Hi,
I have been using freenas 8.1.3 (version from memory) for just over a week and the performance using a single ssd drive and 6GB ram is amazing.
In fact it can serve the data so fast that I've maxed out my on board gigabit network port.
I'm looking to test freenas as a potencial replacement for out NetApp system. Here are some details about the set up I'm trying to replace before I talk about the problem.
I have 23 client machines on the network with around 150 processes reading and writing files from a common shared directory. 1 file is written and 35 machines read it which ends up coming from cache and therefore it maxes out the port (this is expected and OK).
For legacy reasons its very hard to configure lacp in our network. Instead we use multiple network connections from our netapp out to separate switches and cluster client machines around those. A client attached to a given switch is told to access a share through the netapp interface connected to that switch. Therefore no traffic flows between switches (other than DNS etc) and NFS traffic goes straight from client to local switch to dedicated NetApp network port. Imagine the NetApp in the middle with 5 switches around it and 5 cables from 5 NetApp network ports, one going to each switch. All clients and the NetApp are in the same network with a huge netmask of 255.255.128.0
Now on my test freenas box I had a single on board network port and all this traffic that for the NetApp was going through 5 ports is going through 1 port. This is why it maxed out the port.
So I've now added two network ports, again in the same network like the NetApp.
Port 0: 192.168.128.140
Port 1: 192.168.128.141
Port 2: 192.168.128.142
Net mask 255.255.128.0
Clients in range 192.168.144.1-254 (144.x rather than 128.x)
Configured through dhcp where static IP addresses are given out based on Mac addresses.
Problem:
Looking at the report network traffic graphs, I'm only seeing TX traffic (reads from clients) on the on board port.
Although writes seem to going in through the 3 ports, the reads only seem to be going out of the on board motherboard port.
Its as if the net masks are being ignored and the freenas box is thinking its got a net mask of 255.255.255.0 and sending traffic to clients through the gateway.
Looking at our network monitoring software its almost as if its broadcasting the read traffic through the onboard port.
All very strange.
When we tried to configure this manually, it complained when configuring the second interface that the details clashed with the first interface as it was in the same network. Can freenas only support one network address per network?
Many thanks in advance for any help you can give .
Neil
I have been using freenas 8.1.3 (version from memory) for just over a week and the performance using a single ssd drive and 6GB ram is amazing.
In fact it can serve the data so fast that I've maxed out my on board gigabit network port.
I'm looking to test freenas as a potencial replacement for out NetApp system. Here are some details about the set up I'm trying to replace before I talk about the problem.
I have 23 client machines on the network with around 150 processes reading and writing files from a common shared directory. 1 file is written and 35 machines read it which ends up coming from cache and therefore it maxes out the port (this is expected and OK).
For legacy reasons its very hard to configure lacp in our network. Instead we use multiple network connections from our netapp out to separate switches and cluster client machines around those. A client attached to a given switch is told to access a share through the netapp interface connected to that switch. Therefore no traffic flows between switches (other than DNS etc) and NFS traffic goes straight from client to local switch to dedicated NetApp network port. Imagine the NetApp in the middle with 5 switches around it and 5 cables from 5 NetApp network ports, one going to each switch. All clients and the NetApp are in the same network with a huge netmask of 255.255.128.0
Now on my test freenas box I had a single on board network port and all this traffic that for the NetApp was going through 5 ports is going through 1 port. This is why it maxed out the port.
So I've now added two network ports, again in the same network like the NetApp.
Port 0: 192.168.128.140
Port 1: 192.168.128.141
Port 2: 192.168.128.142
Net mask 255.255.128.0
Clients in range 192.168.144.1-254 (144.x rather than 128.x)
Configured through dhcp where static IP addresses are given out based on Mac addresses.
Problem:
Looking at the report network traffic graphs, I'm only seeing TX traffic (reads from clients) on the on board port.
Although writes seem to going in through the 3 ports, the reads only seem to be going out of the on board motherboard port.
Its as if the net masks are being ignored and the freenas box is thinking its got a net mask of 255.255.255.0 and sending traffic to clients through the gateway.
Looking at our network monitoring software its almost as if its broadcasting the read traffic through the onboard port.
All very strange.
When we tried to configure this manually, it complained when configuring the second interface that the details clashed with the first interface as it was in the same network. Can freenas only support one network address per network?
Many thanks in advance for any help you can give .
Neil
