QNAP-409 Turbo Pro NAS on 1GB LAN - performance issues

[donsom]

Details:
- QNAP 409 Turbo Pro NAS (RAID 5 setup) with 4 X 7200.11 Seagate Sata 2 drives (32 MB Cache)
- Netgear 1GB GS108T 8 port switch (auto-sensing)
- DLink DGL-4500 Router (1 GB LAN - Wireless g/n)
- PC's with either Windows XP (SP2), Vista Ultimate (64-bit), Windows 2000, and Windows 2003 Server

I routinely move large files (amounts of files) between the NAS and the PC(s) .... mostly for video that I work on (file(s) up to 100 GB). I move them to the PC to work on them, then back when complete to free up drive space on the PC to work on others. After post production is complete, I archive to DL-DVDs and remove the files from the NAS. The RAID (and hot-swap capability) is extremely important for protection against drive failure and data loss.

TaskManager on the PC's shows network at approx. 10% -14% when moving files. File transfer can start at approx. 20MB, but soon dies down to between 3 - 6MBs. Network connections all show as connecting at 1 GB. I also upgraded all cables to 1GB compliant cables.

Any ideas on where the bottleneck is? Time is money in this business, so I'm hoping I can speed this up. Thanks in advance for your ideas/questions/replies...

 

[thiggins]

Try having the NAS read the files from the PC's instead of the PCs writing the files to the NAS.

Also, if you are not using PCIe gigabit NICs (either onboard or NIC card), you're probably only getting 600 Mbps vs. 900 Mbps or so.

 

[donsom]

All of the PC's have onboard 1GB ethernet support. 2 are Xeon based workstations as well.

I'll try having the NAS read the files (for copy) and see what that does for things.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[thiggins]

See if you can find the Ethernet chipset used and I can probably tell you if it is PCIe based.
If the computers have a PCIe X1 slot, you can also try adding PCIe adapters like the Intel PRO/1000 PT.

 

[Dennis Wood]

I believe the issue may be Qnap's implementation of RAID5 and how the box handles large files. In RAID0 the TS509 is averaging write speeds at about 80MB/s and read speeds at 94MB/s with a mix of files up to 1.8GB in size. The test workstation is a Vista SP1 box with a 3 drive RAID0 array.

In RAID5, these file copy numbers plummet using the same test workstation to around 13 MB/s and 9 MB/s. What is quite fast is our ffmpeg encoding test running from the NAS and writing two streams to the RAID 0 workstation ...51 MB/s. Looking at the QNAP TS509 hardware monitor information, it's not going beyond 40% CPU usage. The numbers from the QNAP site are accurate I believe for 1GB file copies...but your video files (like mine) are usually well beyond that. I haven't tried RAID 10 on the QNAP box but that's coming. RAID5 and large files don't seem a good mix with the QNAP box.

Tim, maybe you can see if QNAP has any comments on the RAID 5 issue...maybe I'm missing something here. The Intel SS4200 is testing out on the large file copy writes at nearly 3 times faster than the QNAP unit.

 

[00Roush]

Details:
- QNAP 409 Turbo Pro NAS (RAID 5 setup) with 4 X 7200.11 Seagate Sata 2 drives (32 MB Cache)
- Netgear 1GB GS108T 8 port switch (auto-sensing)
- DLink DGL-4500 Router (1 GB LAN - Wireless g/n)
- PC's with either Windows XP (SP2), Vista Ultimate (64-bit), Windows 2000, and Windows 2003 Server

I routinely move large files (amounts of files) between the NAS and the PC(s) .... mostly for video that I work on (file(s) up to 100 GB). I move them to the PC to work on them, then back when complete to free up drive space on the PC to work on others. After post production is complete, I archive to DL-DVDs and remove the files from the NAS. The RAID (and hot-swap capability) is extremely important for protection against drive failure and data loss.

TaskManager on the PC's shows network at approx. 10% -14% when moving files. File transfer can start at approx. 20MB, but soon dies down to between 3 - 6MBs. Network connections all show as connecting at 1 GB. I also upgraded all cables to 1GB compliant cables.

Any ideas on where the bottleneck is? Time is money in this business, so I'm hoping I can speed this up. Thanks in advance for your ideas/questions/replies...

You never mentioned what speeds you are getting between your windows computers. So is this just limited to your file transfers to and from the NAS?

00Roush

 

[Dennis Wood]

The highest measured transfer rates on our 5.3GB file set was between two Vista SP1 workstations, both with 3 drive RAID0 arrays. One is an Nvidia based chipset (Asus P5N32) and the other intel (Asus P5W). The figure was 93.4 MB/s

With XP loaded on both of the above workstations, the max was 58.8 MB/s. If your workstations are single drive units, you'll likely see a max of around 43MB/s between them.

Hope that helps.

 

[starfox101]

I am no Xpert, I have the 409 t pro, I move large files from the nas to my pc and back. I use FTP, 2 connections, get around 20 mb/s per connection. Anyway when I get a slow down I check the nas, the cpu will be at 98% or higher. Reset the nas, things are back to normal. I don't know why the cpu will jump up

409 T Pro
single disk install
3 seagate 1 t/b drives
1 seagate 500 g/b drive
wired gigabit
Pc
windows vista ultimate

 

[Dennis Wood]

Yep, seeing about 20MB/s write using FTP on the 509...so much better than SMB or SMB2 transfers.

 

[donsom]

Speed between computer pc's is faster than the NAS at this time. Doesn't drop off either.

The machine I use to "manage" the files is a Core 2 Duo running WinXP Ultimate 64bit. The 1GB ethernet is Intel(R) 82566DM Gigabit. A quick look into the properties lists it as "PCI".

Editing of the video files is done on a dual Xeon box (curently 32 bit XP Pro). There is another older 3.2 GHZ and 3.4 GHZ server on the LAN as well. I've tested mostly on the newer Core 2 Duo with 64 bit (testing machine) because that is what we eventually want to switch everything up to (most likely early next year ... now that 64bit is "almost, nearly, kinda mainstream".

I did try using an FTP program (64 bit) to move files. Transfers are all around 290K - 350K/sec. Much slower than dragging files between windows and transferring that way.

I'll check the ethernet on the other pc's later on and provide that info as well.

 

[QNAPIvan]

Hello,
We now are having internal beta for TS-509 and TS-409 to improve the performance under certain conditions. We did some fine-tuning and expect to release the solution in the coming week.

Cheers,
Ivan

 

[donsom]

Thank you, Ivan.

I have been following the thread on the TS-509 by Dennis Wood. It's good to know that the beta fix will apply to both units.

Thank you for troubleshooting and taking action to correct it ... and thanks to Dennis Wood for his detailed reports and patience during the troubleshooting of his TS-509 unit.

 

[Dennis Wood]

Don, no worries. You'll see a bit different performance I'm guessing on the four drive unit, but there's a big difference evident with the new firmware. I copied two disk images totaling 450GB and the unit settled in at 50.1 MB/s write speed using Vista SP1. For RAID 5, that's excellent and represents a 250% improvement over the original 2.0.0 code which could only manage 20MB/s. So Ivan and company's SAMBA tweaks worked

Just don't try two workstations at the same time....