slower performance with freenas 9x than with 8x

[nvader]

When i was running freenas 8x (x64) I was getting pretty good performance.
once the drives would spin up from sleep. file lists or copy's were near instant. and I would get about 100-130 mb/s

I upgraded to 9x (x64) and Now when I go to click on a directory, there is a noticeable pause before the directory is displayed. even if you then go to another folder right away, there is still a pause before it is shows.
my transfer speeds are now around 80-86 mb /s

So something has change and I'm not sure where to start looking to figure out what I can do to reclaim that 8x performance.
Note: these are cifs shares. on windows boxes.

Any ideas on where i should start looking? Thanks

Edit: here are my cifs settings.
read raw = yes
write raw = yes
max xmit = 65536
getwd cache = yes
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=98304 SO_SNDBUF=98304

 

[cyberjock]

Can you post your server specs?

I will tell you that some of your cifs settings are defaults and some of the defaults are actually better than what you provided... so you might want to get rid of those socket options as a good first step.

 

[dlavigne]

Anything amiss in /var/log/messages?

 

[jpaetzel]

ZFS on FreeNAS 9.1.x is slower than ZFS on FreeNAS 8.x. However ZFS on FreeNAS 9.2.0 is much faster than either 8.x or 9.1.x.

It's unclear where your underlying issue is, however I'd start with 9.2.0. It may resolve it, and if it doesn't at least it's something we'll work on, as opposed to 9.1.x which is unlikely to get fixes.

 

[nvader]

Can you post your server specs?

I will tell you that some of your cifs settings are defaults and some of the defaults are actually better than what you provided... so you might want to get rid of those socket options as a good first step.

The server was enough to get good performance on 8x. so i don't feel it's a hardware performance type of an issue.
It's a dual core intel 3.0ghz proc
8gb ram (ddr2) (all i can fit in there)
3tb x 5 segeate sata 6.0 drives in a raidz1 setup with 1 3tb drive as a hot spare. (6 total drives)

I removed the socket options as you suggested and it did give me about 10mb / sec improvement. I'm seeing 86 - 96 mb /s speeds now.
any further suggestions?
Thank you for your time and the reply.

 

[nvader]

Anything amiss in /var/log/messages?

I didn't see anything out of order. except i noted it said the ZFS file system was version 5
but when i do a zfs status it shows the pool is at version 28
so i'm guessing maybe a mis-type or something?
everything else looked as it should
Thank you!

edit: Dec 17 23:50:47 freenas kernel: ZFS filesystem version: 5
Dec 17 23:50:47 freenas kernel: ZFS storage pool version: features support (5000)

I was trying to get the version for you. but last night when i was doing a zfs upgrade, it would come back and say it was already up to version 28. but now all i can get it to show me is version 5

 

[nvader]

ZFS on FreeNAS 9.1.x is slower than ZFS on FreeNAS 8.x. However ZFS on FreeNAS 9.2.0 is much faster than either 8.x or 9.1.x.

It's unclear where your underlying issue is, however I'd start with 9.2.0. It may resolve it, and if it doesn't at least it's something we'll work on, as opposed to 9.1.x which is unlikely to get fixes.

I am running 9.2 RC 2 currently
I didn't change anything other than a straight upgrade.
however, two things that were added, were plugins.
I'm now running plex and sabnzbd, where i was not with 8x.
they are lightly used, but i do image that takes away some of the available system ram.
Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

One thing you should realize is that going from 8.x to 9.x is like going from XP to Vista. Hardware needs change accordingly. So to compare the 2 versions by saying "it was good enough for 8.x" is not really a fair comparison.

Other suggestions:

Get an Intel NIC if you don't have one already. You didn't post specifics so I can't help you out any more.
Disable Autotune if you enabled it and delete any tunables/sysctls Autotune may have created.

Other than that, you are probably at the limits of what your hardware can provide. You are likely to have severe performance problems later due to your limited RAM, but you can deal with that if/when it comes. Frankly, I'm surprised you are getting the speeds you currently are getting with your hardware.

