SMB reads are slow on OpenIndiana + NAPP-IT

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mstroud

New Member
Mar 10, 2012
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California, USA
www.msinsights.com
Hello all,

I am finishing up my build of a brand new NAS box and I am doing the first round of testing on it. So far I've found one sticky issue that seems to be pestering me: reads from the NAS to my Win7 boxes are half the speed of writes to the same share directory. Here's some examples...

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64
Sequential Read : 60.994 MB/s
Sequential Write : 106.363 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 60.671 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 100.492 MB/s
Test : 50 MB [Z: 0.0% (0.0/6570.3 GB)] (x3)

File Copy using TeraCopy
1min 27secs @ 42 ~ 50 MB/s on a 3.56 GB file coming from NAS to Win7 PC
45secs @ 98 ~ 99 MB/s on a 3.56 GB file going from Win7 PC to NAS

Bonnie++ benchmark on OI/NAPP-IT
SIZE File Seq-Wr-Chr %CPU Seq-Write %CPU Seq-Rewr %CPU Seq-Rd-Chr %CPU Seq-Read %CPU Rnd Seeks %CPU Files Seq-Create Rnd-Create
9.06T 32G 138 MB/s 99 339 MB/s 26 146 MB/s 16 135 MB/s 93 338 MB/s 12 629.8/s 1 16 +++++/s +++++/s

I recall with Debian and Ubuntu that there was a lot of fiddling around with CIFS settings to get better transfer speeds, but I'm not sure what needs to be done with OI since it is pretty new to me. Any input to find and improve the performance here would be very helpful. I can provide more information about the configuration if it is useful.
 

mmmmmdonuts

Member
Mar 22, 2012
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I had the same problem on my Windows 7 boxes. Try deleting Teracopy and try using Windows 7 built in transfer manager. For some reason SMB in OI does not like non default windows transfer programs. This solved the problem for me.

It stinks that you lose some of the advanced features of Teracopy, but try using Microsoft Synctoy if you really do need some of the advanced features.
 

mstroud

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Mar 10, 2012
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Interesting data point, thank you. Read speeds seem fine using the default Win7 copy routine.
For the sake of future searchers, I performed some quick follow up tests that show reads are pretty bad with other copy methods, too.

Command Prompt Win7 Copy
Win7 to OI: 32.9 seconds
OI to Win7: 2mins 17.4 seconds

FastCopy app (http://www.ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en)
Win7 to OI: 45 seconds
OI to Win7: 2mins 23 seconds

SyncToy x64 Copy
Win7 to OI: 33.123 seconds
OI to Win7: 40.32 seconds
 

mmmmmdonuts

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Mar 22, 2012
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Glad I could help. Could you post your actual data speeds or at least the size of the file you were trying to copy back and forth so we can get MB/s speeds?
 

mstroud

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Mar 10, 2012
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California, USA
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Well, I goofed up on providing that info and I've now changed the configuration on that server, so shame on me. I believe the test file (M2TS) I was using was 3.55 GB in size (according to Win7).

I'm doing some other testing on that box at the moment but as soon as I free it up again I will be sure to re-post new test numbers that are similar.
 

primerump

New Member
Nov 18, 2011
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I too had slow reads and fast writes. after some investigation i found a solution by setting flow control in openindiana for the nic card to "rx" only.
I don't know if this the correct solution, but I have 90 megabytes in each direction per second as reported by the system/performance monitor in openindiana for my intel e1000 nics.
 

x-cimo

New Member
Apr 25, 2012
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I too had slow reads and fast writes. after some investigation i found a solution by setting flow control in openindiana for the nic card to "rx" only.
I don't know if this the correct solution, but I have 90 megabytes in each direction per second as reported by the system/performance monitor in openindiana for my intel e1000 nics.
I have a similar problem under ESXi5 but in my case WRITE become very slow if I have 2 or more concurrent SMB file transfer doing write.

Could you detail where and how you turned off the flow control for OI?

Thanks!
 

primerump

New Member
Nov 18, 2011
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I have a similar problem under ESXi5 but in my case WRITE become very slow if I have 2 or more concurrent SMB file transfer doing write.

Could you detail where and how you turned off the flow control for OI?

Thanks!

use "dladm" to show and set properties..

use dladm --help for more info

eg: dladm show-linkprop -p flowctrl
 

Metaluna

Member
Dec 30, 2010
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Interesting data point, thank you. Read speeds seem fine using the default Win7 copy routine.
I had a similar experience with my favorite file manager app, Total Commander. It turned out to have something to do with the efficiency of the file copy API when running a 32-bit app on 64-bit windows. When I switched to the x64 version of Total Commander (still in beta) the read speeds went back up. There could be something similar going on in your case.
 

x-cimo

New Member
Apr 25, 2012
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use "dladm" to show and set properties..

use dladm --help for more info

eg: dladm show-linkprop -p flowctrl
Looks like the flow control is disable on my box.
LINK PROPERTY PERM VALUE DEFAULT POSSIBLE
e1000g0 flowctrl rw no bi no,tx,rx,bi

I guess i'm dead in the water.. Can't figure out why the speed seem to drop from 1Gbps to 100Mbs if I start two SMB write file transfer..