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Confessions of a 10GbE Network Newbie

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I am quite impressed with windows 8.1 SMB multiplex. I have a P67 / 2600K with two on board giga nics and a z87 haswell with two intel onboard nics. I bought a cheesy smart switch from staples to play with teaming and basically that was a waste of time... never could break the 125 MBS giga ceiling... Well I had a few Intel pro 1000 cards from like 10 years ago and was like WTF its just time....

I took my on board nics and connected them 1 for 1 to companion computer


P67 Onboard --> Z87 Onboard No Switch / Direct Cat6 Connected IP 169...
P67 Onboard --> Z87 Onboard No Switch / Direct Cat6 Connected IP 169...

P67 Pro1000 ----> giga switch for DHCP <----- Z87 Pro 1000
This is my 192...

both boxes have Samsung 840 SSD's and I can Xfer @ SSD's MAX MBS

And when you go to task manager you can see each NIC and how each is performing...

All in all I am impressed with SMB... Its a bridge for a few years till 10gbe starts showing up. AND why buy a NAS... build a new box.... my haswell idles @ .9 watts......
 
Hey Guys,
Super informative blog, which I used to build my home 10GbE network without a switch. A little information on my setup. I use a work station to work station direct connection via Cat 6 to intel x540 T1 cards. One of my workstations is acting like a file server running windows 10. The other has the same chipset, same OS, processor and network card.

In the Workstation serving as a file server I have a LSI 9266-8i MegaRAID card. I have 2 raids created from this card. RAID0 consisting of 4 2TB WD Black drives, the other is RAID6 consisting of 4 6TB WD Black Drives.

I've commented about 6 months back on this article, and got a few responses back from Dennis on some troubleshooting scenarios, which really helped me out. He helped me get the performance out of my network. This has allowed me to start testing my system in application scenarios. I've run a few large projects using CDNG, Proxies (prores 444, and 422) and various other file formats to really test the platforms.

I've run into a few bottlneck/responsiveness issues, and I've run into a hardware glitch that I'm hoping your guys' experience can help me sort out. I'm a super user and builder, but no where near a professional when it comes to network engineering.

First, the hardware. I have an issue when I restart, or start after a full shut down on the File server machine. This happens about 75% of the time. When I start the machine up, my RAID card at post warns me that one or more drives are missing. I can restart and restart, and I'll get a 10% chance that it will start normal, but when I take the lid off my Roswill 4U 12 bay case, it's a 90% chance that all drives will be detected after a restart. Can anyone help me out with the reasoning for this? Everything is properly seated in the case, I've checked and triple checked cables, all LED on the outside light where there are Hard drives present, but yet, I get this often. I've even checked data cables to ensure they are all attached to the backplane, and I've ensured nothing is touching the lid when I cover it. Any Ideas? (I'm hoping to expand with a 4i card to separate the RAIDs and to expand the RAID 6 in the future, but I want to sort out any failures before I proceed). If it helps, I have a 750W powersupply at the moment.

Second issue: I have a bottleneck/responsiveness issue. When working in premiere I can work with CDNG files, but with lack luster responsiveness. I often create proxies so I can actually play smoothly (most of the time). The thing is, I can play through smooth as butter with CDNG files in Davinci Resolve, but premiere has issues. So I go and create proxies (proress 422, or 444), and I work with them in Premiere. Even with the proxies, I often get unresponsiveness on the timeline (meaning I hit play, and I wait 30 seconds before even a prores file plays). The software doesn't lock up or anything, but I get painful wait times for the playhead to start playing. I suspect it's something to do with Premiere, as Resolve has no issues that I've experienced yet (Although I just used it for the proxy workflow and coloring). Has anyone had an experience like this, or do you have any ideas for solutions?

My network performance is still very good. I get average 650MB/s with the RAID0, which I use for my projects, and the 10GbE is capable of 1.1GB/s ram drive to ram drive, so I'm not hitting any bottlenecks from what I can tell...

Any help, tips, suggestions would be appreciated. This is a home projects, and I love to tinker, so I'm happy to try things.

Thanks!
 
IIRC there's a battery on many of the LSI Megaraid cards, and it might be dead...

Also check the firmware - had a similar issue with one of my blade centers that required a FW update from the blade center vendor (IBM) that sorted out missing disks on reboot..
 
On the app responsiveness - you weren't clear on what the Server and clients are running - I don't want to assume it's Windows or whatever...
 
To my knowledge I have the latest firmware, unless they came out with a new on in the last few months. I'll check on that tonight.

Also, I am running without a battery back up (I utilize a UPS). I have considered getting the battery backup, but I haven't purchased one as of yet.
 
Also, I am running without a battery back up (I utilize a UPS). I have considered getting the battery backup, but I haven't purchased one as of yet.

Battery on the Megaraid - it holds the settings for the array, as it's in RAM, not in NV... shortcoming of many of the megaraids...

Normally folks only notice this when rebooting an old server where the megaraid battery has run out...
 
See? If it's an older server, that's likely the problem - it's basically a cellphone battery at the end of the day.


LSI-Logic-Mega-RAID-MR-SAS-8708EM2-SASSATA-RAID-LP-Controller-Card-With-Battery-291289311519.jpg
 
I didn't notice it anywhere on the card. I'm not sure if that would be the issue, if I can get it to properly start and recognize the drives. It almost always recognizes the drives when I pull the top off the Roswill 4u 12 bay case.

It seems that the issue has something to do with that... I did notice that there is a support peg that helps support the lid of the case. This peg is connected to the HDD bay cage. It seems that when it's not touching that point, the case boots up regular. I may try a few test to recreate this, but if this is the problem, any ideas on a solution? Perhaps I need to contact roswill?

As for the Premiere Pro CC Performance, any idea? Both systems running windows 10, working with the latest editing software, RAID drivers, and RAID firmware...

Thanks,
E
 
A couple of pics might help - even when contacting Roswill (newEgg).

But I think you're on to something that might be the cause of both of your issues - what you're seeing should not be happening - hmmm
 

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