[Beginner]WakeonLAN, slow Copy Speed

[simon-rowing]

Hello all :)

First of all I'm not a native speaker, and my english isnt very well, so pleas apologize for that.

My Projekt:
I build a FreeNAS Server with 8 TB (6 TB RAID5), with the follwing items:
- ASROCK ALiveNF6G-DVI (http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=ALiveNF6G-DVI)
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K8/AMD-Athlon%2064%20X2%203800+%20-%20ADA3800IAA5CU%20%28ADA3800CUBOX%29.html)
- OCZ Gold GX XTC 1GB DDR2 PC2-6400 (http://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/OffersOfProduct/524911_-gold-gx-xtc-1gb-ddr2-pc2-6400-ocz2g8001g-cl5-ocz.html)
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 8344ELP
- Western Digital WD20EARS Caviar Green 2TB (http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B002ZCXK0I)

I also bought an old 19'' Chenbro Server Blade with six Backplanes.

I startet this nearly 3 monthes ago, because all of this is new for me.

What I did:
I installed FreeNAS 8.0.2 for amd
I configured with the RAID-BIOS the RAID Array
I set the Permissions for the Folders via Putty
I create a ZFS Volume

My Questions:
I it possible to set different FILE & Dirctory Mask for different Folders?
Why I have only a copy speed of ~10 mb/s, althought I have Gigabyte LAN everywhere...?
I also want Wake on Lan, but I cannot find a readme.
I enabled Wol in my BIOS an test it with ifconfig -m

Code:

[root@freenas] ~# ifconfig -m
nfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=82008<VLAN_MTU,WOL_MAGIC,LINKSTATE>
        capabilities=82008<VLAN_MTU,WOL_MAGIC,LINKSTATE>
        ether 00:13:8f:e0:a4:9a
        inet 192.168.0.19 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
        media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,flowcontrol,rxpause,txpause>)
        status: active
        supported media:
                media autoselect mediaopt flowcontrol
                media autoselect
                media 1000baseT mediaopt full-duplex,flowcontrol,master
                media 1000baseT mediaopt full-duplex,flowcontrol
                media 1000baseT mediaopt full-duplex,master
                media 1000baseT mediaopt full-duplex
                media 1000baseT mediaopt master
                media 1000baseT
                media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex,flowcontrol
                media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex
                media 100baseTX
                media 10baseT/UTP mediaopt full-duplex,flowcontrol
                media 10baseT/UTP mediaopt full-duplex
                media 10baseT/UTP
                media none
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
        options=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>
        capabilities=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>
        inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
        inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
        nd6 options=3<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV>

Althought Wol is possibel i cannot enabel it in Interfaces.
Perhaps someone can also help me with this problem.

Thanks to everyone! :)

Simon

 

[Milhouse]

In order to reduce confusion it's often best to keep threads focused on individual questions/problems, rather than ask multiple questions in a single thread.

Re Performance: If you are using the LSI onboard hardware RAID5 you would probably be better off disabling it completely and switching to software RAID using ZFS. Run some simple dd transfers (dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/tank/zero.dat bs=1M etc.) to gauge the performance of your drives, and use iperf to determine the performance of your network connection.

Regarding WOL, others have tried, and failed, to get WOL working with FreeNAS - search the forum for their threads.

I it possible to set different FILE & Dirctory Mask for different Folders?

If you mean different permissions for each share (NFS/CIFS/AFP/etc) then yes. If not, I don't really understand your question.

 

[simon-rowing]

Thanks for the beginning.
I bought i RAID Controller for this no Onboard ;)
Searched and searched for 5 days...
I mean the permissions, which cifis auto sets if you copy something on the server. This calles FILE MASK and DIRECTORY MASK.

 

[Milhouse]

Thanks for the beginning.
I bought i RAID Controller for this no Onboard ;)

I meant onboard the LSI controller. With FreeNAS, software RAID is the preferred approach. If you get crappy disk performance using hardware RAID, you might want to ask about it on the LSI support forum.

Searched and searched for 5 days...

