SOLVED Time Machine backup very slow

pixel8383

Explorer
Joined
Apr 19, 2018
Messages
80
I am running a FreeNAS server (FreeBSD 11.1-STABLE) on a HP Proliant Microserver Gen 10 (8GB ECC-RAM, Intel NIC, 4TB mirrored WD Red disks) but I am finding pretty slow performances during Time Machine backups through wi-fi.

I have tried to test the connection speed using iPerf3 and it's enough good (even tough it's not a wired connection). Here are my results:
Code:
Connecting to host 192.168.1.82, port 5201
[  5] local 192.168.1.10 port 53923 connected to 192.168.1.82 port 5201
[ ID] Interval		   Transfer	 Bitrate		 Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  7.12 MBytes  59.7 Mbits/sec	0   1.00 MBytes	  
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec  3.73 MBytes  31.3 Mbits/sec	2	257 KBytes	  
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  6.99 MBytes  58.5 Mbits/sec	1	146 KBytes	  
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  6.92 MBytes  58.2 Mbits/sec	1	101 KBytes	  
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  5.91 MBytes  49.6 Mbits/sec	2   49.6 KBytes	  
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  3.29 MBytes  27.6 Mbits/sec	3   28.3 KBytes	  
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  5.25 MBytes  44.1 Mbits/sec	2   58.3 KBytes	  
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  4.02 MBytes  33.8 Mbits/sec	4   66.8 KBytes	  
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec  3.98 MBytes  33.4 Mbits/sec	4   54.0 KBytes	  
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  6.39 MBytes  53.5 Mbits/sec	2   69.6 KBytes	  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval		   Transfer	 Bitrate		 Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  53.6 MBytes  45.0 Mbits/sec   21			 sender
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  52.4 MBytes  44.0 Mbits/sec				  receiver

iperf Done.


When I try to backup my Macbook anyway, the transfer speed is about (and never more) 500Kbit. This way a 500MB backup can take more than one hour.

Transfer using ethernet are different - even if not astonishing: they runs at about 20Mbits.

I suspect something is buggy on TM or AFP protocols implementation on FreeNAS.

Do you have any suggestion?
 

garm

Wizard
Joined
Aug 19, 2017
Messages
1,555
Most probably it’s time machine throttling itself, it’s meand to do that to not interfere with the tasks a user might be doing at the same time.

What happens if you leave the computer alone to do the backup? Monitor from FreeNAS and not the client.
 

pixel8383

Explorer
Joined
Apr 19, 2018
Messages
80
It's the same, even if all apps are closed, TM will do its work very very slowly if the destination is FreeNAS. The source machine is a MacBook Pro 2017 (i7 quad-core, 16GB RAM, SSD...).
I would exclude an issue on the machine since I was already using TM before of FreeNAS.
 

pixel8383

Explorer
Joined
Apr 19, 2018
Messages
80
Same issue even with another MacBook Pro (SSD, 8GB RAM) connected using wifi. Something is not working fine on TimeMachine/AFP service on FreeNAS.
 

RegularJoe

Patron
Joined
Aug 19, 2013
Messages
330
Apple time machine works, is neat, can get you out of trouble and is free. you can say a LOT about time machine backups. about 10 years ahead of Microsoft Windows when it comes to getting home users to back up the junk in the trunk(your desktop).

That said, Time Machine is NOT fast. I used Firewire 800 SSD's and directly attached SSD's and it is still slow as molasses on a winter day in Northern Michigan.

In engineering they had a saying :

Fast, Cheap and Good - Pick 2

So here it is : Time Machine is Cheap and Good, not fast.

I have been using mac computers since 2005 and DOS/Windows since 1988. At one time Microsoft was the underdog... not so much anymore.
 

pixel8383

Explorer
Joined
Apr 19, 2018
Messages
80
For the shake of clarity: yesterday night I figured out what wasn't working properly and now my Time Machine backups works great again.

I have two Time Machine AFP shares on my network NAS (FreeNAS) but I did setup only unix priviledges on write-read access for each user that was supposed to use that share.

I did not setup the "allow list" properly in one of those two shares and - don't ask me why - it seems like the Macbook sometimes tried to use/pool the second share even if it wasn't supposed to access/connect to that share (I can see two network Time Machine disks from System Preferences GUI and obviously for each Mac assigned one share).

When I inhibited not only read-write capabilities but even the access to the wrong disk, suddenly Time Machine stared to work like a charm.

I don't know why over ethernet this issue was not present but that's all.
 

RegularJoe

Patron
Joined
Aug 19, 2013
Messages
330
while your running your TM backup how much of the ethernet interface is it using on your FN box?
 

pixel8383

Explorer
Joined
Apr 19, 2018
Messages
80
while your running your TM backup how much of the ethernet interface is it using on your FN box?
It's around 30% (300Mbit/s). It's not damn fast but is pretty good to my needs. [I did not tweak any parameter in order to make this low-priority process go faster on my machine so I guess it will never saturate a gigabit connection].
 

RegularJoe

Patron
Joined
Aug 19, 2013
Messages
330
LOL, no not yet, I had another FreeNAS node I had to start up. I hope to get that this weekend. There is a way to migrate my time capsule backups to FreeNAS so I am looking at that as well.
 
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