FreeNas Bottleneck Issue

[sonny81]

I'll say that I'm very new to the freenas world.

My setup is listed in my signature and here's my symptoms:

1MB/s transfer speeds from my desktop computer to freenas unit.

Desktop computer has built in Marvel LAN connected to a Dlink gigabit switch.

The switch is connected to my Linksys G WRTG2 v1 router using a Belkin ethernet power line. My nas unit is connected to the Linksys router via CAT6 cable.

Set priority in my router settings to the two ethernet ports my desktop and nas are connected to (1 & 2), and cut off flow control.

In NAS GUI under Services, CIFS is on (drives configured ZFS), SNMP enabled, S.M.A.R.T. enabled and scheduled once a week, SSH enabled.

I have Enable powerd (Power Saving Daemon) enabled and for the drives, I have them set to Level 1 minimal power usages with Standby, and HDD standby is set to 10 minutes.

When I look under Display System Processes its showing me this:
last pid: 23720; load averages: 0.08, 0.13, 0.15 up 0+23:04:45 23:29:58
40 processes: 1 running, 39 sleeping

Mem: 120M Active, 89M Inact, 2743M Wired, 162M Buf, 512M Free
Swap: 4096M Total, 4096M Free


PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND
23450 root 1 48 0 55080K 15656K sbwait 0 1:23 6.59% smbd
2018 root 6 44 0 159M 90304K piperd 0 1:58 0.29% python
2297 root 7 44 0 67412K 9932K ucond 0 1:11 0.00% collectd
7333 root 2 44 0 52508K 14492K select 0 1:09 0.00% python
5180 root 1 44 0 6776K 1252K select 1 0:22 0.00% powerd
1646 root 1 44 0 39220K 6360K select 1 0:12 0.00% nmbd
5341 root 1 44 0 11784K 2796K select 1 0:06 0.00% ntpd
2753 root 1 76 0 87008K 40028K ttyin 1 0:02 0.00% python
2374 root 1 76 0 7964K 1532K nanslp 0 0:01 0.00% cron
6634 root 1 44 0 10168K 2048K select 1 0:01 0.00% bsnmpd
1325 root 1 44 0 6908K 1468K select 1 0:01 0.00% syslogd
1604 root 1 44 0 46796K 9260K select 1 0:00 0.00% smbd
13373 www 1 44 0 14372K 4748K kqread 1 0:00 0.00% nginx
2601 root 1 44 0 7840K 1532K select 1 0:00 0.00% rpcbind
9357 root 1 44 0 13416K 3152K nanslp 0 0:00 0.00% smartd
1645 root 1 44 0 46796K 9176K select 1 0:00 0.00% smbd
1031 root 1 73 0 3200K 724K select 0 0:00 0.00% devd
5854 root 1 44 0 14372K 4348K pause 1 0:00 0.00% nginx

And now to the kicker, I'm transferring about 200GB of data to my NAS.

Anything I can do to speed my NAS up? I'm upgrading the system this week to 8GB of RAM (mobo max).

Was even thinking of connecting two switches together but am hearing some negative things about that.

EDIT: Made configuration changes on my local NIC (disabled flow control, set jumbo packets to highest allowable setting, 1000 full duplex, transmit and receive buffers both to 512 instead of 256)

 

[pfonseca]

Hi,

I think your problem is on PLC connection. Try to connect your desktop and your NAS to the same DLink Gigabit switch and test again.

I hope this helps:)

 

[sonny81]

Hi,

I think your problem is on PLC connection. Try to connect your desktop and your NAS to the same DLink Gigabit switch and test again.

I hope this helps:)

So disconnect the NAS from the router, plug it into the DLink switch, and completely hard line my desktop to the DLink switch? From there I would need to PLC the switch to the router for internet access because of their locations in the house. This wouldn't effect the speed of my DLink switch transfers correct?

Thanks for your reply!! Was afraid someone was going to say that

 

[pfonseca]

Hi,

You shall, maybe, feel some degradation on your internet connection, but PLC works that way. It's very sensible to the way your circuitry in the house is implemented.

Personally, I've had very bad experiences with PLC, and one day I pulled a Ethernet cable between my switch and my router. problems gone:)

Regards,

 

[sonny81]

Hi,

You shall, maybe, feel some degradation on your internet connection, but PLC works that way. It's very sensible to the way your circuitry in the house is implemented.

