Qnap 450 pro+

[Privster]

I'm installing a game now on "one" machine using a 6.5gig .iso mounted from the NAS using magic disc on the client machine and the speed is terrible. Why is this? At the moment the Nas server is connected to a linksys 100mb router directly, no other switch, The NAS is set to Raid 0 and the port trunking is set to Balance (alb) and the bandwidth monitor is showing - Ethernet 1 Packets sent 2.85 mb/s, Packets received 2.85kb/s. Ethernet 2 Packets Sent 2.50kb/s and Packets received 1.68kbs. Nothing else is running or downloading on the router.

The client machine is running Asus P5 KPL AM/PS motherboard, 2 Gig DDR2 Ram, 320 gig Samsung HD, 3gig core 2 duo and is connected to the router at 100mps as is the NAS server.

Please help as when im copying files to the client it is much quicker and uses approximately 87% bandwidth in the network utilization using task manager to see but when installing the iso using magic disc it displays only 25% network utilization.

I do not understand, please can someone advise me on what to do. Im running the latest firmware for the NAS, 315.

 

[00Roush]

My guess is you are seeing slower speed because of how the install program reads from the disk. In my experience most installs end up doing quite a bit of small random reads from the install disk which causes throughput to go down. For example a 16x DVD drive can read a sequential file from a disk at about 20 MB/sec. But reading that same file randomly can cause read speeds to drop to 1 MB/sec due to the extra latency involved with all of the head movements. Same thing applies when reading across a network.

00Roush

 

[Privster]

Thanks for your advice

 

[00Roush]

I figured I would follow up more on this as I found your other post and had a few questions myself. As you questioned, can an ISO be mounted on the NAS itself? Something else I wondered is, will there be a performance difference with the ISO being mounted on the server or mounted on the client side? Also does different mounting software provide different performance?

My initial thought was your performance was low due to mounting the share over the network but I wasn't quiet sure. I was a bit curious so I decided to test this out by installing Call of Duty: World at War via an ISO (6.95 GB ISO) that was located on my server. I tested using Virtual CloneDrive and Magic Disk. Since my server is running Windows Server 2008 I not only tested with the ISO mounted on the client but also with the ISO being mounted on the server. Long story short... Magic Disk is much slower than Virtual CloneDrive. At least in my tests over my gigabit network. Max throughput I saw was about 19 MB/sec with Magic Disk. Max throughput I saw with Virtual CloneDrive was 80 MB/sec and the average was around 60-70 MB/sec. Overall I found the highest performance was when the ISO was mounted on the server instead of the client. It wasn't a huge difference with Virtual CloneDrive but noticeable.

I should point out though that I consider my setup a best case. Both the client and server are fairly powerful machines with fast disks. Depending on your setup you might not see as large of a difference. With that said I would definitely consider trying out another program to mount your ISOs with.

As to mounting an ISO within your Qnap NAS... this might help.

Hope that helps a bit more. Let us know how it goes.

00Roush

 

[Privster]

Mate i cannot thank you enough for going to the effort to replicate my setup. Just to give you further info, all the machines including what i call the server are running Win XP Pro. The networking of the machines is obviously done via peer to peer. Using Dlink Gigabit switches DGS 1024 Unmanaged and Linksys E3000 router.

The specs for the newer machines are:

(30 Units)
Core I3 540 3gig, 2gig DDR3, ASUS P7H55M-LX motherboards, SAMSUNG HD103SJ 1TB, Geforce 460 1gig OC.

The older machines are:

(25 Units)
3gig Core 2 duo, 2 Gig DDR2, ASUS P5KPL-AM-PS, Samsung HD321KJ 360gig, Geforce 260 1gig OC

The even older machines are:

(12 Units)

3gig Dual Core, 2 Gig DDR2, ASUS P5N-MX, Seagate Barracuda 7200 500gig, Geforce 9600 OC 1GIG

Im so thankful for your results and i wanted to know a bit more about you installing using the inbuilt iso mounting on the 450 Pro+ i have tried it on mine and know how to set it up, was it quicker than virtual CloneDrive?

Thanks once again for your help mate....

 

[Privster]

Your were 100% correct mate, did the same tests as you, magic iso could only manage around 24%, VirtualClone 91%.

What a difference.......

Regards,

Dave

 

[00Roush]

Your welcome, glad I could help and that you are seeing better results. I am actually quite amazed at the difference in performance between these two programs.

Im so thankful for your results and i wanted to know a bit more about you installing using the inbuilt iso mounting on the 450 Pro+ i have tried it on mine and know how to set it up, was it quicker than virtual CloneDrive?

In my case I used Virtual CloneDrive to mount the ISO on the client and to mount the ISO on the server side. I found that the best performance was when the ISO was mounted on the server using Virtual CloneDrive and then shared over the network. In your case you would be mounting the ISO on the NAS (server) using the built in software. Not really sure which method would be better. The only way you will probably know for sure is to test both ways out and see what kind of performance you get.

00Roush

 

[Privster]

Well mate, have just spent the last 4 hours trying it our through a gigabit switch and it seems it has gone from good to worse.

Trying to install an 8 gig iso using VirtualClone or MagicISO via the client machine just makes the client hang during the install process. Managed to get the processes tab up after waiting 30 mins for it to do something and for some reason now both apps are using all the physical memory. It starts off ok then slowly but surely the physical memory is at 99% on both XPPro SP3 and Win7. Have to hold the power button in for 5 secs for it to turn off!!

So then i tried mounting the iso on the nas using the iso shared folder wizard, no problem, install was fine no running out of physical memory on the clients as expected, network speed was around 45-48mbps. Is that normal for a gigabit network?

