Performance Tuning

[HAL 9000]

Asus AT5NM10T-I Motherboard
Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D525 @ 1.80GHz
2x2GB DDR3 RAM
2x2TB WD Caviar Green WD20EARX
2x2TB Seagate Barracuda ST2000DL003

Does 66MBps write seem like reasonable local drive speeds for a zfs volume? They appear a pretty slow to me.

If so is there any tuning in FreeNAS that would directly impact (improve) read/write on a zfs volume?

On Atom D525 mobo with 2GB RAM and 4 ST2000DL003 configured as RAIDZ-1 i get 150MB/s write and 300 MB/s read.
Try setting record size to 64K:

Code:

zfs set recordsize=64K

 

[fungus1487]

On Atom D525 mobo with 2GB RAM and 4 ST2000DL003 configured as RAIDZ-1 i get 150MB/s write and 300 MB/s read.
Try setting record size to 64K:

Code:

zfs set recordsize=64K

Hey thanks for that but it appears my mobo's sata controller for two of the ports isnt supported in FreeBSD, the JMicron controller causes the problems but I can't get this fixed without new hardware or FreeBSD supporting it.

 

[HAL 9000]

my mobo's sata controller for two of the ports isnt supported in FreeBSD, the JMicron controller causes the problems but I can't get this fixed without new hardware or FreeBSD supporting it.

I have JMicron JMB363 SATA controller and it works fine under FreeNAS 8.0.3-p1.

 

[fungus1487]

You appear to have a later controller than me :(

I have the AT5NM10T-I mobo with built in JMicron JMB362 controller

 

[sjieke]

I was reading through this thread and noticed everyone was saying CIFS performance is bad. But my latests tests give better performance using CIFS than NFS.

I have an Intel Atom D525 1.8GHz, 4GB ram and 4 x WD20EARS in RaidZ1 configuration.

Using the 'Intel Nas Performance Toolkit' (NASPT) on a Windows 7 Prof 64 bit client I get +- 60MB/s read and +-90MB/s write speeds.
On a linux client using NFS I get +-50MB/s write and +-70MB/s read.
The same linux client using CIFS I get +-75MB/s write and +-85MB/s read.

The test on linux are performed using dd to a mounted volume. I used a blocksize of 2M and a count of 3k, resulting in a file of 6GB (which is larger than the available RAM).

My cables are only Cat5E, and iperf gives me results between 750 and 850 Mbit/s. So I think I'm very close to hitting the line speeds.

The only optimisations I did was enabling prefetch (disabled by default because of the amount of RAM) and enable SMB2 in the cifs service.

And finaly the FreeNAS version I am using is '8.0.3-Mulitmedia-p1

 

[fungus1487]

Hey I don't believe CIF's is inherently bad but when scaling up e.g. more than one active user reading/writing nfs tends to be less of an overhead and because it isn't per session you should get a level transfer rate. The intel nas toolkit has options to test multiple read writes, what sort of speed was you getting for this? I imagine its alot less than your single read/write divided by the total number of connections.

Another question, what model is your mobo? This is the problem I am facing with an unsupported sata controller

 

[sjieke]

My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-D525TUD.

The read speeds for the traces labeled '2xHD Video Playback' and '4xHD Video Playback' give about the same results of 60MB/s. I'm not sure if these are the options you were refering to.

If I could find a good (and free) NFS client for Windows 7 prof., then I could run the same NASPT test and compare the results. Maybe that will show better speeds when the 2 and 4x HD Video Playback.

 

[fungus1487]

There aren't really any great nfs clients for windows, the ones I have used have all been pretty basic. That said if your just looking to test transfers then you could give it a go, I just wouldn't trust how well written the nfs transfer routine is in these clients so it may not be 100% accurate. The best by far (for windows) is built into windows ultimate edition but like always they want to try and force me into an ultimate license for 1 feature...

I've been looking at biting the bullet and going for a SuperMicro X7SPA-H-D525 to replace my existing board, looks like it will pretty much just swap out with my current configuration and research so far shows that the controllers and other hardware is compatible, hopefully if I can max out the local read/write speeds I will see an improvement over my network.

Anyone have any issues or experience with this mobo on freenas 8?

 

[sjieke]

Looks like a very interesting board. The intel nic's should be better than the realtek one. On the sata controller I can't give feedback as mine (integrated on the motherboard) has also JMicron (which appears not to work in your setup)

Chipset (Intel):
2 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_0, SATA2_1) supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices
GIGABYTE SATA2/JMicron JMB363 chip:
1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
2 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (GSATA2_0, GSATA2_1) supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices

Good luck with the descission, but if you somehow can verify it will work with FreeNAS and you can get a descent price... I would go for it :)