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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
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milamber3 wrote: At first I thought it was an auto-negotiation problem but now it seems more like something's broke in the Raidiator driver.
Auto negotiation problems may be caused by switches used. That would explain the discrepancy between
32.4/17.1; 22/10.9 ( jumbo on/off; read/write) bonjour on, NV 4x2TB and
15.6/21.7; 1.5/9.5 ( jumbo on/off; read/write) bonjour on, NV+ 4x1TB and
It would mean that the D-Link DGS1005DE on the NV can cope better with Jumbo frames than the 3Com gigabit router (will look up the type and edit).
It can indeed not explain the differences between the
32.4/21.8 Jumbo on read Bonjour on/off and
17.1/21.8 Jumbo off read Bonjour on/off nor the similar number ratio on write using the NV.- Hi all and Justin,
I have read this thread with interest - alongside my own topic "Woefully Slow ReadyNAS" to be found here: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=57241&p=325768&hilit=woefully+slow#p325768
During my investigation, I came across an (old) article which I thought might be of interest to those looking at network/ReadyNAS performance. It can be found here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gigabit-e ... 31611.html
This article suggests creating RAM disks to overcome the drive-speed limitations in the puzzle - an excellent idea and one which yielded some interesting results for me. In all my tests, including direct connections, the maximum WRITE speed I had obtained to or from the ReadyNAS NV+ was 19MBs - despite everything hooked up correctly in a Gigabit network. READ speed from ReadyNAS to iMac is a more pleasurable 34MBs. I created a RAM disk on my iMac and repeated some tests using a 3.17GB file over afp. A transfer from my RAM Disk to the ReadyNAS again gave only 19MBs. However, a transfer in the other direction (from ReadyNAS to RAM disk) gave 40MBs.
I can't do a test transfer between two PC clients on my network as my Windows client only has a 10/100 NIC - I don't have two PCs with GB NICS sadly. However this did enable to find one problem - my Netgear GS605v2 Gigabit switch - which was limiting throughput for ALL connected devices to the speed of the lowest connected which was my 10/100 PC. This switch is now in the bin - replaced by a Belkin which does not cause this problem. So if you have one of these switches - beware.
There's lots of detail in my topic - though I suggest future responses to this problem use this topic as it has more detail than mine! However, it's worth noting that I reverted back to 4.1.7 and did not get a speed increase. There is no difference whether Bonjour is enabled or not. The other thing of note is that I'm using 4 new 2TB Seagate 5400rpm green drives in the readyNAS so would expect slightly slower read and write speeds that with higher rpm drives.
I guess for me, the war is over at 19MBs transfers to the ReadyNAS.
Newt netnewt wrote: However this did enable to find one problem - my Netgear GS605v2 Gigabit switch - which was limiting throughput for ALL connected devices to the speed of the lowest connected which was my 10/100 PC.
Hi netnewt, thanks for the crosslink and the observation of the lesser speed across all devices on the GS605v2. On the NV+ set up we made sure all devices on the Gb switch are 1000Mb/s and all 100 Mb devices were moved to another switch that has a Gb uplink. We check the LED status occasionally to ensure no 100Mb device sneaks in, so your notice on downgrading to the lesser speed can't be an explanation for the low transfer rates. I think with 60 MB/s (not Mb/s) between macs, I don't need a RAM disk to prove the problem is on the NAS end.I think with 60 MB/s (not Mb/s) between macs, I don't need a RAM disk to prove the problem is on the NAS end
You're right there! :wink: I wish I had another Mac to see if I could get 60MBs!- Ok here is a breakdown of some testing I did:
Netgear ReadyNAS NV+
Testing 4.1.7 vs. 4.1.8 Performance
Test Machines (All fully patched to 10/14/2011):
1) Windows 7 (64-bit)
a. Intel i7 (gen2) 2600K 3.4Ghz
16 GB Ram
ASUS P8P67 Deluxe
b. Tests Performed using the Onboard Intel 82579V Gig Nic
2) OSX Lion 10.7.2
a. Mac Pro 1,1
2x 3.0GHz dual core Xeon Processors
8 GB of Ram
Onboard Nic
3) Ubuntu 11.04 (64-bit) Linux
a. Shuttle SN25P
Nforce4 Chipset
AMD 64 Dual Core FX60 2.6 GHz (Socket 939)
2 GB Ram
Onboard Nvidia GB Nic
ReadyNAS Configuration:Stock ReadyNAS NV+ (no memory mod)
4x Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5 (on the HCL)
Hard drives configured in X-RAID
All services but CIFS turned off
All discovery services off
No addons installed or enabled
All Journaling turned off
CIFS Fast writes enabled
Optimize for OSX Enabled
Testing Methodology:
I’ve found that using IOMeter is not indicative of real world performance. So I opted for using drag and drop testing as that’s how most real world file moving is done. I used the file iobw.tst that IOMeter generates in all read and write tests. All tests were drag and drop tests. I rotated between filenames iobw.tst and iobw2.tst for each test to make sure caching was out of play. All performance numbers were recorded from the rate the OS reports just as the file is finishing its copy. I used an empty share I created just for this testing. For Jumbo Frames testing, the system was tested with Jumbo frames enabled on all client and NAS components. During standard MTU testing all client and NAS components were set to Auto or 1500. The admin interface was never loaded while testing.
