FeeNAS SMB/AFP stream freezing

[tmacka88]

Hi,

I seam to be having a few issues with my FN system. Not sure what is happening but when streaming movies they freeze and start buffering which is not normal. It really has only occured recently after I updated to 9.1.1 doing a clean instal.

here are my log:

Code:

Oct 25 14:10:54 FreeNAS manage.py: [common.pipesubr:57] Popen()ing: /usr/local/bin/warden list  -v
Oct 25 14:10:54 FreeNAS last message repeated 2 times
Oct 25 14:10:56 FreeNAS manage.py: [py.warnings:193] /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/http/request.py:193: DeprecationWarning: HttpRequest.raw_post_data has been deprecated. Use HttpRequest.body instead.  warnings.warn('HttpRequest.raw_post_data has been deprecated. Use HttpRequest.body instead.', DeprecationWarning)
Oct 25 14:10:56 FreeNAS manage.py: [common.pipesubr:57] Popen()ing: /usr/local/bin/warden list  -v

 

[cyberjock]

Those logs are for the jail.

But, you definitely need more RAM. 8GB of RAM for an 18TB pool is a fool's errand.

Yes, I realize this means new CPU and motherboard, but you shouldn't have built a system with that much storage and limited to a measly 8GB, which is the minimum recommended for ZFS.

I had a 36TB pool and 12GB of RAM and the pool performed fine, until it didn't. And when it didn't, it REALLY didn't. As the sole user of the server I didn't think I'd need more RAM just to be able to stream movies. Wrong. I couldn't stream anything for my life because pool performance was so bad. It forced me to upgrade my RAM. As soon as I added the RAM the pool was back to excellent performance and I've never gone back.

The 1GB of RAM per TB thumbrule as mentioned in the manual is a good place to expect to be. For servers with a single user you can get by with a bit less. But in your case with 18TB of disk space, I'd look at going for more RAM before anything else.

As FreeNAS continues to add more features and you begin to use more plugins you can expect RAM needs to slowly increase. This is pretty typical of all OSes.

The other possibility is you have a failing drive. Bad or failing drives kill a pool's performance. You can do some SMART checks to see if one or more of your disks are failing. But considering you said this started right after you upgraded, I tend to think it's RAM that's your problem.

 

[tmacka88]

hey.

yeah I am in the process of upgrading to 32GB ECC RAM. hope it fixes it.

cheers

 

[spg900ny]

I am having the same issue. If you look at the performance tab, the data for the five minutes or so where it freezes is just "missing," as in there's a blank space when this happens. In my case, it doesn't necessarily happen when I am streaming. I was just accessing the server via the shell to check some things out and it started happening. I got the same warden list message.

I have two ZFS pools with 2TB each, and the rest are all UFS (legacy from a FreeBSD file server). I have 8GB of RAM in my system.

 

[tmacka88]

Currently I am actually only running 4GB ram. But my upgrades are arriving tomorrow to 32GB ECC. So I will test then and see how I go. I also just received a SMART email for a drive failure not sure if this is related. Cyberjock doesnt seam to think so. Apparently its something to do with the Jail.

I will have a look at the performance tab if it does it again.

 

[spg900ny]

Here's what the gaps look like. I just replaced a drive myself because it started having SMART errors. Now all my drives are fine, and I'm still having the issue. My jail folder wasn't located on the drive with the issue, but it is on one of the ZFS volumes. Perhaps I should move it?

 

[cyberjock]

The reason I said those messages are for the jail is because the warden is for the jails. If you search the forums you'll see several people ask what they mean and developers have said its for the jails. It should be supressed in the next FreeNAS version as it doesn't do any good to show us those messages.

If you are getting SMART errors now you should take a look at the disk. Probably have a failing disk. ;)

 

[tmacka88]

The reason I said those messages are for the jail is because the warden is for the jails. If you search the forums you'll see several people ask what they mean and developers have said its for the jails. It should be supressed in the next FreeNAS version as it doesn't do any good to show us those messages.

If you are getting SMART errors now you should take a look at the disk. Probably have a failing disk. ;)

Thanks for the clarification cyberjock. Would it be possible to have a look at my thread about my SMART issue?
http://forums.freenas.org/threads/smart-error-failedopendevice-detected-on-host-freenas.16317/

thanks

 

[spg900ny]

In my case, the pauses coincide with the jail messages almost exactly. Coincidence?

(sorry if I'm jacking the thread, but if tmaka88's RAM and drive replacement doesn't solve his issue, this might still be relevant)

 

[cyberjock]

I'd say it's a coincidence only because a bunch of things happen at the same intervals for FreeNAS. There might be 10 things that trigger every 5 minutes(I don't have an exact number, just pulled one out of the air) and the warden might be one of those 10. I get warden messages myself(virtually everyone does) and few people have a break like you do. Usually the break is because /data is full or something similar.