Improving SMB share

[Darkodo]

Hi everyone,

I have created a FreeNAS server inside a proxmox server.
I have read several posts on this topic, and I choose to do a passthrougth of a MBA MegaRAID flashed as mentionned on this site.

The VM have 32 GB of RAM (ECC) and 4 vCPU.

I measured the transfer rate through a samba share of 60 MB/s, and I was wondering if there were a bottleneck.

• Network tests

I thought first that the virtual network could be the bottleneck. Several thread on the forum incriminate the VirtIO driver of FreeBSD. So I performed some tests.

• Linux_VM/Linux_VM (iperf3) :

CentOS8>---<VirtIO>---<vmbr>---<VirtIO>---<CentOS8	18,7 Gbits/ses​
CentOS8>---<VirtIO>---<vmbr>---<e1000>---<CentOS8	3,1 Gbits/sec​
CentOS8>---<e1000>---<vmbr>---<e1000>---<CentOS8	1,6 Gbits/sec​

• LinuxVM/FreeBSD_VM (iperf3) :

CentOS8>---<VirtIO>---<vmbr>---<VirtIO>---<FreeNAS(11.3U1)	16,6 Gbits/ses​
CentOS8>---<e1000>---<vmbr>---<VirtIO>---<FreeNAS(11.3U1)	3,0 Gbits/sec​
CentOS8>---<VirtIO>---<vmbr>---<e1000>---<FreeNAS(11.3U1)	535 Mbits/sec​
CentOS8>---<e1000>---<vmbr>---<e1000>---<FreeNAS(11.3U1)	584 Mbits/sec

• VM/Laptop (iperf3) :

CentOS>---<VirtIO>---<vmbr>---<I350>--|Cat5E|--<Realtek>---<Ubuntu	941 Mbits/ses​
FreeNAS>---<VirtIO>---<vmbr>---<I350>--|Cat5E|--<Realtek>---<Ubuntu	941 Mbits/sec​

We can see that VirtIO give the best speed rate on FreeNAS, so I choose to use this driver on my VM.

The tests were conducted without the proxmox firewall (poor performance when activated).
No impact of the hardware offloading parameter on FreeNAS.

• FreeNAS Read/Write performance

I assumed next that maybe the disk itself was the bottleneck. So I performed some more tests and compared them to the expected R/W performance.

• Actual Raw Read/Write Performances :

dd if=/dev/random of=/mnt/.../testfile bs=4M count=10000	105 MB/s 95 MB/s 99 MB/s ------------------ 100 MB/s
dd if=/mnt/.../testfile of=/dev/null bs=4M count=10000	91 MB/s 94 MB/s 93 MB/s ------------------ 93 MB/s
dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null bs=4M count=10000	136 MB/s 137 MB/s 136 MB/s ------------------ 136 MB/s

• Theoretical Read/Write Performances :

Disk	Write (MB/s)​	Read (MB/s)​
Seagate NAS HDD 3 To ST3000VN000	123​	123​
Seagate BarraCuda 1 TB ST1000LM048	126​	133​

Seagate NAS HDD 3 To ST3000VN000 en test - Comparatif : Neuf disques durs 3.5'' de 3 To - HardWare.fr

Le prix des disques revient lentement à la normale, si bien que la capacité de 3 To tire aujourd'hui son épingle du jeu. Quel disque choisir parmi les offres Seagate, Toshiba et Western Digital ?

www.hardware.fr

Seagate BarraCuda 1 TB ST1000LM048 Hard Drive Review | Hardware Secrets

www.hardwaresecrets.com

So it appears that I have a small performance degradation on my Read/Write rates compared to the expected ones. Maybe due to the virtualisation.
But from my 60MB/s I can expect better.

• What is next ?

From my tests, I can tell that my SMB share isn't limited from the network and not from the disks.
What could I do next to try to improve the SMB share rate ?

 

[Darkodo]

For information,

I have increased the RAM from 32 to 64 GB with no improvement.

I have seen that AES is not enable on the VM. I will try it.

Would 100MB/s is expectable with a "one disk" dataset?
If I add N disks, would it be N times one disk speed? (without the network limitation).

 

[Darkodo]

Final message.

With AES enable on the virtual machine, I manage a fair 80 MB/s. Now it's my laptop disk that becomes limiting so I am satisfied.

To recap the config of the virtual machine ont the proxmox server:

• Proxmox firewall, must be desable;
• Processor, add AES flag;
• Networking, use VirtIO;
• Disks, passthroug the HBA so FreeNAS has a direct control over them.

I hope this will help some of you guys.

 

[sretalla]

Networking, use VirtIO;

You might consider trying the VMXNET driver in Proxmox as FreeNAS has the driver on its side for that and runs well with it.