4kb Disks and FreeNAS

[Bohs Hansen]

I've just setup my new box with FreeNAS 8 and 4x Seagate V35.5 2TB drives, they are 4kb sectors. Didn't have to do anything, setup managed it fine.

 

[HolyK]

The disks will work, but the question is about the performance, read/write speed and the allign. Try this:

# write test
dd if=/dev/zero of=/CHANGE/THIS/PATH/zerofile.000 bs=1m count=4000

# read test
dd if=/CHANGE/THIS/PATH/zerofile.000 of=/dev/null bs=1m

Warning: do not make mistakes with this command. Change the /CHANGE/THIS/PATH string to where your primary data array is mounted.

 

[jafin]

Running:

Code:

#zdb -U /data/zfs/zpool.cache  | grep ashift

From output, if the zfs metadata says ashift=9 was 512 blocks ashift=12 was 4096 blocks

Ref: http://groups.google.com/a/zfsonlinux.org/group/zfs-devel/browse_thread/thread/671325cc79dade71

4k disks work fine in both configs, I think there were some performance benefits though if you could get the 4k blocks though on advanced format drives..

Some more reading: http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=135641

 

[golemcito]

100 MB/s for samba is doable, you just need a fast system.

my system (dual gigabit nic) can sustain 200MB/s in and out at the same time.

Please let us know what is your system.... At this moment I have installed freenas 8 in a Phenon x6 1090T and 8Gb RAM, NIC Gigabit (Realtek 8111E) and only can get 30 MB/s under samba. I think my problem is the NIC....

Thanx in advance

 

[druid01]

i do vouch for the comment, my freenas system is currently a old quad core Q6600, 4 gb ram and internal m/b nic also sustains over 100mb/s to even a raid drive array over samba, interestly enough, read speeds are slightly slower, always thought reading was faster than writting but still plenty fast enough for my uses.

 

[esamett]

fn8 release does not setup 4k sector drives optimally. it is in the roadmap for the future. This feature was in FN.7 but has yet to be implemented in release version of 8.

 

[pauldonovan]

The disks will work, but the question is about the performance, read/write speed and the allign

I have a WD20EARS drive in a ZFSguru machine. Using ZFSguru's benchmarking tools I found a roughly 10% speed increase in writes (I think it was writes) using 4k sectors. Given that the transfer rates are 100MB/s without using 4k sectors and most GigE network interfaces won't reach that I don't think it's really worth worrying about for a lot of people.

Paul

 

[HolyK]

kk thanx :)

 

[Bohs Hansen]

tried the before mentioned read and write tests - I've got 245mb/s and 260mb/s .. at least if I read the output right. Don't know hows that on a normal scale, but seems a nice speed. I got 4kb drives, but I don't know how they are set up. Still testing the system

 

[golemcito]

And maybe the NIC, because i get 30Mb/s on the same machine using FreeNAS...

Now I have installed an INTEL Gigabit PRO and i am still in 30Mb/Sec under CIFS... I don´t know how people say they can saturate the lan....

 

[SoftDux-Rudi]

Does anyone know when FreeNAS 8.x would support 4K drives properly?

 

[William Grzybowski]

since 8.0.1-beta1

 

[matthewowen01]

Please let us know what is your system.... At this moment I have installed freenas 8 in a Phenon x6 1090T and 8Gb RAM, NIC Gigabit (Realtek 8111E) and only can get 30 MB/s under samba. I think my problem is the NIC....

Thanx in advance

sorry i missed your question.

here is my setup:

Case:
NORCO RPC-4220 4U Rackmount Server Chassis w/ 20 Hot-Swappable SATA/SAS 6G Drive Bays
highly recommend, 20 hot swap bays plenty of space.
Motherboard:
EVGA 132-YW-E178-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI FTW
dual gigabit, 3 pcie16, 6 on board sata2.
CPU:
Intel e7400, overclocked to 3.5 Ghz.
Controller Cards:
LSI Internal SATA/SAS SAS3081E-R 3Gb/s.
Disks:
8, 1 TB Western Digital Green in a Raidz2
6, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green in a Raidz2.

 

[golemcito]

Thank you for the info.

Now I have changed the Realtek for an Intel Pro Gigabit and I have got the same speeds. The MOBO is an Asus M4A89GTD_PROUSB3 and i dont know what to test in order to increase the cifs speed. The dd test works perfect, speed over 100MB/sec writing and reading but when i access FreeNAS throught cifs i get the standard 30MB/sec.

The smbd process is always under 12%.

The lan is gigabit and both machines (freenas server & Win7 client) are connected to a Dlink 655 router throught CAT6 cables.

What can I check in order to improve it?

 

[matthewowen01]

i have 'Large RW support', 'Send files with sendfile(2)' and 'Enable AIO' checked in my cifs config page. try enabling those and see what happens.

 

[golemcito]

i have 'Large RW support', 'Send files with sendfile(2)' and 'Enable AIO' checked in my cifs config page. try enabling those and see what happens.

I had to enable only 'Enable AIO' and 30MB/sec is the best i can get...

 

[HolyK]

Connect the NAS directly to the PC, set up your IP manually (192.168.1.1 , 192.168.1.2 for example) and test the speed. So you will be sure the router is not the bottleneck. Maybe it sounds stupit, because on the box is text like "1Gbit router!", but i don't belive to those SOHO solutions. ( Mikrotik powah! :p )

 

[golemcito]

Connect the NAS directly to the PC, set up your IP manually (192.168.1.1 , 192.168.1.2 for example) and test the speed. So you will be sure the router is not the bottleneck. Maybe it sounds stupit, because on the box is text like "1Gbit router!", but i don't belive to those SOHO solutions. ( Mikrotik powah! :p )

I didn´t try it yet, but under win7 the same machine, connected to the router, gets 60-70MB/sec and if i use FTP, under freenas, I get 70-80 MB/sec.

I did a communication test, with the same router, using iperf and i get values over 950Mbit/sec

It seems it is not a router "problem"...

 

[matthewowen01]

can you run 'top' when you make a large transfer of a single file? which processes are at the top, how much cpu are the taking....

let me know what you see.

 

[golemcito]

can you run 'top' when you make a large transfer of a single file? which processes are at the top, how much cpu are the taking....

let me know what you see.

Here we go. In the attached file you can see what top says copying a 40Gb file

View attachment top.doc