Executing a program from NAS share

[wayne_sw]

Not sure if this is a performance issue or a general topic question. I have a Dell Poweredge T300 with 12GB of RAM and 4/1TB drives. Our read/write numbers are fine but when I try to run a program from the server it takes a bit to load. I tried running a 4.26mb file and it takes six seconds to start the program. I setup another NAS box on a T110 and it takes it TWENTY! seconds to open. I've tried on three different computers, all about the same speed with and without the antivirus turned on.
FreeNAS share is setup with CIFS.

Where would I start looking to to see where the problem is? Would it be PC side or server side?

 

[DrKK]

That is odd. when you say your "read/write numbers are fine", how was that tested?

 

[wayne_sw]

Nothing official other than knowing what our other servers do, which are windows servers. I was able to make Macrium backups at (they say) 723 Mb/s which created a 21GB backup file in 6:04. Our windows servers are lucky to be in the lower 500 Mb/s range for comparison. We've been able to transfer files to and from it at around 90 Mbps.

 

[DrKK]

My next step in your spot is to inspect the network flow as your files are loading. Running an executable over CIFS over a network is not quite the same thing as running it directly off of a local hard drive. It's hard to advise you really what may be happening. Virus scanners, for example, can impede network-loaded executables because of the careful inspection they (obviously) will do when executables are loaded from remote network shares.

One thing you might try is to transfer some files back and forth from the NAS using something like FTP; if those speeds are concordant with expectation, then almost certainly something else, having nothing to do with the NAS really, is in your way.

We'll be happy to try to help you troubleshoot this if you'd like to try a few experiments of this type.

 

[wayne_sw]

My next step in your spot is to inspect the network flow as your files are loading. Running an executable over CIFS over a network is not quite the same thing as running it directly off of a local hard drive. It's hard to advise you really what may be happening. Virus scanners, for example, can impede network-loaded executables because of the careful inspection they (obviously) will do when executables are loaded from remote network shares.

I've tried it on three computers with similar results. All three similar spec'd computers.. one with Kaspersky Internet Security, one with ESET Nod32 and the other with no AV and all have Defender turned off. All Windows 7 Pro x64 systems.

One thing you might try is to transfer some files back and forth from the NAS using something like FTP; if those speeds are concordant with expectation, then almost certainly something else, having nothing to do with the NAS really, is in your way.

I will try FTP and post results back.

We'll be happy to try to help you troubleshoot this if you'd like to try a few experiments of this type.

Always happy to experiment. In the spirit of experiment, I tried NAS4Free with as identical of setup as I could to the Freenas setup on the same machine and it was almost instant in opening the program.

I'm running FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201602031011

 

[solarisguy]

Did both of them have identical samba configuration?

 

[wayne_sw]

I did some shuffling around in the shop and moved the server from one bench to another and the number improved! Did some looking and found that the cable end was coming apart. Doesn't really explain why Macrium backups worked and it was just the program execution that was slow.