Bad transfer speed on CIF share

[ToonVA]

Hello everyone,

The problems with the guest account are solved but now there is already another problem.

My previous setup was good but build in a rush for a school project but never completely running as i wanted it to be. The transfer speeds were good (80 - 100 MB/s) but due to the nasty config i started all over from scratch (Freenas default config - no new hardware or firmware).

Running version FreeNAS 9.1.2.8 (64bit)

• 6x 3TB in RaidZ2 ZFS
• 18GB DDR3 Ram
• 2x Intel I5 op 3Ghz
• 2x 1Gbit NIC on LACP
• Vmware machine on ESX 5.1 (ESX Host got 32GB Ram)

At this moment i have some CIF shares where my DATA was stored. But for the new fresh install i copied everything temporarily to a Dell Powervault MD1000 (14x 300GB SAS 10K) so i could fresh install Freenas and configure it again like i want. The Powervault is controlled by a Dell Perc 6/E controller in Raid 6 mode with a SAS connector (this should provide enough throughput for copy the files over again).

When i start to copy from my Windows 2012R2 machine (1Gbit NIC) i have very bad transfer speeds on the CIF share. At start the transfer is doing 90 - 100 MB/s (Windows view) but within a couple of minutes it drops to 6 - 12 MB/s and stays there. Few moments later it increase again tot 80 - 90 MB/s but drop again and this continuos until the transfer is complete

Normally with this setup it should be possible to do a stable 80 - 90 MB/s, but 12MB/s is nog acceptable for the hardware i am using. The CIF protocol is configured for Min SMB2 and Max SMB3_00, i tried Min/Max on SMB2 but this isn't working either.

On the internet i found i should put the MTU on 1500 for the Freenas NIC but this hasn't solved the problems either.

Does anyone have the same issues or know where and how i can troubleshoot this so i can use my NAS again like before? I need to copy around 4TB of data but at this rate i can't, USB2 has a higher writing speed than i am getting now.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mlovelace]

First thing, if your doing a bulk data transfer in windows you should use a protocol that is multithreaded like robocopy or ftp. It'll be much faster then straight cifs.

Second, the defaults settings for CIFS are, in most cases, what you want. Yes server 2012 supports smb3 but the samba team has had some issues implementing it. Stick with the default setting (other then adding to domain or workgroup). You might want to check your network with an iperf test to make sure it's not packet loss in the switch resetting tcp window size.

 

[cyberjock]

First, CIFS is single threaded, but if it's bottlenecking you, you've got bigger problems. CIFS is very valid and very appropriate for your situation. If it's not working when moving data to your server, it's not going to work any better when you are trying to get the data off the server. So trying to use ftp is only postponing the problem until the data is copied. robocopy is a silly recommendation because robocopy isn't a protocol. It runs over other protocosl (like CIFS), so saying you should use robocopy because it's multithreaded is pointless because you're still going over CIFS.

Second, you are virtualizing FreeNAS. We do not support or condone use of FreeNAS in a VM, and there are very serious performance and reliability problems. If you can't handle these problems on your own you shouldn't have virtualized FreeNAS.

Unfortunately, as our forum rules clearly state this is a topic that will find very few experienced users willing to discuss it in any detail.

So I give you "good luck" and wish you the best!

 

[Mlovelace]

First, CIFS is single threaded, but if it's bottlenecking you, you've got bigger problems. CIFS is very valid and very appropriate for your situation. If it's not working when moving data to your server, it's not going to work any better when you are trying to get the data off the server. So trying to use ftp is only postponing the problem until the data is copied. robocopy is a silly recommendation because robocopy isn't a protocol. It runs over other protocosl (like CIFS), so saying you should use robocopy because it's multithreaded is pointless because you're still going over CIFS.

Second, you are virtualizing FreeNAS. We do not support or condone use of FreeNAS in a VM, and there are very serious performance and reliability problems. If you can't handle these problems on your own you shouldn't have virtualized FreeNAS.

Unfortunately, as our forum rules clearly state this is a topic that will find very few experienced users willing to discuss it in any detail.

