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Performance halved at a stroke (ReadyNAS Duo, 4.1.8) ...
In a busy few weeks, my little ReadyNAS Duo's performance seems to have halved at a stroke. The problem seems to be a consequence of upgrading to RAIDiator 4.1.8 (release) and performing a full factory reset but ... just in case ... here's a full rundown of its recent life ...
* After swapping my ageing PC for a shiny new iMac (really shiny, by the way), I noticed a very modest (but welcome) *increase* in performance from the ReadyNAS.
* Running Windows 7 (directly through Boot Camp, fully Windows Update'd) and RAIDiator 4.1.8 beta (for Lion compatibility) the little Duo could saturate my Gigabit Ethernet to 25-30% (transferring data at around 250-300Mb/s, then). Everything was running great ...
* Then a mini-disaster ... after three years use the ReadyNAS power supply gave up. The unit shut down without warning and wouldn't power up again.
* Some excellent online support put me back on track. "Some time later" and with a new power supply connected (an identical Netgear part) I was up and running again.
* The unit started first time and all was well ... everything was accessible and usable ... but restarting the unit once more (from front-view) the ReadyNAS unexpectedly froze on boot.
* Blue light flashing at 1Hz, fan at medium-volume, no activity or drive lights and invisible to RAIDar, I gave it four/five hours ...
* Not responding to physical (power) button presses, I had to pull the plug. Fortunately, the unit picked itself up and booted without issue. Scouring downloaded log's I could see *no trace whatsoever* of the failed boot.
* To eliminate any possibility of data corruption or similar badness (and with a new release-version of RAIDiator 4.1.8 now available) I updated the unit firmware, performed full factory reset and reconfigured the unit to match its old settings (all from front-view). Perhaps this was a beta glitch?
* Now running solidly and without issue, I copied data back to the unit using Windows Explorer and a local backup. It should have close to zero fragmentation, then.
Doing this, it was clear performance had halved. The unit now saturates just 10-15% of the network ... transferring at around 100-150Mb/s only (no RAIDar or front-view pages open).
This doesn't look like a hardware problem ... the drives look fine (a matched Seagate ST3500630AS pair, their SMART reports look good and their temps are normal), the network looks fine (private LAN, both Mac (on-board Broadcom NetXtreme) and NAS are wired to the same Netgear WNDR3700 (gigabit router, latest firmware), no concerning errors ... a few TCP retransmits which are not unusual) and there are no errors or warnings in the logs. But for a new power adapter, nothing has changed hardware-wise.
The old and new front-view settings match near-exactly (same network settings, same shares, same users and access rights, one or two *fewer* services running than before, no bittorrent/photo's/remote/vault, full data journaling, oplocks enabled, fast CIFS writes enabled, jumbo frames disabled), the unit isn't resynching or indexing media, there are no scheduled backup jobs (internal or time machine) and ... to be absolutely sure ... I've also confirmed performance several times over the last week to eliminate any other invisible, transient activity ... no luck :?
Performance seems to have halved at a stroke with no clear reason.
It looks very much like a RAIDiator 4.1.8 issue but I'm happy to help troubleshoot. Any chance a Jedi (or other expert) can help?
Thanks,
Justin
* After swapping my ageing PC for a shiny new iMac (really shiny, by the way), I noticed a very modest (but welcome) *increase* in performance from the ReadyNAS.
* Running Windows 7 (directly through Boot Camp, fully Windows Update'd) and RAIDiator 4.1.8 beta (for Lion compatibility) the little Duo could saturate my Gigabit Ethernet to 25-30% (transferring data at around 250-300Mb/s, then). Everything was running great ...
* Then a mini-disaster ... after three years use the ReadyNAS power supply gave up. The unit shut down without warning and wouldn't power up again.
* Some excellent online support put me back on track. "Some time later" and with a new power supply connected (an identical Netgear part) I was up and running again.
* The unit started first time and all was well ... everything was accessible and usable ... but restarting the unit once more (from front-view) the ReadyNAS unexpectedly froze on boot.
