Slow speeds transferring large files from personal computer to new FreeNas build

[Jon928]

Hi Everyone,

Here's my setup:

Freenas Hardware:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3240 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Motherboard: Supermicro Motherboard MBD-X9SCM-F-O
RAM: Kingston 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 Server Memory Intel Model KVR13E9K2/16I

Storage: 4 Western Digital Red 4TB SATA III 64MB Cache with CIF Shares enabled
BIOS: Onboard Lan Option Rom Select - Set to PXE

Workstation:
ASRock X58 Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard w/ 12gb of RAM
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield Quad-Core 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W

Setup:
Version: FreeNAS-9.2.1.8-RELEASE-x64 (80c1d35) in ZFSz2

Personal computer has a gigabit onboard jack, cat5e going to router (Verizon Actiontec MI424 revE w/ built-in gigabit), then cat5e going to FreeNas.

My apologies but I am very new at this and I've done quite a few searches through youtube looking for a video that perhaps answers my question and using the search here. But nothing that I've found addresses my issue specifically.

I had 2 4tb drives sitting in my computer that was JBOD that I used to save my videos. I wanted to use those 2 4tb drives in my Freenas set up so I transferred everything onto a bunch of external and older internal harddrives that I had laying around. So I'm deathly afraid of losing anything at this point since everything is scattered around everywhere.

After I finished setting up Freenas, I hooked it up via cat5e cable to my router and got everything recognized and started on the path of setting up plexmedia server and transferring all of my videos over. But when I did that, I was getting horrendously slow speeds. I'm getting 10-11MB/s transfers. Moving over all of my videos, including my raw wedding videos is taking forever.

The mobo comes with 2 LAN ports. I currently have it hooked to Lan1 with Lan2 disabled. I've tried disabling Lan1 and hooking up Lan2 with the same slow speeds. I've switched using different ports on the router and different ethernet cables with no luck.

Freenas and my own personal computer are directly connected to the router with no switches in between.

I was possibly thinking of getting an Intel NIC hoping that might fix the issue. But I don't have a spare PCI-e NIC laying around to test it out. If you guys believe that will fix my issue then I'll be more than happy to get one.

I'm here to learn but having all of my files scattered across so many disk drives is making me really anxious so if I can get everything transferred over the better I'll feel.

In the mean time I'll continue to transfer things over at 10MB/s but it's taking like 20 hours to do ~500-600gb.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jon

 

[mjws00]

The hardware on your FreeNAS box looks great. 10-11MBs could be something hooking up at 100Mbit instead of 1GBe. You may want to transfer from any external disks to fast storage on your workstation in order to ensure you get throughput an iops for the transfer. The other thing to test is your network speeds themselves. Set up iperf and verify that you have a high speed connection.

Maybe let us know what hardware is on the workstation. If you can verify network speeds via iperf that would be great. Also see if you can read fast from FN and it isn't just writing that is slow. Shouldn't be too hard to get you sorted, assuming the gear is reasonable.

Good Luck.

 

[Jon928]

mjws00: Thank you for the reply. Since I created the topic I've been doing more reading on the forums. But haven't found anything specific to my situation. I'll update the specs on my workstation on the first post. But I have verified that it has a gigabit LAN onboard.

Looking at the back of the router, there are the 2 standard led's back there for each LAN port. One light for 10 and another for 100. The 100 is the one that is lit. How do you verify by looking at that that you're connected at 1000??

On youtube I found a video where the person just mentioned that if you're getting 10-11MB/s transfer speeds, then most likely your culprit is a somewhere along the line a device is connecting at 100Mbit like you suggested. I'll look into how to running those tests and update when I finish them.

Thanks again.

 

[Jon928]

You may want to transfer from any external disks to fast storage on your workstation in order to ensure you get throughput an iops for the transfer.

One more thing, in your above quote, are you suggesting I transfer a file from the FN to my workstation to test the throughput for the transfer?

I don't have any other devices attached to the network that I can use besides the FreeNas server.

 

[mjws00]

Yep. It's just a quick test to see if things are symmetrical. Or maybe there is a write issue, or the source is slow. Typically 4 drives will have roughly 4 times the speed of 1GBe so we should saturate it easily when sending data to a workstation. Especially with a large file.