Lastly why do you think that when i add the gigabit network switch the clients cannot handle using software iso mounting apps and run out of memory?

Is the NAS and network bandwidth to fast now for the software? what did you test on?

Hopefully i will get this fixed with your wisdom soon....

-Dave

 

[00Roush]

Well that is kinda weird. Adding gigabit shouldn't really change anything. If it worked with 100 Mbps it should work the same with 1 Gbps. That is provided there are no network problems. Since you mentioned that testing with both Windows 7 and XP both ended up using 99% of physical memory I tend to think it might be some sort of weird problem with the software you are trying to install. Other things that come to mind are maybe firewall software, antivirus software, or network drivers that for some reason might be interfering.

You do bring up a good point about possibly being too fast... There is a possibility that for some reason the install program uses a lot of memory. With the faster connection you end up using up all of the free memory very quickly and then the computer never gets a chance to recover. Whereas with the slower connection memory is able to be freed in a more controlled manor and you don't run into memory contention problems.

Here is my test setup:
Client:
i7 860 CPU
MSI P55-GD65 Motherboard
4GB (2 x 2GB) RAM
320GB WD Hard Drive
Onboard Gigabit NIC
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Server:
Phenom II 955 CPU
MSI 890GXM-G65 Motherboard
4GB (2 x 2GB) RAM
160GB WD Hard Drive (OS drive)
3 x 1TB Hitachi Hard Drives in RAID 5 using onboard RAID (Shared drive)
Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter (NIC)
Windows Server 2008 R2

With this setup and my test ISO I saw 50-80 MB/sec (about 400-640 Mbps)of throughput during the install with the ISO mounted on the client. This is a bit hard to compare to your setup due to the extra memory and quad cores so I tested another computer I have here that might be more comparable to what your testing with.

Client #2
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (2.3 Ghz)
Asus M2N68-LA Motherboard (Compaq Computer)
2GB (2 x 1GB) RAM
500GB 7200.12 Seagate Hard Drive
Intel PRO/1000 MT NIC (PCI)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Using the same server and again mounting the ISO on the client I averaged 30-50 MB/sec across the network during the install of COD: World at War. I should note that so far I have only tested using COD: World at War. Other software might work completly differently. What software are you trying to install?

So how is the performance between your NAS and computers using gigabit to just transfer a large file?

To help figure out what might be causing problems you might try testing with the simiplest setup you can. For example a single computer connected directly to the NAS (if possible), standard network config (ie no jumbo frames or special settings), and disable an extra programs that might be running on the client (Anti virus, firewall, etc).

00Roush

 

[00Roush]

Not sure what your network setup is now for gigabit but I noticed in your first post you mentioned you were using port trunking... For testing you might consider just using a single connection to minimize your variables.

00Roush

 

[Privster]

Thanks for the advice mate, i am starting to think its a computer network adapter issue as i have already gone the simplest route, active backup failover etc. My transfer speeds are comparable to the tests you did on your other machine which makes sense. Im thinking that the NAS is very fast with the Samsung 7400 1tb drives in Raid 0 as when i watch it the install via the software iso mounter it seems to throw the data to the computer at the start, then slows right down to practically no throughput. As i said earlier when mounting via the NAS app no problem as its taking the workload off the client i presume.

The only other way i have found out how to do it with the computer iso mounter is by copying the the whole game iso to the machine then mounting it from there and this seems to work better, but its a bit annoying as this is another process in the installing phase i was looking to eliminate.

When i copy the iso via normal copy and paste to the client from the nas the speed is 53-55MB/s which takes approx 2mins 40secs, will i get the same performance when copying the same iso to 5 computer concurrently....?

All the software is predominately games all via iso's.

I wish somebody would make a hardware based iso mounter than can be installed in pc's with its own memory controller!!!...hehehe

 

[Privster]

Hi Roush,

Tested again by connecting the NAS direct to one of the clients, throughput for single file copy only was 60-65Mbps and directory copy was 55-57Mbps, nothing like all the reviews i have been reading.

Anymore suggestions much appreciated

Thanks.....Dave

 

[Privster]

And i forgot to add the client was Win7 not XP Pro, as all the other clients, hardware all the same as last time

 

[00Roush]

After reading your most recent posts I am really wondering where your bottleneck would be. While 65 MB/sec file copy speed is fairly good you should be able to see higher with a Windows 7 computer that has a recent SATA hard drive.

Not sure how much time you want to spend on narrowing down your bottleneck but there are some more things you can test/check.

Test out your raw network throughput between two of your Windows computers using Iperf. I generally use a command line of iperf -c 192.168.0.2 -w 64k -r. This will connect to the computer that is at IP 192.168.0.2 and test both send and receive. The server just needs the iperf -s command line. Generally you should see 800+ Mbps in each direction on a gigabit connection. Lower than that and you probably have a network bottleneck.

If you can test with a Windows 7 computer open up the resource manager ( Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\System Tools\resource manager ) and pay attention to the disk usage during a file transfer. Make sure you are testing with a file larger that is at least 1 GB in size. Also you can test hard drive speed using HD tach. Basically you want to know if your hard drive is being maxed out during your file transfer. As you mentioned the NAS is probably fine with all its drives in RAID 0 so I was thinking maybe your clients hard drive is a bottleneck.

Next on the list might be to try and use FTP to transfer files between the NAS and a client. I have found that the built in Windows FTP client is not so good so you might try out Filezilla.

Let me know how it goes.

00Roush

 

[Privster]

Thanks Roush, i will try again and report back....