 

[nvader]

One thing you should realize is that going from 8.x to 9.x is like going from XP to Vista. Hardware needs change accordingly. So to compare the 2 versions by saying "it was good enough for 8.x" is not really a fair comparison.

Other suggestions:

Get an Intel NIC if you don't have one already. You didn't post specifics so I can't help you out any more.
Disable Autotune if you enabled it and delete any tunables/sysctls Autotune may have created.

Other than that, you are probably at the limits of what your hardware can provide. You are likely to have severe performance problems later due to your limited RAM, but you can deal with that if/when it comes. Frankly, I'm surprised you are getting the speeds you currently are getting with your hardware.

okay point taken. I will try to nuke the auto tune stuff and anything i've added and see where it gets me. I am using an on board NIC (Dec 17 23:50:47 freenas kernel: re0: <RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E/F/G PCIe Gigabit Ethernet>)
I think I'll get by with 95mb/s :)
I appreciate the advice and feedback.

 

[nvader]

If i were decide to downgrade back to 8.3.1 is it possible to do from 9.2? or do i need to start from scratch?
Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

If i were decide to downgrade back to 8.3.1 is it possible to do from 9.2? or do i need to start from scratch?
Thanks!

If you didn't upgrade your pool you can import your pool and resetup your share settings and stuff.

If you did upgrade your pool you'll have to destroy your current pool and recreate it along with your settings.

 

[Irvin Daniel]

When i was running freenas 8x (x64) I was getting pretty good performance.
once the drives would spin up from sleep. file lists or copy's were near instant. and I would get about 100-130 mb/s

I upgraded to 9x (x64) and Now when I go to click on a directory, there is a noticeable pause before the directory is displayed. even if you then go to another folder right away, there is still a pause before it is shows.
my transfer speeds are now around 80-86 mb /s

So something has change and I'm not sure where to start looking to figure out what I can do to reclaim that 8x performance.
Note: these are cifs shares. on windows boxes.

Any ideas on where i should start looking? Thanks

Edit: here are my cifs settings.
read raw = yes
write raw = yes
max xmit = 65536
getwd cache = yes
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=98304 SO_SNDBUF=98304

Where would you go to do the Cifs edits for settings you have listed?

 

[cyberjock]

Did you notice i told him to delete them??? The manual will tell you where to use them

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

 

[Irvin Daniel]

oh ok thanks....

 

[gearhead]

Irvin, were able to find how to edit cifs setting ? I looked at the manual and couldn't find. If you found it would you please share it with me. TIA

 

[Irvin Daniel]

Hi gearhead no I was unable to locate it and was told it does not help... still looking into other option will post once I find something...

 

[nvader]

you just go into the services. and click on cifs. and then you will get the gui. go down to the aux box and paste your stuff there. I can tell you on 9x the settings for 8x that i had did not help. I got about the same performance without anything in 9x as i did with them in 8x. I'm still thinking i'm going to drop back down to 8x. I had great performance and the only reason i upgraded to 9x was for plugins. but i'm thinking i'll be better off just building a separate ubuntu box and sticking with my solid 8.3.1 freenas setup for storage.

 

[Irvin Daniel]

Oh okay. My main problem right now is freezing. When I start to transfer large files it will start off at 70 ~80mb/s the stop then start again then stop then start again. It would even same file already exist do you want to skip or overwrite. But the problem is that the files do not already exist. The connection to the NAS seems to be dropping and reconnecting on its own. When it freezes the folder for the NAS: you can see the folder name bar fill up with the green line like its trying to open/load the folder. The the coping starts back.

 

[gpsguy]

Irvin, assuming your copying files over CIFS, your 333MHz CPU is woefully slow. Samba is single threaded.

FreeNAS is designed to run on modern hardware.

 

[Irvin Daniel]

AHHH OK I see, now i understand. I was thinking it was a memory problem. Thanks for the info. If you don't mind any recommendations on CPU's.