I just found 25 threads on this forum dealing with Wake On LAN (just search for WAKE) - none of them were useful to you or worth posting in?

I mean the permissions, which cifis auto sets if you copy something on the server. This calles FILE MASK and DIRECTORY MASK.

Yes, add the following in the Auxiliary Parameters field of each share - obviously, set your own values, the following is just an example:

Code:

create mask = 0664
directory mask = 775

 

[simon-rowing]

I meant onboard the LSI controller. With FreeNAS, software RAID is the preferred approach. If you get crappy disk performance using hardware RAID, you might want to ask about it on the LSI support forum.

Okay, but cant there other problem than the RAID, because this a realy expensive controller... http://www.bettercomponents.be/ordinateur-composant/raid-controllers/lsi/megaraid-8p-sas-8344-elp.html

I just found 25 threads on this forum dealing with Wake On LAN (just search for WAKE) - none of them were useful to you or worth posting in?

Okay i will search more. I found many, but non of this is i realy understood or make sense for me...

Yes, add the following in the Auxiliary Parameters field of each share - obviously, set your own values, the following is just an example:

Code:

create mask = 0664
directory mask = 775

Great thats what i searched for thank you :)

 

[Milhouse]

Okay, but cant there other problem than the RAID, because this a realy expensive controller... http://www.bettercomponents.be/ordinateur-composant/raid-controllers/lsi/megaraid-8p-sas-8344-elp.html

From my experience, FreeBSD (on which FreeNAS is based) doesn't play that well with hardware RAID. The hardware RAID drivers are more complicated than the non-hardware RAID drivers, and due to the added complexity the hardware RAID drivers don't work as well (less stable, fewer features etc.). Just because the card is expensive doesn't mean it's a good choice for FreeNAS - in fact, more often than not it will mean the exact opposite.

If you can't resolve the performance issues, my advice would be to replace the card with one from the Hardware FAQ. I personally use an LSI 9211-8i reflashed with Initiator Target firmware to remove the Integrated RAID functionality.

Since you only said you have "slow copy speed" this involves two variables, disk performance and network performance. As I suggested, perform basic tests (ie. dd and iperf respectively) to eliminate variables and narrow down where the problem lies.

 

[simon-rowing]

Okay thank, just bought this card because get this card NEW for round 100 $ ;) i will test ist without the RAID Controller

 

[Milhouse]

Okay thank, just bought this card because get this card NEW for round 100 $ ;)

There's probably a reason for that. :)

Reasons why I would have avoided this controller:

1. PCIe 4x v1 - the controller could become a bottleneck if you add more drives or port expanders. PCI 8x v2 would give more headroom.
2. 3GB/s card - this means it's an older generation card, and isn't likely to support 3TB drives
3. Can't be flashed with Initiator Target firmware, meaning you're stuck with hardware RAID
4. Hardware RAID - additional complexity, and if the controller fails you need to find another identical replacement controller otherwise goodbye to your data

 

[simon-rowing]

Okay put an hdd into sata onboard and same speed...

 

[Milhouse]

Okay put an hdd into sata onboard and same speed...

You measured it with dd? Or was was it slow copying across the network?

Check the performance of the isolated hardware using dd and iperf tests.

 

[simon-rowing]

You measured it with dd? Or was was it slow copying across the network?

Check the performance of the isolated hardware using dd and iperf tests.

Code:

[root@freenas] ~# iperf -c 192.168.0.2
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.0.2, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 32.5 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 192.168.0.19 port 63155 connected with 192.168.0.2 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  82.0 MBytes  68.7 Mbits/sec

Code:

[root@freenas] ~# dd if=/mnt/RAID5/Shares/Gemeinsam/testfile.txt of=/mnt/test/test/testfile.txt bs=1G count=1
dd: /mnt/test/test/testfile.txt: No such file or directory
[root@freenas] ~# dd if=/mnt/RAID5/Shares/Gemeinsam/testfile.txt of=/mnt/sadas/test/testfile.txt bs=1G count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1073741824 bytes transferred in 30.762095 secs (34904704 bytes/sec)

There are some problems with gigaLAN, but 34904704 bytes/sec would be 30 Mb/s, right? This is too slow right, but i just copy from windows with 4 mb/s! So where could be the Problem.....?