* Blue light flashing at 1Hz, fan at medium-volume, no activity or drive lights and invisible to RAIDar, I gave it four/five hours ...
* Not responding to physical (power) button presses, I had to pull the plug. Fortunately, the unit picked itself up and booted without issue. Scouring downloaded log's I could see *no trace whatsoever* of the failed boot.
* To eliminate any possibility of data corruption or similar badness (and with a new release-version of RAIDiator 4.1.8 now available) I updated the unit firmware, performed full factory reset and reconfigured the unit to match its old settings (all from front-view). Perhaps this was a beta glitch?
* Now running solidly and without issue, I copied data back to the unit using Windows Explorer and a local backup. It should have close to zero fragmentation, then.
Doing this, it was clear performance had halved. The unit now saturates just 10-15% of the network ... transferring at around 100-150Mb/s only (no RAIDar or front-view pages open).
This doesn't look like a hardware problem ... the drives look fine (a matched Seagate ST3500630AS pair, their SMART reports look good and their temps are normal), the network looks fine (private LAN, both Mac (on-board Broadcom NetXtreme) and NAS are wired to the same Netgear WNDR3700 (gigabit router, latest firmware), no concerning errors ... a few TCP retransmits which are not unusual) and there are no errors or warnings in the logs. But for a new power adapter, nothing has changed hardware-wise.
The old and new front-view settings match near-exactly (same network settings, same shares, same users and access rights, one or two *fewer* services running than before, no bittorrent/photo's/remote/vault, full data journaling, oplocks enabled, fast CIFS writes enabled, jumbo frames disabled), the unit isn't resynching or indexing media, there are no scheduled backup jobs (internal or time machine) and ... to be absolutely sure ... I've also confirmed performance several times over the last week to eliminate any other invisible, transient activity ... no luck :?
Performance seems to have halved at a stroke with no clear reason.
It looks very much like a RAIDiator 4.1.8 issue but I'm happy to help troubleshoot. Any chance a Jedi (or other expert) can help?
Thanks,
Justin
87 Replies
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- I have got the same problem.
4.1.7 Read 30-35 MB/s Write 14-16 MB/s
4.1.8 Read 10-13 MB/s Write 12-14 MB/s
back to 4.1.7 Read 30-35 MB/s
I tested it two times. - I'm also using a Duo with 4.1.8 - but I've not experienced any performance decrease.
But I've configured the usage of Jumbo frames - maybe that makes the difference?
I'm using a D-Link Gigabit switch (DGS-1005D). adam.p wrote: I have got the same problem.
4.1.7 Read 30-35 MB/s Write 14-16 MB/s
4.1.8 Read 10-13 MB/s Write 12-14 MB/s
back to 4.1.7 Read 30-35 MB/s
I tested it two times.
Thanks Adam. It's good to hear I'm not alone and I'm glad you found a solution, temporary as it is. You'll probably agree, rolling back the firmware isn't an ideal solution ... sooner or later you always have to upgrade.
In my case, it's *really* soon ... 4.1.7 isn't compatible with Lion :(
JustinWSJ wrote: I'm also using a Duo with 4.1.8 - but I've not experienced any performance decrease.
But I've configured the usage of Jumbo frames - maybe that makes the difference?
I'm using a D-Link Gigabit switch (DGS-1005D).
That sounds promising as it suggests this mightn't be a universal problem ... that it might affect certain configurations only. With a mixed network ... some devices compatible with Jumbo Frame and others not ... I suspect I'll suffer performance problems elsewhere if I enable it. In the interests of troubleshooting, though, I'll certainly check it.
For the record, Jumbo Frames were not enable pre-upgrade so this wouldn't explain the performance drop.
Thanks,
Justin- Another report of 4.1.8 performance problems here ...
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=57206&p=322965#p322965
Can anyone help? - Not an isolated case, then.
