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Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Scubbie
Apprentice

Slow transfer with RN104

Hi there,

I've been trying to help a friend set up a ReadyNAS 104 and we are experiencing a couple of problems. I have a ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus and the way of setting up the RN104 is quite different/

He has 4 Seagate ST4000DM000 (4TB drives) (http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/docs ... 1212us.pdf ).

The first issue is that I'm having difficulty setting up the X-RAID so that the capacity is around 11TB.

The second issue, and most worrying, is the transfer speed. This appears to be limited to just 100mb/s. This is nothing like what I get with my RN Ultra+ 6.

He has another NAS and is able to achieve good transfer rates with that on his 1Gbit LAN. Currently the two Ethernet ports are paired and this has made no difference to the speed. The drives are formatted using RAID6 & X-RAID. This has left around 7TB available.

We did get it formatted to about 10.5TB, but this was without X-RAID.

I'm busy going through the two manuals for the RN104 (hardware & software). He has 6.2.4 installed.

Any suggestions as to what may be causing these two issues please?
Message 1 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Scubbie wrote:
...The drives are formatted using RAID6 & X-RAID...

If you are using RAID-6 of course you will end up at 8 TB. You want RAID-5 (which is the default for X-RAID). Did you mistype?

Write speeds with RAID-5 should be on the order of 40 MB/s with antivirus protection off. RAID-6 speeds on the RN104 are a lot slower.

The NAS isn't fast enough to benefit from link aggregation, so I'd just connect one ethernet port and forget about that.
Message 2 of 14
Scubbie
Apprentice

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Thank you for responding StephenB,

We tried RAID 5 initially and the transfer rate was as dismal then, with no more than around 100mb/s on a 1Gbit connection.

The format process for RAID-5 took around 8 days to complete.

It was when it was initially set up with RAID 5 that I then linked the two Ethernet ports in the hope that this might improve things, but obviously it didn't.
Message 3 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Well, RAID-6 performance will never be better than RAID-5 on any NAS, so playing with that is also a waste of time.

Overall, the 100 mb/s issue sounds like network, but I don't think it should take 8 days to format the raid array either.

Maybe start over on the RAID array - this time just install one drive, and do a factory reset (xraid). Get that working well with a single gigabit connection, and after that expand the array. A single drive on the RN104 should have about 50 MB/S write speeds (a bit faster than RAID-5). Keep Antivirus off, and don't install any add-ons..

If this is recently purchased (e.g., within 3 months) you might also use Netgear support.

I am thinking that you might also
(a) try a different network cable and switch/router port (perhaps "borrowing" the connection from the other NAS.
(b) confirm at the router and the NAS that the NAS ethernet is negotiating gigabit.
(c) check ethernet stats for lost packets, RX/TX issues. I think you'll need to look at the logs for that (info in the web ui is limited).
(e) Check the drive health for all drives. Possibly in a PC with Seatools.
Message 4 of 14
Scubbie
Apprentice

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Ok, the NAS is back to RAID 5, with X-RAID lit as green.

The capacity is now 10.9 TB, which is fine.

However the transfer rate is terrible once more - about 10.8MiB/s.

Having wiped the unit, there are currently no other apps installed.

Cables have been swapped around. The Switch and router both report that the NAS is connected at 1Gbit.

The computer can move files to/from another NAS without any major issues and achieves in the region of 70-80MiB/s with the same computer.

Do you have any suggestions as to why the transfer rate is so bad?
Message 5 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Are you testing both read and write speeds? (btw nastester is a convenient tool here - http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance).

More information on your network setup would be useful.

If jumbo frames are turned on, try turning them off.
Message 6 of 14
Scubbie
Apprentice

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Thank you once more for responding StephenB.

That tool is certainly useful and is showing something interesting.