Personally, I've had very bad experiences with PLC, and one day I pulled a Ethernet cable between my switch and my router. problems gone:)

Regards,

You're the best! Thanks so much for the clarity!! I'll start doing some creative wire running now :)

 

[sonny81]

Hi,

You shall, maybe, feel some degradation on your internet connection, but PLC works that way. It's very sensible to the way your circuitry in the house is implemented.

Personally, I've had very bad experiences with PLC, and one day I pulled a Ethernet cable between my switch and my router. problems gone:)

Regards,

Alright so I have my NAS hooked CAT5e into my DLink switch and my desktop hooked CAT5e in the switch as well. However, I still have that switch connecting all devices to the internet via my PLC. I'm maxing at about 8MB/s and there's a small delay in getting folders to open on my NAS.

I left the PLC connected since I wasn't accessing the internet but rather using the NAS and PC directly connected together via DLink gigabit switch.

Is the PLC still the cause of the slow speeds? Anything else I might be overlooking?

Transfer size is 190GB

**UPDATE**
Just realized the gigabit NIC on my NAS is lit orange and not green. Bad nic or is there something I need to do to configure it in the freenas GUI?

 

[sonny81]

Sorry for all the posts. Just keep messing around with things.

Anyway, I gave up on my Intel onboard NIC and decided to try my Marvel onboard nic. The reason I did this is because I saw under ifconfig:

epair0a (NIC name I'm assuming), media: Ethernet 10Gbase-T (10Gbase-T <full-duplex>), status: active

I disabled my previously configured NIC in my bios and connected by 5e cable to that 10Gbase-T NIC.

What's odd is that the status light is not blinking on the NIC, its light orange, but my DLink light is green (1gigabit).

I gave it a different IP address from my old NIC in Freenas system (same subnet, just 2 numbers higher than the previous NIC...jail is one number higher that previous NIC).

Couldn't connect to my Freenas GUI so I decided to give it the same IP address as the old NIC, still can't connect via Freenas GUI.

Thoughts?

 

[cyberjock]

I believe the epair0a is the network bridge between the jail and FreeNAS.

Have you tried to ping something from your FreeNAS server? If you can't ping anything my first guess is your onboard NIC isn't supported.

Intel NICs really are the bread and butter of NICs for FreeNAS. It should autoconfigure to Gb. If its not it might be your network cable. I've seen lots of them that should work at Gb speeds but don't. Perhaps try a different network cable between your switch and your Intel NIC.

If nothing works my recommendation would be to buy an Intel NIC card and add it to the server.

 

[pfonseca]

If both your NAS Server and Desktop have Gb NIC, activate Jumbo frames, mtu=9000

 

[pfonseca]

sonny81, just confirm. Is this your current layout?

 

[sonny81]

sonny81, just confirm. Is this your current layout?

View attachment 1028

Yes that is my current lay out. I ordered an Intel PCIe nic and it should be in tomorrow. I think my nic is just acting crazy because I've tried all I read about. Setting mtu 9000 in the interface configuration didn't work and setting the command line to 1000mbps make my nic blink green a few times then if stopped working.

So now I'm back at 100mbps connection with a new issue:

I installed a 3tb hard drive into my NAS today and upgraded all the RAM to 8gb. Everything in the case is connected properly, I can log into my gui and see all my drives shares, etc.

I created a volume using the full 3tb disk and gave it a windows share. The weird thing is that I can't connect to any of my network drives locally now. They are all offline. Again, if can log into my gui so the NAS is online and I can also see all my shares and the alert light in the GUI is green.

Thoughts?

Really appreciate the time everyone has put into helping me!! Grateful

 

[cyberjock]

The list of possible causes is almost endless. Is the CIFS service running? Do you have the permissions set up properly? Are you sure your share settings are correct?

The green GUI light only means that you don't have any serious problems with zfs pools, admin passwords, administration stuff. It doesn't have the know-how to tell you if your share settings are wrong. It's up to the adminitrator to get it right.

 

[sonny81]

The list of possible causes is almost endless. Is the CIFS service running? Do you have the permissions set up properly? Are you sure your share settings are correct?

The green GUI light only means that you don't have any serious problems with zfs pools, admin passwords, administration stuff. It doesn't have the know-how to tell you if your share settings are wrong. It's up to the adminitrator to get it right.

Thanks for the reply.

Yes the CIFS settings are running and I have the permissions set properly. I have two shares previously set up on this machine and they were working fine minutes before I installed the new hard drive and created the share for it.

