takes a snapshot, and then copies the virtual disks to the backup device.
Previously, the backups were stored on a Synology Device which was fairly quick - only have about 4-5 VMs that need to be backed up anyway and was able to hit 400-500 mpbs transfer speeds which was good enough.
After setting up the new FreeNAS device and attempting to back up to it, I noticed the transfer speed was hovering around 30-40 mbps. This made no sense, because even with low specs of the hardware I used for FreeNAS device it should at least be the same as the Diskstation which has about 1GB of RAM. So I tested the ports made sure everything is on 1Gbit network, and when tested with iperf I get 800mbps - 1gbps speeds from FreeNAS to a VM on one of the hosts and back. So no issues with hardware.
Looking more into the issue, I learned about disabling sync. This improved the speeds from measly 30-40mbps to 200-400mbps. But many people say this is a fairly risky thing to do...which makes sense to me if you run "live" VMs from the FreeNAS device.
My question is, does it make much difference if this device is just used for backups? Does sync matter much in this situation? Also, would upgrading t0 16GB of RAM help at all?
Thanks in advance.
FreeNAS 9.10 installed on a custom desktop PC
16GB RAM
4x 2TB SATA 7200rpm drives in Raidz2
MB: Asus P8H61-M LX2 (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8H61M_LX)
CPU: Pentium G620 (http://ark.intel.com/products/53480/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G620-3M-Cache-2_60-GHz)
I've setup a FreeNAS device to be used as storage device for backups for VMWare Images. I have a script that runs every night, takes a snapshot, and then copies the virtual disks to the backup device.
Previously, the backups were stored on a Synology Device which was fairly quick - only have about 4-5 VMs that need to be backed up anyway and was able to hit 400-500 mpbs transfer speeds which was good enough.
After setting up the new FreeNAS device and attempting to back up to it, I noticed the transfer speed was hovering around 30-40 mbps. This made no sense, because even with low specs of the hardware I used for FreeNAS device it should at least be the same as the Diskstation which has about 1GB of RAM. So I tested the ports made sure everything is on 1Gbit network, and when tested with iperf I get 800mbps - 1gbps speeds from FreeNAS to a VM on one of the hosts and back. So no issues with hardware.
Looking more into the issue, I learned about disabling sync. This improved the speeds from measly 30-40mbps to 200-400mbps. But many people say this is a fairly risky thing to do...which makes sense to me if you run "live" VMs from the FreeNAS device.
My question is, does it make much difference if this device is just used for backups? Does sync matter much in this situation? Also, would upgrading t0 16GB of RAM help at all?
Thanks in advance.
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