Link Aggregation Question

[raidflex]

Freenas Server:

Freenas 8.2 Beta2
Intel Celeron G530 Sandy Bridge CPU
Intel H67 Motherboard
Intel Gigabit PCIE NIC
16GB DDR3 memory
8x2TB Seagate Green Drives in RaidZ2
IBM M1015 Controller
Netgear GS108 Gigabit Switch


I am attempting to setup load balancing with the on-board Intel gigabit NIC and the secondary PCIE Intel NIC. Now I know to use LACP you need a managed switch, which I do not have. I want to setup load balancing so that when I transfer files from the server to multiple PCs at the same time I could effectively push 1Gb/s to each PC. Now as I understand using load balancing this should be possible.

To test I have two different PCs, both running windows 7 and both have SSD HDDs. The test consisted of transferring two different 20GB files from the server to each PC at the same time. What I found was that em0 interface is fully saturated at 1Gb/s, but em1 is not at all. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

I have attached a link for Freenas settings.


hosting images

 

[louisk]

To my knowledge, all forms of LAGG on FreeNAS require a managed switch.

 

[Brand]

Your Netgear GS108 Gigabit Switch does not support link aggregation. It sounds like you need to do some more research on link aggregation.

 

[raidflex]

So it seems that basically I need a switch that supports LACP. Any recommendations, i'm looking to stay as cheap as possible and one with 16-ports.

 

[Visseroth]

Other than ebay spacials my Linksys (Cisco) SLM2024. I purchased it on sale on newegg for 250 at one time. It seems that the price of this switch fluctuates and that 250 seems to be the lowest price I've seen but I use LACP with my FN box with this switch and it works great and the switch has thus far been good to me for the past few year.

 

[mattlach]

You might also consider setting up Multipath I/O on both Client and Server side instead of Link Aggregation.

This - to my understanding - does not require switch compatibility, and has the added benefit of actually being able to improve the performance of the same connection, not just multiple ones.

With MPIO you can (provided drives, etc. are up to the task) make a single transfer 2000Mbit/s over two gig-e NIC's, whereas with Link Aggregation it only allows you 1000MBit/s per connection. Adding the second NIC in this case only helps when you have 2 or more simultaneous connections.

The downside to MPIO is - as explained above - that both server and all clients need to be MPIO aware.

As far as managed switches go, I am very happy with my HP ProCurve 1810g-24, which does what you are looking to do, and can be found at a bargain if you look around enough.

 

[jgreco]

Also beware that link aggregation provides no guarantees that both links will be equally used; each TCP session is mapped to a single gigabit connection (per standards) and there's a good possibility that if you only have two PC's, both sessions would get mapped to one gigE. Link aggregation only works well in situations where there are lots of connections from lots of clients.

 

[mattman555]

I went with an older Netgear 24 Port Gig + 4 SFP for $150 on ebay... Model is GSM7324