Improve performance of my freenas

[mattpitts74]

Hi there,

A couple of years ago I built a freenas box based on recommended hardware using the following:

Supermicro motherboard
Pentium CPU
16gb ecc RAM
4 x WD Red 2TB drives.
USB boot drive

Currently running version 9.10

I'm looking to improve the performance of the NAS and wonder which upgrades would give me the biggest improvement in performance. I generally use the NAS for media storage and serving, plus backups for my professional video and photo projects.

I also find the when I access the wifi shares often seems a bit flaky and the share can just disappear for no reason.

Plus read write performance doesn't seen as good as I would have hoped, but I am using minimal hardware I guess so maybe that's why?

I'm wondering what would be the best upgrade? CPU, boot drive, adding an SSD cache?

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[nojohnny101]

A little more detail wold help beyond generic "supermicro" board and "pentium cpu".

What kind of speeds are you seeing over wifi? Generally new components are not going to speed up wifi access because it is always going to be notoriously slow no matter what you do.

As far as your data sets just "dropping off". That shouldn't happen with any components so upgrading is probably not going to help you there either. That seems to be a separate problem.

 

[Bidule0hm]

I also find the when I access the wifi shares often seems a bit flaky and the share can just disappear for no reason.

The answer is in the question: do not use wifi, use cables instead ;)

 

[mattpitts74]

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate WiFi isn't the best option, but there are times when it's more convenient. I haven't ever recorded the speed over wifi, but i'm sure its a wifi issue rather than freeNAS, but also using a wired connection also seems pretty slow and certainly no better than the synology box I used to use.

My question was more about what upgrades would be most beneficial to overall performance? for read writes over a 1GB wired connection.

Here's my spec in a but more detail, I forgot that my spec is there on the end of my posts?

FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE, Supermicro X10SLL-F with Intel Pentium Dual Core G3220 and 2*8GB Crucial ECC 1.35V DDR3 1600MHz, Seasonic G-450, Fractial Design R4, 4 x WD RED 4TB

 

[Spearfoot]

Adding additional RAM would be a good start.

How full is your pool? A full pool can degrade performance.

 

[mattbbpl]

Adding additional RAM would be a good start.

How full is your pool? A full pool can degrade performance.

More RAM is always better, but if I'm reading his post correctly he has 16GB for 16TB which should be adequate for basic NAS purposes. Really, all his hardware seems adequate for basic NAS sharing (although I have no experience with the CPU, it's still recommended here for basic NAS purposes).

Checking pool use percentage is a good thought. OP, are you using any jails or doing something else with the machine beyond basic NAS purposes? The hardware doesn't leave much room for "extras". What kind of protocols are you using?

 

[Spearfoot]

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate WiFi isn't the best option, but there are times when it's more convenient. I haven't ever recorded the speed over wifi, but i'm sure its a wifi issue rather than freeNAS, but also using a wired connection also seems pretty slow and certainly no better than the synology box I used to use.

Can you post some details showing what you mean by slow wired connections? Perhaps a screenshot of Reporting->Network taken during a large file transfer?

 

[mattpitts74]

I've just been copying some large video files from my PC to the NAS, over the 1GB wired connection. Is that a realistic speed for my system? I had also noticed that my wired network has been dropping out too, and I think Imhave narrowed the issue down to the secondhand old netgear switch, which seems to keep dropping out!

Can anyone suggest a more reliable switch than Netgear at an affordable price? I suspect that's why the freenas box had kept disappearing from my wifi network too!! Cannot beleive its taken this long to realise!

 

[snaptec]

96mb/s is Absolutey ok for cifs and 1gbit.
Maybe Look at Ebay for a used hp procurve. They are cheap and get the Job done.


Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk

 

[Spearfoot]

I've just been copying some large video files from my PC to the NAS, over the 1GB wired connection. Is that a realistic speed for my system? I had also noticed that my wired network has been dropping out too, and I think Imhave narrowed the issue down to the secondhand old netgear switch, which seems to keep dropping out!

Can anyone suggest a more reliable switch than Netgear at an affordable price? I suspect that's why the freenas box had kept disappearing from my wifi network too!! Cannot beleive its taken this long to realise!

