Time Machine Super Slow Backup

[pattont]

My wife and I both have MacBooks and are attempting to use Time Machine through FreeNAS 8 to do our backups. These Macbooks are running the most up to date OS (10.8.2). When transferring to my FreeNAS Time Machine it takes FOREVER to do the initial backup. Just for testing, I have been connecting my laptop directly to my gigabit switch and starting the transfer. Here is an image of what I mean.



There is just no way that it should take this long to transfer that much data.

My Setup:
I have a VM setup in VMWare Workstation 9 and am running version FreeNAS-8.3.0-RELEASE-x64 (r12701M).

I have three virtual hard drives on this virtual machine:
1. Install HDD
2. My Virtual HDD
3. My Wife's Virtual HDD

These virtual hard drives are stored on a hardware SATA RAID array of two 1TB drives in Raid 1 (mirror - for added protection). This RAID is working great and doing a simple transfer of a 5TB file to this RAID is super fast over gigabit ethernet. I don't have the exact speeds of that transfer, but it's what I expect from a transfer over gigabit.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Advice?

 

[bollar]

I don't have a VM, but my TM backups seem normal speed as compared to a Time Capsule.

Just a couple of thoughts:

1. TM estimates can vary significantly during the process -- I'd let one run to completion and see how long it really took.
2. Have you tried rebooting the FreeNAS as well as the Macs?
3. You might look at the system logs to see if there are any TM errors. The Time Machine Buddy widget can help with this.

 

[pattont]

1. TM estimates can vary significantly during the process -- I'd let one run to completion and see how long it really took.

I have let it run all the way to 100% complete before and it literally took days to complete. The screenshot above was about 8 hours in.

2. Have you tried rebooting the FreeNAS as well as the Macs?

Yes, that was the first thing I tried.

3. You might look at the system logs to see if there are any TM errors. The Time Machine Buddy widget can help with this.

I have never seen this widget and will give it a try later today. Below is a SS from the FreeNAS console. I am not sure sure what I can do about these errors though.

 

[bollar]

Ugh.

I've never seen error 70 before and I couldn't find it in any documentation. Maybe it's VM related and in that case, perhaps changing the way the NIC presents itself to the network will give us a clue. (Change from Shared to Bridged or vice versa).

 

[pattont]

Ugh.

I've never seen error 70 before and I couldn't find it in any documentation. Maybe it's VM related and in that case, perhaps changing the way the NIC presents itself to the network will give us a clue. (Change from Shared to Bridged or vice versa).

Changing the networking didn't help, but here is what I am currently trying.

- Delete the ZFS Volume from FreeNAS and delete the virtual HDD that I created in VMWorkstation for that data. I re-created a virtual HDD in VMWare and chose a single file vs. a split hdd.

- Then, I rebooted my FreeNAS box and re-added the volume. This time instead of adding a ZFS drive I added a UFS drive after reading a bunch of posts about ZFS requiring a ton of RAM if you have a bunch of data. I only have 2GB allocated to this box so I decided to try UFS. Well, it seems to be much quicker:



Any thoughts on changing those two things? Am I stepping on a landmine that will blow up in my face soon?

 

[bollar]

Well, if you're RAM constrained, can you add more RAM? IMO, the benefits of ZFS are worth fully provisioning your VM if that's the solution.

 

[pattont]

Well, if you're RAM constrained, can you add more RAM? IMO, the benefits of ZFS are worth fully provisioning your VM if that's the solution.

How much RAM is recommended? I only have 8gb on the box and have allocated 2GB to it already. I mean what are my benefits to using ZFS that I have to give it that much RAM?

 

[cyberjock]

How much RAM is recommended? I only have 8gb on the box and have allocated 2GB to it already. I mean what are my benefits to using ZFS that I have to give it that much RAM?

Highly recommend you read the manual. Section 1.4.2 will recommend nothing less than 4GB, and preferably 6GB for good performance. If I remember correctly the manual says if you have less than 4GB consider using UFS instead of ZFS.

 

[pattont]

You should read the manual! Section 1.4.2 will recommend nothing less than 4GB, and preferably 6GB for good performance. If I remember correctly the manual says if you have less than 4GB consider using UFS instead of ZFS.

I will have to take a look. I figured by today my transfer would be done since I have the Power Nap feature enabled, but when I turned my Mac on today it picked up where I left off yesterday when I shut it. It appears to be going pretty quickly, but I still don't feel like the speed is completely there.