Slow transfers from Mac and Windows using Freenas 9.1.0-BETA-00b60df-x64

[Stephan]

Hi Everyone,

I am very new to Freenas and Linux / Unix in general.
That said, I hope I can get some assistance with a particular issue I am experiencing.

I have recently setup Freenas 9.1.0 Beta on a HP Proliant Microserver N40L with 8GB of RAM.
FREENAS runs from a Transcend 8GB flashdrive.
The server contains 2x 2TB Western Digital Black 3'5 Hard Drives.
File System is UFS setup in Mirror mode.

I can access Freenas from either a Mac or Windows but the transfer speeds are horribly slow.
I have tried different windows and Mac machines. I have even tried different network environments.

The following test were conducted using a 100Mbps network environment:

If I run IPERF, I get a very good result:
Client -
bin/iperf.exe -c 10.75.2.22 -P 1 -i 1 -p 5001 -f m -t 10
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 10.75.2.22, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 0.06 MByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[156] local 10.75.2.128 port 60872 connected with 10.75.2.22 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[156] 0.0- 1.0 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.5 Mbits/sec
[156] 1.0- 2.0 sec 11.3 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec
[156] 2.0- 3.0 sec 11.3 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec
[156] 3.0- 4.0 sec 11.3 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec
[156] 4.0- 5.0 sec 11.3 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec
[156] 5.0- 6.0 sec 11.3 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec
[156] 6.0- 7.0 sec 11.3 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec
[156] 7.0- 8.0 sec 11.3 MBytes 94.8 Mbits/sec
[156] 8.0- 9.0 sec 11.3 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec
[156] 9.0-10.0 sec 11.3 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec
[156] 0.0-10.0 sec 113 MBytes 94.6 Mbits/sec
Done.

Iperf Server (In this case the Freenas):
[root@freenas ~]# iperf -s
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 7] local 10.75.2.22 port 5001 connected with 10.75.2.128 port 60872
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 7] 0.0-10.0 sec 113 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec

However, the problem start when I do actual transfers from Mac or Windows.
My average speed is 500Kbps. The fastest I managed to get was 1.3Mbps. Speed fluctuates between 200Kbps and 900Kbps. Sometimes, the link will drop as well.

Notes:
I have tried using different HDD on the Freenas Server. I have tried different Flash Drives for Freenas.
Also previously tried Freenas 8 but with no luck.

I have included 2 files which I am not sure will be relevant or not but hopefully it is a start.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Stephan

 

[gpsguy]

Try swapping out your network cable between the server and your switch. One can also get inexpensive gigabit Ethernet switches.

I have a similarly equipped N40L running a pair of 2tb drives in a ZFS mirror and my performance is much better than yours.


Sent from my phone

 

[Stephan]

Try swapping out your network cable between the server and your switch. One can also get inexpensive gigabit Ethernet switches.

I have a similarly equipped N40L running a pair of 2tb drives in a ZFS mirror and my performance is much better than yours.


Sent from my phone

Thanks for the response gpsguy,

I have already tried the options as you recommended and experienced no difference.
I am actually gonna try using NAS4FREE and see if I pick up a performance difference.

Regards,

 

[cyberjock]

UFS is often slower than ZFS. ZFS has an advanced caching system to increase performance(it does require RAM though) while UFS(as far as I know) has no such system.

Try making a RAID1 zpool and see how performance changes.

Also try doing some benchmarks using the dd command. The FAQ and/or stickies can help you with what dd commands to run.

 

[Whattteva]

Wow, you're a brave soul. I've been using FreeNAS for a while now and I still don't have the courage to beta test version 9 yet, especially after looking at the release notes.

 

[cyberjock]

The betas really aren't that scary. The real problem with betas are unknown bugs that might eat your data or unfinished features. In my 18 months on the forum I don't think I've ever seen a bug that ate someone's data.

Nevertheless I don't use the betas on my actual server. I do play around with them in a VM though.