View attachment 12793

96.5MB/s is only a little slower than the realistic maximum, which is somewhere in the vicinity of ~110-115MB/s. There may not be much you can do to improve on this. You might want to check your cabling and make sure you're using Cat5e or Cat6.

Which Netgear switch are you using? I've had pretty good luck with the GS108TV2: Amazon offers a close alternative in the UK:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-GS108T-200UKS-ProSAFE-Gigabit-Ethernet/dp/B000RAILSQ

 

[mattbbpl]

I've just been copying some large video files from my PC to the NAS, over the 1GB wired connection. Is that a realistic speed for my system? I had also noticed that my wired network has been dropping out too, and I think Imhave narrowed the issue down to the secondhand old netgear switch, which seems to keep dropping out!

Can anyone suggest a more reliable switch than Netgear at an affordable price? I suspect that's why the freenas box had kept disappearing from my wifi network too!! Cannot beleive its taken this long to realise!

View attachment 12793

You're pretty close to full usage there. Keep in mind that those two values (MB vs mb/gb) differ by a factor 8 (since there are 8 bits in a byte). Thus, you're speed = 96.5 MB = roughly 772 mbs or pretty close to 1 gbs. You'll probably go up or down around that area within a relatively narrow range, but that speed isn't too bad.

Also, don't criticize my back of the napkin maths here :p

 

[mattpitts74]

It's good to know the speed is what would be expected :)

The switch I have is a NETGEAR ProSafe GS116 16 Port Gigabit Desktop Switch. After doing a quick bit of googling is seems that many people have problems with Netgear switches dropping out of the network. I guess something like either of these would be more realiable?

http://www.ebuyer.com/718110-cisco-small-business-sg110d-08-unmanaged-switch-sg110d-08-uk
HP ProCurve Switch 1800-8G I see these on ebay quite cheaply.

I have a spare 80GB Samsung SSD which I could use
So putting a Xeon processor or more RAM will make little difference?

 

[mattbbpl]

I have a spare 80GB Samsung SSD which I could use
So putting a Xeon processor or more RAM will make little difference?

I can't speak to the router, but yes, these upgrades make little sense if your goal is CIFS speed improvement - save your money.

 

[hertzsae]

When people talk about performance, there are two different things they may be talking about. One is latency and the other is bandwidth. If things respond slowly, then you have a latency problem. If large file copies are slow, then you have a bandwidth problem. You are complaining about large file transfer times, so I'm going to go with bandwidth being your issue.

As pointed out earlier, there's a big difference between megabits and megabytes. Networking people often use 'b' for bits and 'B' for bytes. The picture you show lists 96.5 MB (MegaBytes) per second. Your wired connection is 1000 mb (MegaBits) per second. It was already pointed out that your 96.5 MBps equals 772 mbps. It's nearly impossible to get the full 1000 mbps transfer speed. I'd say at best, you'll be able to get your transfers to go 15% faster without going to a 10 gbps network. If your transfers are slow enough to complain about, then I doubt 15% is going to make you happy.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if your laptop is maxing out its ability at 96.5 MBps, so you unless you have a fast SSD in your laptop, upgrading your network or NAS won't help at all.

So now the question becomes, do you want to spend large amounts of money? 10gb networking gear is expense and you probably won't get much above 1gb transfer out of your drives, so you'll need a different drive configuration as well.

In the end, I guess I'm saying that you're possibly reaching the limits of your network, your laptop's hard drives and your NAS hard drives. If you want to go significantly faster, then you're going to spend at least a few thousand.

If you test your wireless and its a lot slower than wired, then you could probably get better wireless hardware to help there. For the record, I think the netgear prosafe wired switches are great and I don't think they are limiting you at all.

 

[Stux]

Your NAS is fairly capable for a 1gb connection, and you are seeing that with transfers in the 96+MB/s range

If you want to go faster then you pretty much need to look into a 10gbe upgrade.

 

[TXAG26]

Your laptop is the limiting factor to additional speed. Also, keep in mind that you'll only see +90 MB/s with large media files. Backing up small office files will show significantly slower speeds, even on 10gbps connections.