General advice on slow write performance

[Sambo52]

Hi
I have assembled a system from old hardware as follows
Based on Thinkcentre M7515
CPU Core1 duo E7400@2.8GHz
4G RAM
Boot drive 80Gb 5400rpm 1% used
RocketRAID 2340RAID controller
Volume1 6 x 500G stripe 10% used
Volume2 2 x 1Tb mirror 50% used

I appreciate none of this is going to give me lightspeed file transfer but it seems very slow (estimate transfer speed 10% of writing to single USB3 drive). I have not checked the speed but it is only 2/3 through a 225Gb folder after 24Hrs
Speed is similar writing to either volume

Looking at reporting info none of the graphs are maxed out, CPU under 20% System load mid graph (300). All disks mostly in bottom third. Memory is high but still has headroom, network in the bottom quarter.

I suspect the issue is the PCI bus.

From your experience is this likely and are there any utilities to look into PCI utilisation?

I suspect I should upgrade to faster motherboard but I would like to know what is causing the issue before investing my 20 cents

Thanks for your help
Sambo52

 

[Chris Moore]

CPU Core1 duo E7400@2.8GHz
4G RAM
RocketRAID 2340RAID controller

I am trying to be nice, but you need to review the hardware requirements as the 4GB of RAM does not cover the minimum requirement and that is going to impact performance.
You should also review the recommendations guides as the "RAID" controller you are using is a very bad choice and definitely part of the performance problem.
FreeNAS will not work properly with just any old random hardware you throw at it.

 

[Chris Moore]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[Chris Moore]

http://doc.freenas.org/11/intro.html#ram

 

[Sambo52]

I am trying to be nice, but you need to review the hardware requirements as the 4GB of RAM does not cover the minimum requirement and that is going to impact performance.
You should also review the recommendations guides as the "RAID" controller you are using is a very bad choice and definitely part of the performance problem.
FreeNAS will not work properly with just any old random hardware you throw at it.

 

[Sambo52]

Thanks Chris. I understand and thanks for trying to be nice. As I said this is just thrown together from old bits so expectations were low. As a proof of concept I am happy enough with the performance and support from you guys to spend money on better hardware.
Thanks for your feedback.

 

[Stux]

Try again using motherboard Sata ports...

 

[Waco]

Your hardware is fine IMO, your config is not. Create singular RAID0 arrays for each drive behind the RocketRAID (then use ZFS to aggregate them). 4 GB is fine for a barebones setup, just don't try to run too many services off the box without some performance impact and/or OOM conditions. That controller is plenty quick enough to push ~2 GB/s, so it's not that in itself that's causing your performance issues.

I have to assume you're testing via Samba? Test locally, then dive into Samba tuning if needed.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Your hardware is fine IMO, your config is not. Create singular RAID0 arrays for each drive behind the RocketRAID (then use ZFS to aggregate them). 4 GB is fine for a barebones setup, just don't try to run too many services off the box without some performance impact and/or OOM conditions. That controller is plenty quick enough to push ~2 GB/s, so it's not that in itself that's causing your performance issues.

I have to assume you're testing via Samba? Test locally, then dive into Samba tuning if needed.

Do not listen to this person. This advice is not good. All the other comments are much better.

 

[Chris Moore]

4 GB is fine for a barebones setup

If they were not using FreeNAS, but FreeNAS has a minimum required memory of 8 GB.

 

[Waco]

If they were not using FreeNAS, but FreeNAS has a minimum required memory of 8 GB.

Sure, which is why I suggested not running many, if any, services. :)

 

[SweetAndLow]

Sure, which is why I suggested not running many, if any, services. :)

Your like to drive your car without the min number of tires? It would still drive but I'm not sure it would work correctly.

 

[Waco]

Your like to drive your car without the min number of tires? It would still drive but I'm not sure it would work correctly.

Bad analogy. This is like driving your car with the back seats taken out. Doable, but not as usable. :P

 

[Ericloewe]

They're called minimum requirements and not you-can-probably-get-away-with-half-this-amount-but-we-like-to-waste-people's-money-unnecessarily requirements for a very good reason.

<Moderator hat on>

This is a friendly warning that encouraging people to ignore the minimum requirements is frowned upon here. There will also be no discussion on these minimum requirements unless someone shows up with lots of concrete data and an analysis of memory management in FreeBSD as it applies to FreeNAS.
The minimum requirements were not particularly onerous three years ago and they are not particularly onerous now.

<Moderator hat off>

 

[Waco]

Understood. I didn't mean to encourage such behavior, I was just trying to help him get his testing done. I'll refrain from sidestepping the rules in the future!

 

[Chris Moore]

I am happy enough with the performance and support from you guys to spend money on better hardware.

Did you make any progress on the setup?

 

[Ericloewe]

There is some amount of testing that can be done with 4GB of RAM, but it's mostly UI stuff. Definitely not a good idea for production (that includes home).