 

[Milhouse]

Your disk performance is bad, very bad. You should be getting closer to 250MB-300MB/sec (bytes/sec) for a 4 drive array.

Maybe try with a more realistic block size, ie. 1M and count=1000 although with 8GB you want to eliminate buffering so try bs=1M and count=10000.

Obviously your network performance needs fixing as well - check you haven't connected at 100Mbit/s and/or half-duplex.

 

[simon-rowing]

Your disk performance is bad, very bad. You should be getting closer to 250MB-300MB/sec (bytes/sec) for a 4 drive array.

This is horrible, since three months....this shit dont want to work....I will not stop!

Can i fix it with a mfi driver?

 

[Milhouse]

Can i fix it with a mfi driver?

Maybe, though if the mfi driver isn't included as standard with FreeNAS you'll need to roll your own driver from source, something likely to make future FreeNAS upgrades a total PITA.

For the sake of $100, after three months (actually, 3 weeks) I'd have just binned the card once I realised it wasn't going to work out of the box, and would have switched to something compatible with FreeNAS.

All credit to you if you want to keep trying to get it to work, but it's probably not worth the time and effort unless you've got nothing better to do with your time. :)

 

[simon-rowing]

Okay thank you :) So if i'll wrong with the RAID Controller why some server need one?
Okay so what i shall do now? Sell my Raid Controller and use just the normal SATA-Ports or what i have to do for a great working storage system?
I want Linux/Unix in every case, because i'm nearly a total pro for windows and want to learn some new!
So what do you think?

 

[Milhouse]

Okay so what i shall do now? Sell my Raid Controller and use just the normal SATA-Ports

If you only plan on using 4 disks, then yes, that sounds like a great plan.

I just reviewed your specs again, and it seems you only have 1GB RAM. You want to get that up to 4GB, preferably 8GB, ZFS performs better with more than 4GB RAM.

 

[simon-rowing]

If you only plan on using 4 disks, then yes, that sounds like a great plan.

I just reviewed your specs again, and it seems you only have 1GB RAM. You want to get that up to 4GB, preferably 8GB, ZFS performs better with more than 4GB RAM.

Yes i have only 2 gb ram, but i will buy 8 if this will work!
I got zfs raid-z now and tested it:

Code:

[root@NAS-Server] ~# dd if=/mnt/RAID-Z/test/testfile.txt of=/mnt/RAID-Z/test2/testfile.txt bs=1G count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1073741824 bytes transferred in 14.351375 secs (74818045 bytes/sec)

Code:

[root@NAS-Server] ~# dd if=/mnt/RAID-Z/test/testfile.txt of=/mnt/RAID-Z/test2/testfile.txt bs=1M count=1000
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes transferred in 10.969988 secs (95585883 bytes/sec)

This is better, but not perfekt why?
And the speed of copy via cifis is around 12 mb/s, wtf???

I think there is something wrong in my configuration, do you have a solution or a great tut for configurate a freenas??

 

[Milhouse]

This is better, but not perfekt why?
And the speed of copy via cifis is around 12 mb/s, wtf???

Is this still through the SAS controller or the on board SATA ports? I would also try a count greater than 1000, eg. 4000 with bs=1M, in order to avoid any effects of memory.

I think there is something wrong in my configuration, do you have a solution or a great tut for configurate a freenas??

Dumping the LSI controller would be my first move.

 

[simon-rowing]

This is without the RAID-Controller, just the four Onboard-Sata Ports. FreeNas is installed on an USB-Flashdrive!

 

[simon-rowing]

At the Moment im very depressed about this server and i'm thinking about, to buy everything new and sell the other shit again!
This what i'm thinking about, could this work?
http://www.schottenland.de/produkt-vergleich/20245095-20410219-20479923-20598483

Thanks for all your help!