So I give you "good luck" and wish you the best!

I know robocopy isn't a transfer protocol :D ftp is the protocol part I was eluding to, but robocopy will support a serious number of threads. Thanks for clarifying that point.

 

[ToonVA]

Thanks dor the information.

As i mentioned in the start, i have runned Freenas for over a year now in an Virtualized environment. It worked very good and i haven't had any problems with performance issues.
But recently i had some problems with permissions so i set Freenas back to default (upgraded from 9.2 tot latest release).

I made avery share, pool, network configuration exact the same way as before, just the permissions en user profiles are different. Everything is working under "Guest" now (home situation so no need for passwords). I don't think the ESX/Virtualization is the problem (it always can but since it ran a year without a problem i doubt it) because there was no hardware/software change in ESX.

But like u suggested, i ran some test with Iperf and found the network connection drops sometimes and manage to reestablish again. Just at this point i don't know who or what this error on the network is making. There are no other users for now that connect the the NAS and there are no other VM Machines running, FreeNAS has 2 dedicated NIC.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1w0hfmdeejnun1j/AAARuNBnpOxdx63Ctwbp7OfIa?dl=0

 

[ToonVA]

I have had some help on other forums and found that the LACP setup is causin this problem.
The problem is now that i need to find where the problem is created.

LACP Setup in ESX, Freenas or HP Switch.

I will let you guys know. I this moment i am running Freenas on 1 NIC and i get around 80 - 100 MB/s write over CIF.

So saying ESX is not a good setup might not be trough, i am running against the speed of my 1Gbit network.

 

[anodos]

I have had some help on other forums and found that the LACP setup is causin this problem.
The problem is now that i need to find where the problem is created.

LACP Setup in ESX, Freenas or HP Switch.

I will let you guys know. I this moment i am running Freenas on 1 NIC and i get around 80 - 100 MB/s write over CIF.

So saying ESX is not a good setup might not be trough, i am running against the speed of my 1Gbit network.

You might want to verify that your switch supports LACP, but it's entirely possible that your problems with LACP are related to ESXi or the combination of ESXi and FreeNAS. If that's the case, then you may be better served asking questions on vmware forums or on the FreeBSD mailing lists. I don't virtualize FreeNAS in a production environment, but I can say that LACP works with proper networking hardware when FreeNAS is not installed in a VM.

 

[Mlovelace]

You might want to check out this VMware KB article that covers LACP on hp switches.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004048

 

[cyberjock]

So saying ESX is not a good setup might not be trough, i am running against the speed of my 1Gbit network.

Mighty strong language considering the number of posts that say that ESXi is dangerous and the fact that you have a single digit number of posts.

What could possibly go wrong!?

 

[ToonVA]

The HP switch i am having here has the support for LACP protocol.
In ESX the settings are modified for the LACP setup, but maybe i need to redo or make them better.

It have worked before in my previous setup also in ESX and with working LACP so i need to find where this is going wrong.
The only thing i can think about now is that with a new version of Freenas the LACP support got changed or something that causes this error.


A have an other forum where they give advise to people to run Freenas as VM machine so you can use the hardware for other machines and testing. I know that i am new to this forum but that doesn't meen i don't know anything i am talking about.

I let you guys know as soon i am done with the copy of my files what the reconfiguration of LACP is doing to my network. See you tomorrow or late evening.

Thanks in advance for the advice

 

[cyberjock]

A have an other forum where they give advise to people to run Freenas as VM machine so you can use the hardware for other machines and testing. I know that i am new to this forum but that doesn't meen i don't know anything i am talking about.

So you can take the advice from "some other forum" or from the FreeNAS forum. I'm thinking that if we're talking about FreeNAS you should assume that anything that disagrees with what is said in the FreeNAS forum is probably incorrect. If you don't see it that way, well, good luck.

 

[pschatz100]

Intel Core i5 processors do not support ECC memory. Even if you get your performance issues identified, you will not have a realiable FreeNAS setup. Seems to me that you are asking for problems down the road.

Good luck.