You can hook up the workstation and the FN box directly via cat5 as well. Just to rule everything out. You may have to set static IPs etc... but it's just another thing to simplify and check. Here are the iperf test docs. If we can verify the wire speed we can rule it out and look elsewhere.

 

[Jon928]

Really appreciate your help. I just tried transferring a file back to the workstation and the speeds are 10-11MB/s as well. Going through the steps for jperf now.

Is this what the jperf should look like? I'm not sure I did it correctly.

 

[mjws00]

Cool. Always pays to start with the easy stuff. On your freenas box. what is the output of 'ifconfig'.

Check connection speed on your windows box as well. Then on to the iperf test.

 

[Jon928]

Speedtest is giving me 9ms ping. 58.6Mbps down and 45Mbps up.

When I type in ifconfig into Shell on the FreeNas box I get this:

 

[cyberjock]

ifconfig will tell you if you have a 100Mb link on the server. Of course, it won't tell you if you are running 100Mb anywhere else, but you have to start somewhere.

And I agree that this is almost certainly a 100Mb link somewhere.

You don't need another NIC either. The onboard for that board is perfect. That's the same motherboard I have.

 

[cyberjock]

And you just posted your ifconfig.

em0 says it's 100Mb. So that's your problem. The cable is probably bad. Replace it and try again.

 

[Jon928]

And you just posted your ifconfig.

em0 says it's 100Mb. So that's your problem. The cable is probably bad. Replace it and try again.

Does it say which one to replace? I'm guessing the one from the FreeNas to the router? I have 3 ethernet cables connected so far.

One for the IPMI, one from workstation to router, and 3rd one is from Freenas to router.

 

[mjws00]

FN to router is correct.

 

[Jon928]

Just wanted to say thanks again guys for your help. REALLY appreciate it.

I just switched out the cable from FN to router with another one and still the same result. I used that was a 4ft patchcord I grabbed from my roku3. And tried a different cable that says it's cat5e rated. Still the same slow speed.

Perhaps I should just order some Cat6 cables and have it overnighted?

 

[cyberjock]

You *sure* your router has Gb LAN ports?

Yes, I've been on this rodeo a few times. ;)

 

[Jon928]

You *sure* your router has Gb LAN ports?

Yes, I've been on this rodeo a few times. ;)

Haha. Yeah I did a search to double check it. This is the router I have. Gonna have a huge helping of egg on my face if it turns out I read the specs on that router incorrectly.

http://www.actiontec.com/188.html

as a side note: Thanks for your guide that you wrote. It was because of that guide that I chose to go with Raidz2. I still have a lot of learning to do with regards to everything else in that guide though. I think one of the difficult things that super noobs like myself have is all the jargon associated with FN. Like if I just want to know "can I add another 4tb drive to my existing volume". Doing a search for that, if I'm not using the correct terminology, it's very difficult to find the answer. end aside.

 

[mjws00]

You only have 100Mbit ports. You can hook up the cables directly FN to workstation in the short term. But you'll need a gigabit switch if you want to make things quick.
Here is a snip from the datasheet. And yes ZFS and FreeNAS have some significant learning curves. But you'll find if you are willing to do a little legwork the community will help those that try and help themselves.

 

[Jon928]

Wow I feel like an idiot. I even had my friend take a look at it to verify that it was indeed a gigabit one. Thanks again for your help guys. REALLY appreciate it. Guess I'll have to talk to Verizon and have them send me an upgraded router.

 

[mjws00]

Heh. The webpage says 'Able to support speed up to 1Gbps'. They are talking an optional component on the WAN and just misleading. Datasheet spells it out clear as mud.

 

[Jon928]

I was planning on getting a wireless AC router anyways. Can you connect that through the WAN and solve this problem? Or is the best bet just get a newer gigabit router from Verizon?

 

[cyberjock]

Egg in yo face son! ;)

Just buy this. Then hook all of your devices into it and plug it into your router...http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=105&cp_id=10521&cs_id=1052104&p_id=10927&seq=1&format=2

Two friends and myself have used these. Work great and cheap!