Terrible NAS performance

[dagamer34]

I've got a Synology DS412+ that I've been relatively happy with after owning it for a few months, but lately I've been pretty disappointed with the read/write performance (15-20MB/sec). I originally created a Synology Hybrid RAID volume with 1 2TB Western Digital Green drive and 2 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green drives, and performance was good but getting weaker as I filled it up (at one point I had 300GB free out of 3.4TB). I then added a 3TB Seagate 7200RPM drive to get some more free space (that took 24 hrs, oy) and now have about 35% free but my read/write speeds are still pretty terrible. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Should I have gone with a simple RAID 10 instead (requiring me to get another 3TB Seagate)? Or is it because I'm using Green drives?

 

[beginner99]

I've got a Synology DS412+ that I've been relatively happy with after owning it for a few months, but lately I've been pretty disappointed with the read/write performance (15-20MB/sec). I originally created a Synology Hybrid RAID volume with 1 2TB Western Digital Green drive and 2 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green drives, and performance was good but getting weaker as I filled it up (at one point I had 300GB free out of 3.4TB). I then added a 3TB Seagate 7200RPM drive to get some more free space (that took 24 hrs, oy) and now have about 35% free but my read/write speeds are still pretty terrible. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Should I have gone with a simple RAID 10 instead (requiring me to get another 3TB Seagate)? Or is it because I'm using Green drives?

Read-write performance with what? single. large file or moving a directory with tons of small files?

Green drives can easily sustain 90 MB/s in a single large file transfer so in that scenario they are not the limiting factor, the NAS is. However i you copy directories full of smaller files that can easily plunge down below 5 MB/s on a single green drive.

see also

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31909-synology-ds412-diskstation-reviewed?start=1

were 20 MB/s is reported under certain scenarios.

 

[xilience]

I second beginner99's post. What you really want is an SSD cache for the NAS, then things will fly!

 

[Deaks2]

I have found that many SOHO NASs are kinda pokey when it comes to sustained data transfers. My old D-Link DNS-323 used to slow to a crawl after a few GB had been transfered.

My new setup, a FreeNAS running on a G620 with 8GB of RAM and a ZFS-RAID setup always saturates my GigE home network. It is massive overkill for what I need, however, for $500 it kills most SOHO solutions.

 

[dagamer34]

Read-write performance with what? single. large file or moving a directory with tons of small files?

Green drives can easily sustain 90 MB/s in a single large file transfer so in that scenario they are not the limiting factor, the NAS is. However i you copy directories full of smaller files that can easily plunge down below 5 MB/s on a single green drive.

see also

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31909-synology-ds412-diskstation-reviewed?start=1

were 20 MB/s is reported under certain scenarios.

Single large files 4-8GB in size.

 

[zuffy]

Have you try enabling jumbo frame?

 

[Lepard]

I have found that many SOHO NASs are kinda pokey when it comes to sustained data transfers. My old D-Link DNS-323 used to slow to a crawl after a few GB had been transfered.

My new setup, a FreeNAS running on a G620 with 8GB of RAM and a ZFS-RAID setup always saturates my GigE home network. It is massive overkill for what I need, however, for $500 it kills most SOHO solutions.

Can you share the specs of the FreeNas box you built? I have a DNS321 and it leaves A LOT to be desired.

 

[dagamer34]

Have you try enabling jumbo frame?

Wow, that was it. Now back to 40-50MB/sec transfers. Thanks!

 

[tracerbullet]

Can you share the specs of the FreeNas box you built? I have a DNS321 and it leaves A LOT to be desired.

I have one too. It's old, I wouldn't expect much.

Wow, that was it. Now back to 40-50MB/sec transfers. Thanks!

Did you have options within that, and if so which did you choose? I have mine turned on, (D-Link DNS-321) and it's set at 5000, roughly the middle of the scale. Curious what you chose (if you had the option) and why?

 

[Deaks2]

Can you share the specs of the FreeNas box you built? I have a DNS321 and it leaves A LOT to be desired.

Sure thing.

Intel G620 CPU (Sandy Bridge)
Gigabyte H61M-S2PV
8 GB DDR3 PC10600
3*1.5 TB HDDs in ZFS-RAIDZ1 (RAID 5 equivalent)
30GB Kingston SSDNow ZFS cache drive
CoolerMaster Elite 343 case
CoolerMaster 420w PSU

It's running FreeNAS 8.2 x64 on a Kingston 4GB USB key.

I used the general performance tweaks you can find in the n00b parts of the FreeNAS forums, including a script that allows miniDLNA to auto-update the media server listings when a new file is dropped into the watched folders.

Running the following servers:
Samba for CIFS
miniDLNA for media sharing (incl. streaming to my mobile devices while away from home)
iSCSI for backups from my 2 Win7 Home machines

Like I said before, it is massive overkill, however, now I don't get frustrated when I do need to transfer data to or from my media server. Going to or from an SSD equiped client, I can saturate my GigE link.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Deaks2, just curious.....did you ever test with and without the ZFS cache drive? It's been a while since I tinkered with my array but IIRC, I could see very little difference with it vs without a cache drive. That was RAID-Z1 on ICH10-R with 5 x Hitachi 2TB drives, and 1 cache drive.

Of course, now my issue is that I am running 6 x 2TB Hitachis in RAID-Z2. I have no more connectors on my ICH10-R and I don't think the OS likes having the cache drive on a different controller.

 

[Deaks2]

I had an issue with long load times for directory listings (i.e.: MP3 folder with 20000+ files). I wrongly assumed it was a throughput issue and added the SSD cache, but it still sucked. I removed MSDOS permissions from the CIFS config and everythign was a-ok speedwise. I never bothered removing the SSD.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Ahhh....good call on the MSDOS permissions, I'll give that a try as I have that same issue.

I have been lazy but need to troubleshoot a speed issue. I'm gigabit all the way thru my network but I'm capped at about 100-125MB/s MAX either to or from a fast SSD RAID-0 array. The system has 16GB of RAM so I'm not sure where my bottleneck is occurring unless it's the cheap gigabit switch.

 

[Deaks2]

Sounds to me like you're at GigE speeds... Unless you meant 100-125 mb/s instead of MB/s...

 

[Yellowbeard]

Sounds to me like you're at GigE speeds... Unless you meant 100-125 mb/s instead of MB/s...

DOH! Brain was thinking in bits, but I typed bytes. So yeah, my speeds are good. 125MB/s is a VERY brief peak. Averages drop to about 800mb/s on big files.

I still need to test enabling/disabling the DOS permissions. Is the specific parameter you disabled the "SUPPORT DOS FILE ATTRIBUTES"?

It takes 5-10min for my directory listings to populate on my music and movie folders, esp the music. Of course, it is 17,825 folders/205,030 songs. That may have something to do with it.

 

[Deaks2]

DOH! Brain was thinking in bits, but I typed bytes. So yeah, my speeds are good. 125MB/s is a VERY brief peak. Averages drop to about 800mb/s on big files.

I still need to test enabling/disabling the DOS permissions. Is the specific parameter you disabled the "SUPPORT DOS FILE ATTRIBUTES"?

It takes 5-10min for my directory listings to populate on my music and movie folders, esp the music. Of course, it is 17,825 folders/205,030 songs. That may have something to do with it.

As soon as I turned off "Support DOS File Attributes" in the CIFS service directory speed reads were what I would consider normal. Around 5 seconds for a 20000+ file listing before cached, instantaneous after it's been cached.