Need some help with a slow FreeNAS

[Robert Thomspon]

So, Ive been trying to figure out exactly what is wrong with my FreeNAS...

Generally speaking, as a NAS, it tends to work fairly well.. HOWEVER, Ive got some major speed issues (or buffering or something) when trying to play media files back via Kodi. (I had initially assumed it was a Kodi problem... but it exists across all platforms and not just in media playback with Kodi)... Ill encounter issues where it will take 1-3 minutes for a menu item to load when exploring media files from within Kodi (this does not exist when exploring via a file explorer like Windows File Explorer...

I then though, maybe it's the network connection? bad cable? But network tests and scans (my switch has a built in cable test function and everything reports back as good and both ends are showing gigabit connections (though rarely does my actual speed across the network really move much passed 100mB/s (usually in the order of about 12MB/s over wireless, and around 40MB/s over cable (im not worried about those speeds at the moment... i hate the network ive built here :) )

Anyway, the most concerning part to me is that FreeNAS itself often takes weirdly long times to load its own menu items when logging into the webGUI... I just went to check for an update and it took 5 minutes to report back that there was indeed an update. The same thing happens when i try to look at JAIL packages and other features inside of FreeNAS... and I get the same garbage response time when trying to connect to a jail ive built (to check out specs or to see which are running)... And I see the same bad speeds when SSHing into the machine... All of which, is very weird... because it used to be MUCH snappier...

OK.. Specs:
HP Proliant M350
96GB ECC DDR3 RAM
1x Xeon E5-2609 V2 ( I had debated putting the other processor in, or updating to dual E5-2650V2 but the CPU usage never really goes above about 50% under heavy taskloads... and even then, not usually for more than brief moments)
NIC: Intel Gigabit Ethernet card (EXPI-9031 IIRC)
FreeNAS 11.3-U1 (running update now)
4x 8TB Seagate Barracuda 16948749970312XXXXX (These are not the most ideal drives... and I had thought MAYBE the issue is with these drives, but even the OS itself is slow to respond... making me think its probably not the drives...)


Anyway, Im not really sure where to go from here without doing a complete system wipe and transfering everything off then back onto the rebuilt machine... a task I do not really want to undertake as it involves dumping 16TB of TV Shows and Movies... im probbaly better off just deleting anyway )

With that said, none of the data is critical.. all the stuff that IS critical is backed up elsewhere in duplicate (things like tax files and family photos)...

Any help/advice/direction would be greatly appreciated...

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

That sure sounds like network to me. Try using iperf to test network throughput without any i/o.

 

[Apollo]

Freenas 11.3 has issues with iocage jails and pluggins.
Listing them can take a fair bit of time. Accessing the jail via CLI over SSH using " iocage console .... will also take a fair amount of time.
Those issues are not network specific.

About Kodi, my understandng is that Kodi does the rendering on the machine it is running on so it needs to have access to the file over the network.

Beyond that I am clueless, but I would definitely avoid reinstalling everything. This is not something ZFS really benefit from.
What I could think of is whether you have enough RAM.

 

[Robert Thomspon]

@Elliot Dierksen So... iperf comes back as expected (fairly healthy network... The first 2 tests are server to server (virtual machine to base FreeNAS), next set of 4 tests were wireless and closer/ further from the wifi point... pretty disappointed in those speeds, but whatever... Last 2 tests are wired from my macbook... the speed drop is from passing through a POE gigabit switch... it was to be expected... but still wouldnt cause issues..

@Apollo Yeah, im going to move my SQL from a jail to a VM... im thinking that the SQL might be the major bogging issue... (it handles the watched/syncing for the kodis, as well as a bunch of other database stuff... its pretty integral to the whole network and a bunch of stuff pulls and pushes to it...

Im happy to run any other tests anyone can recommend...

Code:

root@freenas[~]# iperf -s
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  4] local 192.168.1.2 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.93 port 51304
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]  0.0-10.2 sec  2.04 GBytes  1.71 Gbits/sec
[  5] local 192.168.1.2 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.93 port 51306
[  5]  0.0-10.2 sec  2.07 GBytes  1.74 Gbits/sec
[  4] local 192.168.1.2 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.70 port 51043
[  4]  0.0-10.0 sec  32.5 MBytes  27.2 Mbits/sec
[  5] local 192.168.1.2 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.70 port 51048
[  5]  0.0-10.0 sec  33.6 MBytes  28.1 Mbits/sec
[  4] local 192.168.1.2 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.70 port 51055
[  4]  0.0-10.1 sec  59.4 MBytes  49.6 Mbits/sec
[  5] local 192.168.1.2 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.70 port 51058
[  5]  0.0-10.0 sec  43.2 MBytes  36.2 Mbits/sec
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.2, TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  185 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  4] local 192.168.1.75 port 51213 connected with 192.168.1.2 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.10 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec
robert@Roberts-MacBook-Pro ~ % iperf -c 192.168.1.2
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.2, TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  185 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  4] local 192.168.1.75 port 51219 connected with 192.168.1.2 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.10 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec

 

[Robert Thomspon]

OK... SO!!!!

Not sure what the problem was, but I moved the SQL plugin, the Plex Plugin and the Nextcloud plugins I had running from the NAS to a separate machine and all of my speed issues are gone...

My assumption is it had something to do with SQL... but im not sure why...