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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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- Hi there. I have a Duo and using Lion. How does one measure the speed? I read that Iometer is not available for Macs. Thanks!
- Hi Wrz0170,
You might have tried this already but the simplest way to measure speed is just to copy a large file (say, 500MB or more) between your Mac and the Duo, timing how long it takes.
Divide the file size (in megabytes, MB) by the time it takes to copy (in seconds, s) to get your speed (yes ... in MB/s). Copy the file _from your Mac to the NAS_ to find your write speed ... _from your NAS to the Mac_ to get the read speed. For consistency, use the same file each time you test.
This isn't as accurate or comprehensive as Iometer but it's perfectly fine for most cases.
Thanks,
Justin - It would be good to get some official feedback on these 4.1.8 performance problems, if possible ... or perhaps some involvement to help bottom them out.
Can anyone from Netgear ... any ReadyNAS Jedi ... shed any light on this?
Thanks,
Justin Justin S wrote: Hi Wrz0170,
You might have tried this already but the simplest way to measure speed is just to copy a large file (say, 500MB or more) between your Mac and the Duo, timing how long it takes.
Divide the file size (in megabytes, MB) by the time it takes to copy (in seconds, s) to get your speed (yes ... in MB/s). Copy the file _from your Mac to the NAS_ to find your write speed ... _from your NAS to the Mac_ to get the read speed. For consistency, use the same file each time you test.
This isn't as accurate or comprehensive as Iometer but it's perfectly fine for most cases.
Thanks,
Justin
Funny you say that. That's exactly what I did. I am in the midst of transferring some files from my Duo (looking to upgrade to an Ultra +) to a USB external and saw the estimated time and I thought hey, thats a way of a close guestimate. Thanks :)- I use the Activity Monitor (Applications -> Tools -> Activity Monitor) press the "Network" button on the lower right and you get a live feed of your current network usage.
- Hi am also experiencing issues after upgrading to 4.18 on a readynas NV+
I have two macs
macbook air running lion
mac mini running snow leopard
macbook find has quickly and seems to transfer OK
the mac mini takes ages to discover and navigate through shares now via AFP
transfers over AFP are very slow
for the mac mini it now seems faster if I don't use AFP
previously all navigation and transfers seemed fine when using the mac mini
BTW both mac access the readynas via WiFi using 802.11n - Same problem here, upgraded my NV+ from beta 4.1.8-T9 to final 4.1.8 and performance was cut in half. AFP write is now around 11MB/s. (writing from iMac running Lion 10.7.1)
Edit: (additional details)
NV+
4x2TB drives - Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166
Gig ethernet - 1500 mtu
journaling disabled
CIFS fast writes enabled - Downgraded to 4.1.8-T9 and speed is back to normal. I'll stay with the T9 release unless problems come up. It had been completely stable for my uses prior to upgrading to the final release.
- Hi Guys,
Anyone else noticed most of us ... perhaps all of us ... are running Macs?
Knorrhane, Nasinator, Wrz0170, Hellorob, Dfiler and myself ... we're all running Mac's or Hackint0sh's, Lion or Snow Leopard. That just leaves Adam P and Chaner who noticed problems but haven't mentioned what platform they're running.
Could be a simple stats glitch ... as 4.1.8 is brings Lion support the percentage of Mac users upgrading immediately is no doubt far higher than PC users ... and it may not be so straightforward (it doesn't just affect AFP or OS X ... I hit it initially with CIFS running Windows 7 with Boot Camp) but with each new report it seems more and more remarkable.
A possible lead, perhaps.
Justin
Update ... Continuing the brief recap, with 4.1.8 a SPARC firmware it's inevitable we'd all be running these devices but it's interesting to hear the issue isn't limited to the Duo ... Nasinator, Hellorob and Dfiler are all running similarly affected NV+'s. - I have 3 platforms running, Windows, OSX, and Linux. . . they all suffer massive 50-60% read and write performance hits under 4.1.8 on my NV+
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