Increase Performance Or Accuracy?

[Steve Brown]

My current setup is below and I am looking for what is best to do with 2 SAMSUNG EVO SSD's (256GB). Should I add one as L2ARC? Should I do one as a "Cache Device". I am fairly new to FreeNAS but have been very very happy with it. Just rock solid once you set it up correctly (it took a few tries for me lol). Anyways thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Motherboard: SuperMicro X10SLH
CPU: Intel XEON v3 1230
RAM: 32 GB ECC
HDD: 6x - 2TB of WD RED drives these are setup as RAIDZ1 (I might be purchasing another HDD here soon to go to RAIDZ2. I thought using WD RED I would be fine since this was all purchased brand new.)
Currently the OS is installed on a 16GB USB 2.0

I mainly use this for backups and my media server (Plex). It also does some downloading for me (Sabnzbd, Couch Potato, Sonarr/Sickbeard). I am looking to increase performance although its performing quite well. I have it hooked up 10 GB's with my Chelsio adapter and a 10GB Switch.

But it might be better to increase write accuracy just not really sure about all that. Looking forward to what you have to say.

 

[joeschmuck]

I am looking for what is best to do with 2 SAMSUNG EVO SSD's (256GB). Should I add one as L2ARC? Should I do one as a "Cache Device".

Neither, do not add either one. Odds are you will reduce your performance. There are many threads about this. I'd re-purpose those SSDs for something else. If you are determined to add these then I'd suggest you first add more RAM first.

HDD: 6x - 2TB of WD RED drives these are setup as RAIDZ1 (I might be purchasing another HDD here soon to go to RAIDZ2. I thought using WD RED I would be fine since this was all purchased brand new.)

Realize that you cannot just add another drive and make it RAIDZ2 without destroying your pool. You may already know this but many users do not.

I am looking to increase performance although its performing quite well. I have it hooked up 10 GB's with my Chelsio adapter and a 10GB Switch.

What performance do you feel is currently lacking? The services you appear to be using are not high IOPS in nature so I'd think you were at the mercy of your hard drive arrangement. But I have no 10GB network experience so that that with a grain of salt.

 

[Steve Brown]

Neither, do not add either one. Odds are you will reduce your performance. There are many threads about this. I'd re-purpose those SSDs for something else. If you are determined to add these then I'd suggest you first add more RAM first.

Ok I will simply add them and use them as "Shares" on the network.

Realize that you cannot just add another drive and make it RAIDZ2 without destroying your pool. You may already know this but many users do not.

Yep totally aware I can simply migrate data to an external by copying over the files to a share. No real challenges there except backing up plex database.

What performance do you feel is currently lacking? The services you appear to be using are not high IOPS in nature so I'd think you were at the mercy of your hard drive arrangement. But I have no 10GB network experience so that that with a grain of salt.

I feel at times when copying over say my "Music" folder with 180 GB of music. These are 2-3 MB files but we are talking thousands, maybe even hundred of thousands. It seems to crawl down to 20 MB/s. I do see some real good performance when it comes copying a large file to the FreeNAS box. I get anywhere from 150+ MB/s to 200 MB/s. I was hoping to help it copy files over when it comes to a large amount of small files. Thats where I thought maybe a cache disk would help.

Also I would have stayed with my 4 port intel NIC if teaming was allowed. File transfers would be lucky if they were above 150 MB/s.

Anyways thanks for you input really appreciate it.

 

[jgreco]

Also I would have stayed with my 4 port intel NIC if teaming was allowed.

Link aggregation is certainly allowed. However, your switch needs to support it, and it doesn't work the way in which many people imagine it to. That is, it doesn't boost the speed of a single client.

 

[anodos]

Ok I will simply add them and use them as "Shares" on the network.



Yep totally aware I can simply migrate data to an external by copying over the files to a share. No real challenges there except backing up plex database.



I feel at times when copying over say my "Music" folder with 180 GB of music. These are 2-3 MB files but we are talking thousands, maybe even hundred of thousands. It seems to crawl down to 20 MB/s. I do see some real good performance when it comes copying a large file to the FreeNAS box. I get anywhere from 150+ MB/s to 200 MB/s. I was hoping to help it copy files over when it comes to a large amount of small files. Thats where I thought maybe a cache disk would help.

Also I would have stayed with my 4 port intel NIC if teaming was allowed. File transfers would be lucky if they were above 150 MB/s.

Anyways thanks for you input really appreciate it.

Transferring lots of small files is always slower than few big ones.

If you're using CIFS, try option #4 in the first post in this thread:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/cifs-directory-browsing-slow-try-this.27751/

 

[joeschmuck]

Transferring lots of small files is always slower than few big ones.

If you're using CIFS, try option #4 in the first post in this thread:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/cifs-directory-browsing-slow-try-this.27751/

Great advice!

 

[Steve Brown]

Link aggregation is certainly allowed. However, your switch needs to support it, and it doesn't work the way in which many people imagine it to. That is, it doesn't boost the speed of a single client.

Yes I have a switch that supports link aggregation. Link aggregation does work nice if you have multiple clients accessing the server. This would work now but before I didnt have to many machines / jails setup and I was looking for a bigger pipe not necessairly more lanes. I might re-evaluate my thinking now thank you.

Transferring lots of small files is always slower than few big ones.

If you're using CIFS, try option #4 in the first post in this thread:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/cifs-directory-browsing-slow-try-this.27751/

I will take a look at this thank you!

Thank you for both of your help!