Network Topology:
**Note WNDR3700v1 is running DD-WRT v17201**
Netgear GS105v2-----------------------------------WNDR3700v1-------------------------------------Netgear GS105v2
|----Mac OSX Client ReadyNAS NV+----|
|----Windows 7 (64bit) Client Ubuntu 11.04 (64bit) Client----|
Now that is out of the way, Here are the numbers:
All numbers in MB/s
Win 7 (64 bit) OSX 10.7.2 Ubuntu 11.04 (64-bit)
4.1.7 (MTU = 9000)
Read 38.2 36.2 22.6
Write 27.5 25.2 13.7
4.1.7 (MTU = 1500)
Read 20.2 26.7 16.3
Write 21.1 21.1 11.9
4.1.8 (MTU = 1500)
Read 7.5 27.7 7.9
Write 16.8 17.3 9.9
4.1.8 (MTU = 9000)
Read 11.1 11.9 10.6
Write 23.6 23.2 12.7
4.1.8-T9 (MTU = 9000)
Read 27.6 32.1 22.4
Write 27.7 25.3 13.2
4.1.8-T9 (MTU = 1500)
Read 20.3 26.7 16.5
Write 20.8 20.7 11.7
These numbers clearly show that 4.1.7 is by far the performance leader across all platforms, with 4.1.8-T9 in second, and 4.1.8 in dead last by a rather large and disturbing margin taking a HUGE hit in CIFS read performance. Which I believe is what many other people are seeing as well.
I hope this helps Yoh-dah.
Thanks,
-Nasinator - Thanks for the detailed feedback. I'll have someone take a look.
- use it for my media center (not professional use) (using mac os lion)
got same issue, cannot even stream SD content
try desactivating all service, bonjour etc nothing work
I went back to 4.1.7 and using a trick found on this website to make it work even with mac os lion
http://charlestendell.com/os-x-lion-afp-nas-connection-error-fix/
PS : read the comment for the corrected command without " characters
Maybe not the best way but everything is working better for me (no stuttering playing media , SD or HD)
hope this can help some people here
edit : sorry for my english , not my natural language - I had an average read/write speed of ~12 mb/s.
Just downgraded to 4.1.7 and it is around ~19/mb/s.
Still not as advertised.. but it's a difference - If you are running a Mac and 4.1.7, you might want to try writing something to the NAS first. Just a very small file, etc then copy a large 1GB+ file off of it and see how its read performs then. I've have noticed that sometimes writing a file first then reading causes much better performance. I currently have a theory that there is also a bug in 4.1.7 related directly to OSX, that once all TCP connections to the NAS time out and close, when you re initiate with a read function (I.E. copy from the NAS) that it isn't negotiating Jumbo frames properly. But if you write to it first, it does negotiate Jumbo frames properly and then your read performance improves dramatically for the rest of that TCP session.
This is a phenomenon I can reliably reproduce on my Mac Pro 1,1 Lion 10.7.2 install while reading and writing to my NV+ running 4.1.7.
Like I said though this is only a current theory and I have tons of more testing to prove it. I haven't seen this phenomenon present itself on Windows 7 or Linux yet, so it seems to be OS X Lion and NV+ specific at the moment. - I was able to restore normal read/write speeds by reflashing 4.1.7, but I had to do a factory reset. A downgrade didn't work for me.
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