410j and 32MBps file copy performance in Vista, is it too little?

[eikka]

I bought 410j and 3 Samsung HD154UI 1.5TB disks. These disks were mostly recommended by the users, they had good ratings at NewEgg.com and I found them cool and quiet as a breeze! I just hope they have the lasting power as well.

After setting them up with Hybrid Raid (SHR) I have made some file copying measurements with my quad core Q9300 Vista 32bit system:

6GB file transfer from 410j shared folder to Vista desktop:

samba: about 32MBps (windows file transfer client dialog)
ftp: about 48MBps (firefox browser downloads dialog)

Who could explain why my samba transfer was so much slower than FTP?? Based on tests, the file read performance from NAS should be about 50MBps...

The 410j CPU was on 40% load with samba file transfer so CPU shouldn't be the bottleneck...

410j is connected to my gigabit Ethernet switch (DIR655) and so is my PC.

 

[00Roush]

Are you running Vista SP1 or higher?

Overall FTP has lower overhead than SMB so it generally is able to get better transfer speeds but it does depend. Also remember that the speeds given in the file copy box are an average. So if for some reason there was a delay before data actually started being transferred this number will be lower than what the actual transfer rate is. The FTP speeds could be calculated differently. I actually like to use the task manger's networking tab to see actual amount of data being sent per second. Just add the bytes sent/received per interval column and you can see if the maximum speeds are similar between ftp and SMB.

00Roush

 

[eikka]

Are you running Vista SP1 or higher?

Overall FTP has lower overhead than SMB so it generally is able to get better transfer speeds but it does depend. Also remember that the speeds given in the file copy box are an average. So if for some reason there was a delay before data actually started being transferred this number will be lower than what the actual transfer rate is. The FTP speeds could be calculated differently. I actually like to use the task manger's networking tab to see actual amount of data being sent per second. Just add the bytes sent/received per interval column and you can see if the maximum speeds are similar between ftp and SMB.

00Roush

Thank you, I have all the latest updates for Vista, including SP2.

I did as you suggested and had:

FTP: 58 000 000 - 61 000 000 bytes received per second
SMB: 36 000 000 - 37 000 000 bytes received per second

A significant difference, I would say..

 

[eikka]

Thank you, I have all the latest updates for Vista, including SP2.

I did as you suggested and had:

FTP: 58 000 000 - 61 000 000 bytes received per second
SMB: 36 000 000 - 37 000 000 bytes received per second

A significant difference, I would say..

PS. I have the latests DSM 3.0 firmware installed from the Synology site (if I recall, it was 1337 build).

 

[00Roush]

Definitely a significant difference.

Well even though the cpu usage on the NAS was only 40% your slower speeds with SMB could still be related to overhead. One interesting thing I found was on the Synology website they show the performance as 51.27 MB/sec for reads but in the notes they show they were using Jumbo frames. You could try setting up jumbo frames and see if things change. Also I noticed on the Synology website that iSCSI performance was also up around 50 MB/sec. Not sure how hard it would be to setup on the NAS but you could try testing that as well.

00Roush

 

[eikka]

Definitely a significant difference.

Well even though the cpu usage on the NAS was only 40% your slower speeds with SMB could still be related to overhead. One interesting thing I found was on the Synology website they show the performance as 51.27 MB/sec for reads but in the notes they show they were using Jumbo frames. You could try setting up jumbo frames and see if things change. Also I noticed on the Synology website that iSCSI performance was also up around 50 MB/sec. Not sure how hard it would be to setup on the NAS but you could try testing that as well.

00Roush

Thanks, I tried to change the Jumbo frames from my NIC properties to 4K and tried to copy the file again. This time the transfer speed was stuck at 5.7 - 6MBps.

I tried pinging with larger packet (ping -f -l 4000) size as well but the packets didn't go through because "Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set".

I changed the Jumbo frames setting back to Disabled but unfortunately I still don't get more than 6MBps speeds for copying from NAS anymore... Even if I tried restarting the 410j... Can the packet size setting get "stuck" somehow?

 

[00Roush]

It is possible that somthing might have gotten stuck. Your best bet would be to make sure both the NAS and Vista desktop both are set to no jumbo frames. Then reset the NAS, desktop, and the switch. Also when testing with jumbo frames both the NAS and desktop have to have jumbo frames enabled and with the same size.

00Roush

 

[eikka]

It is possible that somthing might have gotten stuck. Your best bet would be to make sure both the NAS and Vista desktop both are set to no jumbo frames. Then reset the NAS, desktop, and the switch. Also when testing with jumbo frames both the NAS and desktop have to have jumbo frames enabled and with the same size.

00Roush

Hmm.. didn't enable anything from the 410j DSM, only from Vista network drivers, where is the setting to enable Jumbo frames in DSM 3.0? Can't seem to find it...

 

[eikka]

Hmm.. didn't enable anything from the 410j DSM, only from Vista network drivers, where is the setting to enable Jumbo frames in DSM 3.0? Can't seem to find it...

Ok, I found it from the Network settings. It wasn't very hard to find after all...

