"Bumpy" Network transfer: Large files from Win7 to FreeNAS 8.0.1-Beta2

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esamett

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I had noticed that video playback from FreeNAS to PC was having periodic pauses. I upgraded to a gigabit NIC and tested a transfer from PC to FreeNAS.

Average data transfer was about 26 MB/sec but the image shows a pulsatile pattern, with a large wave followed by 3 small waves.

MyNAS hardware appears adequate:
4 onboard SATA2
2 PCI SATA2 cards
PCI-express Gigabit NIC

Can anybody else confirm this pattern?
 

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can we get a complete list of your hardware, make model, what is plugged in where. it looks like your network adapter and your disk controller are sharing resources can't use the disks at the same time as the NIC.

i had a similar problem at work with a junky old box, nic and disk controller share the pci bus, similar result.
 

esamett

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My hardware as requested:
Mobo: Elitegroup (ECS) GeForce 7050-M ("newest" bios - not very new)
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+
Ram: 2x2GB DDR2 (single channel)
PCI (on left): Promise SATA2 x2 IDEx1 card
PCI (on right/second): Syba Sil 3124 SATA2 x4
PCI-express x1: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express
PCI-express x16: [not used]
on board NIC: disabled in BIOS
Disk Drives x8: HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117) 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s

Even if my system is a bit "old" there should be a way to tweak the system to avoid the throughput from stopping completely. I would be satisfied with this even if it sacrificed 20% of peak speed.
 

esamett

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A workaround for FreeNAS read speed with 4GB ram system has been posted:
https://support.freenas.org/ticket/424
Please note that my original post is regarding poor write speed. I now have excellent read speed around 70% Windows network utilization with a gigabit NIC. This is almost ten times better than my old Promise SmartStor 4300 NAS.
 
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glad that helped, i will mention that only 1 device can be active on the pci bus at one time. and the total bandwidth of the pci bus is about 1 gb/s and it's shared among a few other things.

i would ditch your 2 port sata card and use the 4 on board and the 4 from the sil 3124 card. (or better yet, $50 will get you a 4 port pciex1 card, or even better, $200 will get you an 8 port pciex4 card)
 

esamett

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Good suggestions. I am now running a 10 disk Z2 array so I need the second PCI card for now. (8- port card is presently only in my dreams.) Looking at my read/write graphs on bug-tracker it seems to me that my main bottleneck at this time is software and not hardware.

evan.
 

esamett

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Comment (by jpaetzel): from Bug-Tracker

I am a little confused - NOOB:

1. How do I add the "vfs..." to boot/loader.conf?

2. After I enter the "mount" and "echo" commands from the CLI, do I also type in the "sysctl" command listed at the end of the post or is this an alternative approach?

Comment (by jpaetzel):

Try adding this to /boot/loader.conf:

vfs.zfs.txg.timeout="5"

This will require a reboot to take effect.

From the CLI run sysctl vfs.numvnodes while a transfer is in progress.

Compare this value to sysctl kern.maxvnodes

If vfs.numvnodes reaches kern.maxvnodes performance will be affected.

If this is the case do:

{{{
# mount -uw /
# echo 'kern.maxvnodes=250000' >> /conf/base/etc/sysctl.conf
}}}

You can avoid a reboot for this one by running sysctl
kern.maxvnodes=250000
 

esamett

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newest post:

Changed 15 minutes ago by esamett

I am a little confused - NOOB:

How do I add the "vfs..." to boot/loader.conf?

After I enter the "mount" and "echo" commands from the CLI, do I also type in the "sysctl" command listed at the end of the post, or is this an alternative approach?

Thanks.
Last edited 11 minutes ago by esamett (previous) (diff)
comment:8 Changed 11 minutes ago by william

Yes, running the sysctl command will make the change "on-the-fly", no reboot required...
You just need to run the echo command once, it will stick for the next reboots...
comment:9 Changed 0 seconds ago by esamett

Please excuse my ignorance. I need to:

add vfs line to loader.conf -- how do I do this??

then I from CLI:

# mount... command
# echo... command

Then I:
enter sysctl... line also from CLI??

Thank you so much again.
 

esamett

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