So three shares total, new one is 3tb and the others were working fine up till I installed a new hard drive. Again, I can see the drives and change their power settings, etc in the GUI but can't connect locally on desktop.

**UPDATE**
Under Network in Windows 7 the NAS shows up as a network computer but when I click on it, it says Windows cannot connect. When I hit trouble shoot its telling me there might be something wrong with my DNS but then again Windows troubleshooting loves giving generic issues when it doesn't know what's going on.

 

[cyberjock]

That sounds like more of a networking issue than a CIFS issue.

Have you tried to ping the FreeNAS server from your Win7 machine?
Have you tried to ping the Win7 machine from your FreeNAS server?

Edit: Have you tried rebooting the server? I know alot of people have issues go away with a reboot when changing certain parameters.

 

[sonny81]

That sounds like more of a networking issue than a CIFS issue.

Have you tried to ping the FreeNAS server from your Win7 machine?
Have you tried to ping the Win7 machine from your FreeNAS server?

Edit: Have you tried rebooting the server? I know alot of people have issues go away with a reboot when changing certain parameters.

I can ping my NAS from my desktop machine and my NAS looks like its receive 64 bytes from my desktop.

I'm noticing that under Network in Windows 7 that the NAS goes offline. I just did a force reset on my NIC in the shell back to 100. I'm wondering if I just broke my NIC but then that wouldn't make much sense if I can log into the GUI successfully and ping hosts.

I've previously tried to set the nic to mtu 9000 and it keeps saying please wait in the GUI, I removed send and receive buffers previously in the GUI (now removed that command), in the shell I've tried setting it to 1000mbps but the light blinks green and goes off (no connection).

I reset the device numerous times in troubleshooting and just finished rebooting the router as well. All internet connection (including desktop connected to the same switch as NAS) is working fine otherwise.

 

[cyberjock]

I wouldn't enable jumbo frames while troubleshooting. If any if your network devices don't support it and don't have it enabled it can cause...issues.

 

[sonny81]

Latest attempts. I shut down all networked machines, turn off switch and router for 3mins, turn on router, a minute later the switch, then the NAS and desktop.

Now I can't even log into the GUI. On my desktop I pinged the NAS and another IP address said the destination host was unreachable but then the results came and it said 4 packets sent, 4 received, 0% lost.

This is so irritating.

I reset the network card on the local NAS shell. Put in the IP address again, nothing. I'm assuming I somehow fried my NIC??

I'm a wedding photographer and this is really causing issues with keeping up with work demand. I've been troubleshooting one thing after another for 4 straight days 13hrs each.

 

[paleoN]

I'm a wedding photographer and this is really causing issues with keeping up with work demand. I've been troubleshooting one thing after another for 4 straight days 13hrs each.

I would first turn off jumbo frames on the NAS, the desktop & the switch and then leave them off.

Have you tried with a different cable and different port on the DLink?

Did your Intel PCIe NIC come in?

 

[sonny81]

I would first turn off jumbo frames on the NAS, the desktop & the switch and then leave them off.

Have you tried with a different cable and different port on the DLink?

Did your Intel PCIe NIC come in?

Thanks for the reply. I am going to number these things in hopes it will make it easier for a response:

1. I just changed my desktop jumbo frames setting back to 1500 (default) instead of 9000 (custom setting). I was told this would make Freenas work faster.

2. Should I also changed(desktop) my transmit/receive buffers back to 256? I believe they are at 512 now (custom setting).

3. Should I re-enable flow control? (desktop)

4. I set speed & value on desktop nic to 1000 full duplex (light was always green to begin with though)

5. I'm going to wait till my Intel Nic comes in tomorrow because I've tried so many suggestions and don't even know where to begin to fix my NAS nic. I will do all the other things you've asked tomorrow once I get the Intel NIC installed.

6. I will say that when I did have access to the GUI and I tried to change the NIC to once again be at MTU 9000 it just stayed stuck on "please wait" and I had to force close the web page (probably what caused it to freak out completely).

Thanks!!

 

[paleoN]

1. Yes, set it to 1500.
   
   
2. Back to the default, yes.
   
   
3. Yes, all back to default.
   
   
4. If it's still green, i.e. 1000 full duplex on the DLink, you can leave it.
   
   
5. Probably a good idea at this point. ;)

Jumbo frames need to be enabled end-to-end or you will get all sorts of strange network errors. By default everything assumes 1500. Given that you are troubleshooting network issues let switch back to the default. Once it's working properly if you want/need to you can try turning jumbo frames back on.