I did another test using 4K Jumbo frames set in both 410j and Vista NIC drivers. The file copy speed was around 16MBps. Not too shabby. Perhaps this DIR-655 does not handle Jumbo frames very well..

Only way to restore the approximate 34MBps speed was indeed to restore settings in the devices and reset all machines: 410j, DIR-655 and Vista.

So, I guess I have to stick with 34MBps file copy speed then, which is not utterly bad for home use, I presume... The hardest use I will have is to stream multiple HD/AVC files around the house, which it should manage reasonably well.

 

[00Roush]

I think you should also try to test with 9k jumbo frames if your NAS and Vista machine support it. It looks like the switch does according to google. Just remember that not all devices (ie media players) can do jumbo frames as it is not an ethernet standard.

Well 34 MB/sec isn't too bad. You should be just fine streaming your media.

It still is weird though that your FTP speeds are quite a bit higher than the SMB speeds. Probably just how the NAS works.

00Roush

 

[eikka]

Hmm.. Decided to update DSM to v1354 today and my Samba speeds dropped from previous 35 MBps to 6 MBps! Jumbo frames were not enabled in the update so that's not the cause. But what could it be then??

 

[00Roush]

Any chance you can get use the standard RAID 5 mode or a RAID 1 mode to test with? Also do you have any other computers to test with? Have you tried iSCSI yet?

00Roush

 

[eikka]

Any chance you can get use the standard RAID 5 mode or a RAID 1 mode to test with? Also do you have any other computers to test with? Have you tried iSCSI yet?

00Roush

Ok, fortunately I have been suspicious enough not to fill up the NAS with my data, so I can do some testing.

I reformatted the drives to RAID5 and tested with my Vista 32bit desktop and my office Lenovo T61 Windows 7 (64) laptop, in wired network:

Vista 32bit

SMB: 31-34MBps, saw-like data stream pattern, something is different with this new firmware...

FTP: 54-56MBps, good solid speeds (firefox client)


Win7 64bit Enterprise, Lenovo T61, Dual core 2.4GHz

SMB: 34-36MBps, initially over 40MBps, then after a couple of seconds dropped to 34-36MBps occasionally dropping even to 30MBps and even below

FTP: 37-40MBps, initially starting below average then growing mid-way to full speed (firefox client)


Conclusions

The update of DSM firmware seemed to mess up the transfer speeds and only reformatting the drives to RAID5 corrected the problem. This makes me uneasy on updating the firmware in the future when all my data is inside this box.

The maximum speeds for Windows file copying are for some strange reason capped with this device. It is hard to find any other culprit than the smbd implementation, that seems not to be at its full potential. Plain FTP server wipes the floor performance-wise with the SMB implementation of the Synology NAS. Could this be an issue where other file transfer protocols, such as one for Apple's Mac, has had more development focus?

Overall, above 30MBps speeds are fast for home use, but they are not at the level what has been reported in the tests for this device.

 

[eikka]

I connected the 410j device directly to my Vista 32 and using Synology Assistant to configure ad hoc network. My Vista PC has “Realtek PCIe GBE Family Network Controller” as the NIC driver.

Then I ran some more tests using the ad hoc network and 6GB file uploads and downloads. The 410j had DSM 3.0-1354 installed and 3 drives were formatted to RAID5. 410j was using the default settings and services except I had enabled the FTP service:


Single download tests using a 6 GB file mkv file:
=================================================

SMB download from 410j using Vista File Explorer:
33-34 MBps

FTP download from 410j using Firefox and Google Chrome browsers:
45-48MBps and 54-58MBps respectively


Single upload tests using a 6 GB file mkv file:
===============================================

SMB upload of the 6GB file to 410j shared folder with Vista File Explorer:
26-28 MBps

FTP upload of the 6GB file to 410j using Vista File Explorer:
23-24 MBps


Simultaneous upload/download test:
==================================

SMB file download (Vista File Exporer) + FTP file upload (using WinSCP):
17 MBps + 10 MBps (60% CPU and 40% memory loads in 410j)

 

[eikka]

More tests, now with iSCSI volume:

I connected the 410j to my DIR-655 and created an iSCSI volume to the disk. I formatted the volume to NTFS using Vista Disk Management tool. Then I copied a 6.8 GB file to the drive and tried to copy it back to the desktop. Here are the speeds:

Upload to 410j iSCSI partition:
22-23 MBps

Download from iSCSI partition to Desktop:
36-37 MBps
UPDATE:
After installing automatic Vista updates (arrived in 11.11.) I have managed to obtain max 41-43MBps download speed from iSCSI drive. Changes didn't affect the Samba download performance. However, this speed is only occasional and does not hold to be consistent over period of attempts in different times.


I just can't seem to get the Vista copy speeds that are being reported for example here at smallnetbuilder.

Also, the copy speeds seem to vary a lot. Sometimes a copy operation won't ramp up the speed above 6-10 MBps, sometimes it gives me the speeds shown above.

I have filed a support ticket to Synology, wonder if they can come up with some answers to this performance behaviour.