how much does the processor affect performance.

[alexthefourth]

im getting terribly slow read and write speeds. to transfer from the freenas i get around 12kb/s
im running a zfs raid with 3 2tb drives. 8gb ram, an atom 1.3 ghz processor. my network is gigabit with cat6 cables.
does the processor affect transfer speeds?
what tests can i run to determine if it is the network or the freenas box?

 

[Idiotzoo]

A lot. In my experience of getting Freenas working and happy... and me happy with the performance. You haven't mentioned what protocol you're using. ZFS can be a bit thinky but the transfer protocols can hit the cpu quite hard. Samba in particular needs a decent processor to give you decent speeds.

Try using iozone or do a simple dd test to see what the file system performance is like. Bear in mind this really just test moving large amounts of data, small files can have a high overhead.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/volumename/test.img bs=1024k count=10k

Substitute volumename for the name of your zfs root. This will create a nice big file and announce what throughput it achieved.

You haven't mentioned what network card you have. Realtek are looked down on around here, although my dev server is running just fine with one. A good quality server network card will take some load of the CPU. You can use a tool like iperf to test the network performance.

 

[alexthefourth]

im using a cifs share.
i'll run that and post the results.

to be more specific my mobo is a
Biostar NM70I-847 Intel Celeron 847 1.1GHz with a Realtek RTL8111F NIC.


Ive seen that intel NICs are mentioned often, which model is the best?

 

[Idiotzoo]

Them what are far more knowledgable than I will no doubt chime in, but I suspect the hardware just isn't up to the job. See what sort of results you get with dd, but also see what the processor usage is. You could try setting the disks as a ufs array and see what the performance is like.

 

[ftpmonkey]

I don't think the processor would affect it to that extent. I have had a couple of the low-powered HP Microservers. The older N36L only had a similar processor to yours. I could get up to 120MB/s on it, on CIFS, on a mirrored ZFS array (2 x seagate 2TB).

ETA - I am newish to Freenas, so there has been no tweaking or changes made. That speed is as reported by Windows Explorer, moving larger 1-2GB files from FreeNAS box to Windows PC.

 

[gpsguy]

I really doubt the last poster can get those speeds with CIFS on a ZFS array running FreeNAS 8.x or 9.x. Most user's with similar Atom or Turion CPU's will see CIFS transfer speeds in the mid-40's with gigabit Ethernet.

Those same user'a could see a performance gain with a different protocol like FTP.


Sent from my phone

 

[cyberjock]

I really doubt the last poster can get those speeds with CIFS on a ZFS array running FreeNAS 8.x or 9.x. Most user's with similar Atom or Turion CPU's will see CIFS transfer speeds in the mid-40's with gigabit Ethernet.

I agree.

 

[ftpmonkey]

I'm only reporting what I've seen. I am simply going by the Windows Explorer reported speed. How accurate that is, I don't know.

The spec of the N36 was a dual core AMD Athlon II Neo 1.3Ghz. Copying would start at 125MB/s and then slow to 90-100MB/s (presumably as the memory is maxed out?). I now have a slightly faster N54L AMD Turion II Neo N54L (2.2 Ghz). Needless to say, it is even faster.

In each I had 8GB RAM and 2 x Seagate 2TB BARRACUDA 3.5" SATA-III Hard Drive - 7200RPM 64MB Cache

I will happily run any suggested (windows-based please) benchmark software and report back.

I have to say that I have been very pleased with the performance of the little server and I am a big fan of FreeNAS.

 

[ftpmonkey]

I have grabbed a copy of Lan Speedtest Lite so will run that this evening. Hopefully it is more scientific than Win Explorer.

 

[ftpmonkey]

I ran Lantest on my N54L (admittedly more powerful) and got;

Version 1.3.1
OS Version: Windows 7
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz
Date: 11/05/2013
Time: 18:48:33
Program Parameters: 0
High Performance Timer: 0.0000003093

Test File: Y:\complete\NW_SpeedTest.dat
Write Time = 9.9751813 Seconds
Write Speed = 801.9904320 Mbps
Read Time = 8.6532904 Seconds
Read Speed = 924.5038080 Mbps

Test File: \\FREENAS\Media\complete\NW_SpeedTest.dat
Write Time = 9.8386992 Seconds
Write Speed = 813.1156240 Mbps
Read Time = 8.6348211 Seconds
Read Speed = 926.4812640 Mbps

The speed (at least, as Windows Explorer was concerned) was very similar on the N36L (which isn't running at the moment).

 

[cyberjock]

And you should use iperf over lantest. Quite a few people have used that program and the results are far from true-to-life.

Also I assume you are proving that you can send or receive data on your server via CIFS based on those tests. iperf(and lanspeedtest) only prove the theoretical maximum you can push. But because of a whole laundry list of other potential causes, you can't really get those speeds with CIFS. Try copying a 10GB file to your server over CIFS. I guarantee you that you aren't going to get 50MB/sec.

