Moving data over a network above GbE

[texmexter]

Hi folks,

Have some questions. I need to move data over my home network at speeds above GbE between 2 machines. I have a Synology NAS with 2x GbE, Win 8.1 w/4x GBE and OS X with 2x GbE/Thunderbolt adapters (plus others). I know about Samba Multi-channel but it will only work on Windows 8.1 boxes and servers (not implemented on the NAS and OS X). LAG will only help if I am sending from multiple servers to my single NAS (each server never getting above a GbE), correct? My questions comes down to this. If I upgraded my NAS to 10GbE and ran that into a L2 switch with LAG on several GbE ports, would I be able to get above GbE speed from the 4x GbE ports on my Win 8.1 box assuming I bonded the GbE trunks? Any other way of achieving higher than GbE speeds without running 10GbE everywhere?

 

[wiretap]

Most likely when you try to combine interfaces, you'll only have one gigE port running the TCP/IP session. At least this is the way Cisco's etherchannel works. Additional sessions could yield an overall speed increase, but that would be to multiple clients. You can give it a try, but I wouldn't expect it to work like you think.

How much data do you have? I just migrated 20TB between two servers on my home network with gigE and it didn't take all that long.. unless you're under a time crunch for some reason. Remember, you're limited at your disk speed as well. Synology NAS's don't have that great of throughput to begin with.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Honestly though, I would recommend just running 10GbE where you need it. 10GbE Thunderbolt adapters aren't terribly expensive (for the Mac). A PCI-E 10GbE NIC for the Windows box is pricier, but you could defray the cost by selling your 4x1GbE card.

Otherwise, yes, you could LAG. With the 10GbE Thunderbolt adapter and the upgraded NAS, that would get you 10Gb between the NAS and the Mac, and 4Gb between the NAS and the PC. (Assuming your switch is accomodating.)

I'd probably be lazy and get a 10GbE card in the PC too though.

 

[Ketchup]

Just to throw this out there:

Since this is a home network, wouldn't it be easier and faster to just put the drive in the other machine and hit copy?

 

[imagoon]

Just to throw this out there:

Since this is a home network, wouldn't it be easier and faster to just put the drive in the other machine and hit copy?

Synology uses a *nix based operating system spanned over multiple disks so that may not work.

To add on for OP... LAG won't work without a managed switch and won't go above the speed of a single connection. As you noted SMB 3 from Windows 8 will try to use all 4 channels using session based connections for multiple paths but that only works to a properly implemented SMB3 device doing MPIO.

Also depending on the synology model it may be all moot, my 8 disk Synology doing 2 path (iSCSI) MPIO struggles to get much above ~140MB/s

 

[Ketchup]

Synology uses a *nix based operating system spanned over multiple disks so that may not work...

Oh, lol. Thanks for explaining that, lol. Didn't think about the RAID.

 

[azazel1024]

I would say, yes, it'll probably work. I would not want to gamble any real money on that however.

PC hardware is pretty cheap. A lot cheaper than upgrading to a NAS that has 10GbE in it. Build a $500 windows box with a quad port GbE NIC in it and hook it up to your switch. Done and now you have 4Gbps between your Windows based server and your desktop.

I currently have my windows based server and my windows based desktop with dual ports and 2Gbps between them.

By the way, it is not Samba multi-channel. It is called SMB multichannel. SMB is the protocol, Samba is the name of a Linux SMB/CIFS file sharing service (which also doesn't support SMB multichannel right now and may not later).

 

[azazel1024]

Oh, btw you cannot bond the connections, SMB multichannel fails with that. Leave them unbounded and unmolested. Just connect up the wires and Windows will do it's thing. You do not need nor want to use LAG on the switch. Only time LAG will work or you want it is if you need switch uplinks.

Example, my server and desktop are connected to the same switch, 2 ports each. No port trunking/teaming on either machine or on the switch. 2Gbps pretty steady (with my two drives in each machine in Raid0 I get 233-237MB/sec pretty steady) Testing it out connecting between switches with my desktop connected to one and my server connected to the other, 2 port LAG between the switches for the uplink and I get the same 233-237MB/sec performance.

If I enable LAG on the switches TOO the machines, it fails period (because I didn't setup a trunk/team on the machines). If I setup LAG and trunking...and 1Gbps.

You could setup 2 teams/trunks with a quad port adapter, 2 ports in each team and get 2Gbps with all the perks of trunking.

That said, SMB Multichannel yields most of the perks of trunking/teaming without having to touch it (I've tested running my laptop and my tablet using GbE adapters pulling data from my server and I can get in the 1.8Gbps or so range of combined upload from the server to both machines...tablet isn't necessarily the fastest plus might have had a little disk thrashing, but it was over the 1Gbps of a single GbE link).