I put a fairly comprehensive log of my settings and my (quite protracted!) 4.1.8 upgrade at the top of the thread. Are there any common factors in there that might highlight where the problem lies (e.g. do we all have two drives in the NAS unit, do we share any performance tab settings, etc) ... any major differences that might help us discount things (e.g. am I the only one here to do a full factory reset)?
Thanks,
Justin - I've had the same problem as well. On 4.1.7 I had a matched pair of 1.5TB Seagate ST31500341AS. One started reporting SMART errors and then reported as failed. As a replacement I brought a 2TB WD Caviar Black WD2002FAEX.
I installed the disks and then upgraded straight away to 4.1.8. Performance when streaming Blu-rays was now choppy I read the forum and deduced that I needed to factory reset due to the change in sector size. So I backed everything up, factory defaulted and copied back a single Blu-ray. When I tried to play it back, still choppy. Copying a large file from the NAS to the PC got me about 8MBs.
I just saw this post. Rolled back to 4.1.7, file copy now runs at 12MBs + and Blu-rays are now streaming without any problems again.
I've had jumbo frames enable all the time so I'm not sure the problem is there. - What protocols are you guys using? Du you experience any difference between AFP/CIFS/NFS? I did a quick test (on OS X Snow Leopard) and copied one large file:
AFP
Read: ~15 Mb/s
Write: ~6 Mb/s
CIFS
Read: ~15 Mb/s
Write: ~15 Mb/s
NFS
Read: ~12 Mb/s (going up and down more than the others)
Write: ~12 Mb/s (very stable)
Settings:
Jumbo frames: disabled (my hackint0sh doesn't cope with jumbo frames very well, will try later with my MacBook)
Complete journaling: disabled
Journaling: enabled
Fast CIFS writing: enabled
Computer and NAS connected on a 1 Gbit network.
I browsed through the logs and I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary (no errors or daemon-resets etc.). I have 2 WD drives of 1 TB each and I did a full factory reset with 4.1.7 about 2 weeks before updating to 4.1.8. When you guys tested your speeds you didn't have BitTorrent running or anything? At least with the Duo, I've noticed that this can affect performance. - Hi Knorrhane,
Thanks for your stats ... here's what I see using similar (large file copy) tests from Lion:
AFP
Read: ~15 MB/s (like you)
Write: ~11 MB/s (higher than your 6 MB/s)
CIFS
Read: ~19 MB/s (higher than your 15 MB/s)
Write: ~10 Mb/s (lower than your 15 MB/s)
NFS (1 thread, sync mode enabled)
Read: ~11 MB/s (lower than your 12 MB/s)
Write: ~8 MB/s (lower than your 12 MB/s)
Settings are noted in detail at the top of the thread (though I tested this time from Lion and with AFP and NFS enabled in addition to CIFS). Quick summary ...
Jumbo frames: disabled
Complete journaling: enabled
Journaling: enabled
Fast CIFS writing: enabled
Bittorrent: disabled
2 x 500GB Seagate drives (matched)
PC and NAS connected directly to a WNDR3700 Gigabit Router
Tests performed on data shares rather than media shared ... not monitored by the iTunes/uPnP services
Finally, I did a full factory reset immediately after upgrading to from 4.1.8 (beta) to 4.1.8 (release). chaner wrote: I just saw this post. Rolled back to 4.1.7, file copy now runs at 12MBs + and Blu-rays are now streaming without any problems again.
I've had jumbo frames enable all the time so I'm not sure the problem is there.
Thanks Chaner ... it looks like we can discount Jumbo Frames yes, they don't seem to be a common factor. Rolling-back firmware to 4.1.7 seems like a fairly reliable temporary fix which could help many in the short term. Did you need to perform a second factory reset on downgrading?
So far, we all seem to have two disks. Pulling one of mine (dropping down to 1 disk) doesn't magically restore performance, though ...
CIFS (1 disk)
Read: ~16 MB/s (*lower* than my previous 19 MB/s)
Write: ~10 Mb/s (as previously)
Still investigating ...
Justin
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