First the network setup:

Netgear router (1Gbit connections, can't recall the model at the moment)
1Gbit Netgear 24 port Network Switch

The HP MadiaSmart, running WHS (I'll refer to this as WHS n future) is connected to the switch, so too is the PC. The RN104 was connected to the router, but the same results have been seen when it has been connected to the switch. He has now moved the NAS to the switch, where it would have moved in the end anyway.

The NAS is reporting that it is connected at 1Gbit, so too has the router and switch (LEDs)

Speed results

Basically the speed results give a different perspective to all of this.

WHS
Running a 400MB file write on \\home-server-1\videos 5 times...
Iteration 1: 80.77 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 82.46 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 96.76 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 85.57 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 86.25 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (W): 86.36 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on \\home-server-1\videos 5 times...
Iteration 1: 117.05 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 113.11 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 117.01 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 117.22 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 117.44 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (R): 116.37 MB/sec


RN104
Running a 400MB file write on \\Home-Server-2\Music 5 times...
Iteration 1: 58.02 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 58.82 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 59.64 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 57.76 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 58.53 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (W): 58.55 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on \\Home-Server-2\Music 5 times...
Iteration 1: 65.28 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 68.52 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 65.31 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 66.32 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 68.67 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (R): 66.82 MB/sec
-----------------------------


Now to me that looks a lot more acceptable. Using the Task Manager, the RN104 finally bumped the 500mb/s display.

He's now been able to check with another computer and that was copying from the WHS to the RN104 at around 30MB/s.

This leaves me with a very clear impression that the PC doesn't like the RN104 for some reason. I am thinking things through as we take a break and I am suspecting that perhaps the AV software is not set up correctly or is messing it all up.

For reference, my own 2 RN came out as follows:

RN Ultra 2+ (RAID 1)
Average (W): 58.81 MB/sec
Average (R): 69.62 MB/sec


RN Ultra 6+ (X-RAID)
Average (W): 102.00 MB/sec
Average (R): 62.87 MB/sec


Looking at the RN U6+ you can see what I would have expected from the beginning from the RN104. The test results bore this out. Using both Filezilla (FTP software) and Window's copy command, we have been seeing results around 10MB/s.

If you have any other ideas please let us know. In the mean time it's back to the grindstone to find out what the cause it.
Message 7 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

I'm glad it was useful. But like you I am a bit puzzled by the discrepancy with window's copy command.
Message 8 of 14
Scubbie
Apprentice

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Hi there,

An update on this....

We've managed to get the RN104 formatted to 10.8TB using the X-RAID. Even with all four drives plugged in it took its time to format everything.

After more testing it was found that when using Filezilla to copy items from the PC (or WHS) to the RN104 the transfer speed is around 100mb/s. When using the Windows copy command the speed improved to around 400mb/s.

Its working now and I believe he's happier with it than he was previously.
Message 9 of 14
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

The disks have to be synced sector by sector to setup the RAID. You can use the NAS while the sync is taking place but performance will be lower than what it normally is.
Message 10 of 14
Scubbie
Apprentice

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Yes you can use it, which is what he did to some extent. However he stopped as the sync time increased rapidly to many more days to complete.
Message 11 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

In any event, 400 mbs (50 MB/s) is what he should be seeing for write times.
Message 12 of 14

Re: Slow transfer with RN104

Hi i am the friend that Scubbie been helping everything find the only prob we having is that the transfer speed is about 7MiBs but my other server which is a Hp ex495 and getting speeds of 81 MiBs and both on same network check and replace cables still the same any help please ready to throw out the window

Message 13 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: Slow transfer with RN104


@sparky6789111 wrote:

Hi i am the friend that Scubbie been helping everything find the only prob we having is that the transfer speed is about 7MiBs but my other server which is a Hp ex495 and getting speeds of 81 MiBs and both on same network check and replace cables still the same any help please ready to throw out the window


I think you were getting much higher speeds with NAStester, correct?

 

Can you provide more information on how you are measuring the 7 MiBs?  (CIFS, AFP, NSF, FTP, or HTTP; file sizes; etc).  Also, what OS is on the PC.

Message 14 of 14
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