Slow SMB transfer speeds

[cmmaia]

Hello all,

First time user and running FreeNAS 11.2 on a VM under ESXi.

ESXi boot is USB 2.0 pen drive. FreeNAS boot is an NVMe M.2 with 2 stripped SATA HDDs as pool.

FreeNAS VM:
X11SPL-F
6 cores Xeon Scalable Bronze
16GB DDR4 ECC-Reg
20GB Boot drive space
8TB (2x IronWolf) Pool
2x Intel GBe (vmx0:)

Client side using a Macbook Pro.

Using Disk Speed Test (BlackMagicDesign) on MBP and connecting to SMB share yields 7MB writes and 20MB reads.

Can't seem to figure this out by myself why is this. I would like to copy my data to the share but it would take ages...

I'll gladly provide further info if needed.

Regards,

cmmaia

 

[kdragon75]

2 stripped SATA HDDs as pool.

Can you elaborate on this? Do you have an HBA passed through to the VM? Or are you using RDMs? Or VMDKs on separate VMFSs?

Using Disk Speed Test (BlackMagicDesign) on MBP and connecting to SMB share yields 7MB writes and 20MB reads.

I saw a few posts about a recent change to FreeNAS that is causing poor performance with Mac SMB clients. Do a little searching any you will find it.

 

[cmmaia]

Can you elaborate on this? Do you have an HBA passed through to the VM? Or are you using RDMs? Or VMDKs on separate VMFSs?

I saw a few posts about a recent change to FreeNAS that is causing poor performance with Mac SMB clients. Do a little searching any you will find it.

They are 2 SATA HDDs directly connected to the motherboards as JBOD (no RAID configured).

This is beyond poor performance but I am new to both virtualization and freenas and can't figure this out. Where can the bottleneck be?

Regards,

cmmaia

 

[kdragon75]

6 cores Xeon Scalable Bronze

What CPU model is backing this? A file server VM should rarely be configured with 6 cores.

2x Intel GBe (vmx0:)

Are refering to the e1000 VM NICs (intel) or the VMXNET3 VM NICs? You should be using the VMXNET3 VM NIC.

 

[cmmaia]

What CPU model is backing this? A file server VM should rarely be configured with 6 cores.

Are refering to the e1000 VM NICs (intel) or the VMXNET3 VM NICs? You should be using the VMXNET3 VM NIC.

It's a Xeon Scalable Bronze 3104.

It is VMXNET3...

 

[kdragon75]

I saw a few posts about a recent change to FreeNAS that is causing poor performance with Mac SMB clients. Do a little searching any you will find it.

I don't recall what the issue was but is was a change in the SMB server around FreeNAS version 11.1u5. It's purely a software bug. I think they found a workaround but I don't recall what it was.

 

[cmmaia]

I don't recall what the issue was but is was a change in the SMB server around FreeNAS version 11.1u5. It's purely a software bug. I think they found a workaround but I don't recall what it was.

I am on 11.2... Shouldn't it be corrected?

 

[kdragon75]

It's a Xeon Scalable Bronze 3104.

Ok so that's a 6 core CPU and you have a 6 core VM? you should drop that down to 2 cores. If I have a host with 6 cores and two VMs, VM-A (4 cores) and VM-B (4 cores), only one VM can run per CPU clock. This is because no matter what, a VM needs the number of cores its configured with to execute. So 6-4=2 and if both VMs need 4 cores and I only have two, they have to take turns. If each VM only had 3 cores, they could both run at the same time.

 

[kdragon75]

I am on 11.2... Shouldn't it be corrected?

I don't think so. It's not fixed in 11.1u6 as far as I know. Again you would have to find the threads talking about it.

 

[cmmaia]

Ok so that's a 6 core CPU and you have a 6 core VM? you should drop that down to 2 cores. If I have a host with 6 cores and two VMs, VM-A (4 cores) and VM-B (4 cores), only one VM can run per CPU clock. This is because no matter what, a VM needs the number of cores its configured with to execute. So 6-4=2 and if both VMs need 4 cores and I only have two, they have to take turns. If each VM only had 3 cores, they could both run at the same time.

I'll drop it down to 2 cores then.

 

[cmmaia]

I don't think so. It's not fixed in 11.1u6 as far as I know. Again you would have to find the threads talking about it.

OK, I'll try to find them. But if this was the case, then all people would be in trouble because most use SMB... I'll try and see if I can sort this out.

If someone has any other hint, it would be deeply appreciated!

 

[kdragon75]

I'll drop it down to 2 cores then.

Start there and once you get the samba sorted out, you can monitor the CPU usage and add one if you NEED it. With virtualization there are TONS of little things like this that can have a huge impact on performance.
Heres some extra reading from VMware.

 

[kdragon75]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...k-speed-problem-in-freenas.64272/#post-480492
Might be related.

 

[cmmaia]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...k-speed-problem-in-freenas.64272/#post-480492
Might be related.

I've seen that post yesterday, but I cannot understand how can SMB work so slowly. Besides, windows shares should be more universal. Even apple recommends SMB (or their own AFP)

 

[melloa]

I am on 11.2... Shouldn't it be corrected?

You do realize this still Beta, right?

Did a little test for you.

See the spike when I was copying the file?

 

[stw500]

Turn off "sync" in the dateset and try again. If the transfer speeds up, use "standard" as setting.

 

[kdragon75]

You do realize this still Beta, right?

View attachment 25554

Did a little test for you.

View attachment 25555

See the spike when I was copying the file?

I'm not sure what your trying to show. The issues I was referring to are Mac OS specific. You appear to be running xfce and while this could still be on a Mac, I would guess not.

 

[kdragon75]

Turn off "sync" in the dateset and try again. If the transfer speeds up, use "standard" as setting.

Can you elaborate on what your thinking is? Your advice seem to imply that you assume that @cmmaia is running sync always. This is not the default and no other mention of the setting has been made in this post.

 

[kdragon75]

I've seen that post yesterday, but I cannot understand how can SMB work so slowly. Besides, windows shares should be more universal. Even apple recommends SMB (or their own AFP)

Remember SMB has many implementations by, many companies. Not all of them ollow perfect standards and even if they do, there's still more than one way to do things. SMB is quite complex in its multitude of tuning options. Any mismatch could bring a 100Gb connection to a few Kb.

 

[stw500]

Can you elaborate on what your thinking is? Your advice seem to imply that you assume that @cmmaia is running sync always. This is not the default and no other mention of the setting has been made in this post.

Well, he is first time user and I don't know his settings. So this could be a reason for slow transfers over SMB. If not where is the harm?