Virtually every users to this forum that has use your server hardware has complained about not even getting 50MB/sec. Which is why both gpsguy and myself think you are totally confused. There's just no way that everyone has had relatively low performance with those server and you're just going to somehow get double what everyone else gets. It's far more likely you are confused about something than actually getting those speeds.

 

[ftpmonkey]

Cyberjock, I freely admit to being no expert (and also to the possibility I am misinterpreting things).

I did run the lantest on files of various sizes. I ran one of 90GB (largest you could set it at) and it showed similar results.

I will run the iperf program this evening and will post the results.

In simple terms, I can move 2-4GB movie files around my CAT5 network at a pretty rapid pace. A 1GB movie file certainly takes no longer than 10 seconds to copy from the server to my games PC (SSD).

As part of the discussion here, when I first had my N36 it only came with 1GB memory. According to Win Explorer, it would copy at around 20MB/s. This jumped up five-fold when I upgraded to 8GB.

 

[ftpmonkey]

Cyberjock, I couldn't find a windows version of that software so I made a quick video

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORaRjYoVtXU&feature=youtu.be


(I won't keep it up for long)

 

[gpsguy]

Do you have any spinning rust to test with?

I don't know what ALL the user's who've gotten 45-50 MB/s are using, but I doubt they have SSD's.

A 1GB movie file certainly takes no longer than 10 seconds to copy from the server to my games PC (SSD).

As part of the discussion here, when I first had my N36 it only came with 1GB memory. According to Win Explorer, it would copy at around 20MB/s. This jumped up five-fold when I upgraded to 8GB.

My speeds also run in the mid-40's. Whereas a lot of user's come on the board and complain, I don't. I've always had 8Gb RAM in my N40L (1.5GHz). I also have 2 x Seagate ST320005N1A1AS 2TB in a ZFS mirror.

Unfortunately, I don't have a screaming computer with an SSD drive to test with.

My primary pc, while due for replacement, still meets my needs.

 

[ftpmonkey]

If mine had run at 40MB/s then I would still have been perfectly happy. My previous NAS was a Synology DS209, which would manage about 15MB/s.

What switch do you have? I have a TP-Link 16 port gigabit switch. Maybe that is making the difference.

 

[tio]

I really doubt the last poster can get those speeds with CIFS on a ZFS array running FreeNAS 8.x or 9.x. Most user's with similar Atom or Turion CPU's will see CIFS transfer speeds in the mid-40's with gigabit Ethernet.

I run a N54L with a 6 drive RZ2 with 8GB and i maxed out my 1Gb bandwidth with little difficulty. CPU only hit full throttle on one single core and the other one was untouched. That was transfer to the NAS on writes. Stuck in 10GB NIC and i actually got 300MBps read on it and slightly more on the writes.

Dont have SSD L2arc or a ZIL in mine as its primarily a media server doing DNLA and backup image hosting. This is reported in the FreeNAS reporting section as well as my Activity Manager in OSX measuring packets sent and received.

 

[MattCNS]

I run a N54L with a 6 drive RZ2 with 8GB and i maxed out my 1Gb bandwidth with little difficulty. CPU only hit full throttle on one single core and the other one was untouched. That was transfer to the NAS on writes. Stuck in 10GB NIC and i actually got 300MBps read on it and slightly more on the writes.

What sort of disk read/write speeds are you getting? I've got an N54L with 16G of RAM and 4x3TB drives in RZ2 and I'm seeing about 30MB a second. I'm thinking that this is a little low.

 

[tio]

What sort of disk read/write speeds are you getting? I've got an N54L with 16G of RAM and 4x3TB drives in RZ2 and I'm seeing about 30MB a second. I'm thinking that this is a little low.

I have max speeds allowed through a single gigabit port on my MBA.

I have flashed the BIOS to allow AHCI on all 6 ports including the external one as well as disabled the drive cache in the bios.

I have 4x barracuda green and 1 samsung HD154UI and a WD Green in there as well.

 

[ftpmonkey]

I'm glad my speeds weren't just a fluke!

It would be nice to be able to identify what is slowing Matt's speed. Is it a shortcoming on the client machine?

 

[amires]

I have Core i3-2120T (TDP 35W) and I can read/write at 110MB/s via CIFS to a 4-drive raid-z2 however this is via a direct link from my PC to FreeNAS without any switches and jumbo frames enabled. Both my FreeNAS and PC have dual intel nics which first port of these nics are connected to Cisco SG300-10 and second ports are connected directly together. I was not able to get more than 70MB/s via the first link which goes via the switch and no jumbo frames however I can read/write at 110MB/s via second link which have jumbo frames enabled and no switch in between.