Slow write / transfer speeds across the board with the DS213

[kdmitchell27]

First up, hello all. I was told to check out this site after going to my normal troubleshooting spot.

So now the issue. I've got a home network setup that used to consist of 3 PC's with Windows 7 64-bit, 2 Western Digital WDTV streamers a copy of gaming consoles, a SuperMicro blade and a Synology DS212j with 2x 3GB drives. I've recently replaced the DS212j with a DS213 due to Synology's support saying I was taxing the box and it couldn't handle the load.

The Supermicro, DS213 and my main PC are all connected via a 1GB switch and I'm using new Cat5e cables I just made so they are on their one isolated environment for troubleshooting.

So the issue I have now is I've carved the DS213 up into 5 LUNS with iSCSI block and I'm transferring the content from my PC back to the SAN.... and the transfers are slllllloooooowwwwwwwww. Just as slow as they were on the DS212j. I'm ranging from 1MB/s to 20MB/s. Mind you I have 1TB in video alone to move back and it's telling me it's going to take 3 days to move it back.

The way the network is split up is I have 2 LUNS allocated to the Supermicro that is running Vmware ESXi 5 and houses two datastores on them. The other 3 LUNs are connected to a Windows 2008 VM via mapping. I then connect the WDTV devices to the shares for audio & video streaming. Pretty basic stuff.

When I started to troubleshoot this i removed all cabling from the 1GB switch except the NAS, the Supermicro and my PC. Transfers are still the same speed. I then went and got a new 10/100/1000 nic for my PC and a new switch, just to rule out hardware. The VM is set to full duplex 1000 as well as the PC. I also made sure that the vswitch in VMware was also set to full duplex 1000.

Using iperf I'm seeing some really slow transfer speeds;
From PC to NAS -
C:\>iperf -c 192.168.1.8
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.8, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[156] local 192.168.1.9 port 57199 connected with 192.168.1.8 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[156] 0.0-10.0 sec 228 MBytes 191 Mbits/sec

C:\>iperf -c 192.168.1.8
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.8, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[156] local 192.168.1.9 port 57228 connected with 192.168.1.8 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[156] 0.0-10.0 sec 244 MBytes 205 Mbits/sec

C:\>iperf -c 192.168.1.8
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.8, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[156] local 192.168.1.9 port 57273 connected with 192.168.1.8 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[156] 0.0-10.0 sec 251 MBytes 211 Mbits/sec

From NAS to PC-
DiskStation> iperf -c 192.168.1.9
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.9, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.8 port 55694 connected with 192.168.1.9 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 701 MBytes 588 Mbits/sec
DiskStation> iperf -c 192.168.1.9
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.9, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.8 port 49505 connected with 192.168.1.9 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 661 MBytes 554 Mbits/sec
DiskStation> iperf -c 192.168.1.9
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.9, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.8 port 49506 connected with 192.168.1.9 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 712 MBytes 597 Mbits/sec
DiskStation> iperf -c 192.168.1.9
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.9, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.8 port 49508 connected with 192.168.1.9 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 661 MBytes 555 Mbits/sec

As you can see that speeds from the NAS to the PC are faster, not so much from the PC to the NAS.

Going further I tested with Lantest 3 using the average, maximum and minimum throughput setting;

Average: Writing - 395.1268960 / Reading - 186.3913760
Maximum: Writing - 457.9724400 / Reading - 381.8980320
Minimum: Writing - 57.6238480 / Reading - 74.7522400

It would seem that my experience is I'm constantly on the minimum transfer in implementation. So at this point i'm at a lose, especially since that it seems that everything looks to be good. At this point I just feel that perhaps I'm maxing out this NAS as well and I don't have the funds to run out and get some along the lines of a DS1512+.

So I'm open to suggestions, ideas on this conundrum.

 

[thiggins]

The DS213 isn't much of a step up from a DS212j. From:
http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/What_kind_of_CPU_does_my_NAS_have

DS213 2 GHz Marvell Kirkwood 6282
DS212J 1.2 GHz Marvell Kirkwood 6281

What are you looking for for transfer speed? Marvell based NASes generally are in the 40 - 60 MB/s range or so for large file transfers.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/bench/1156-synology-ds413j

Can you keep it simple and just post the read/write throughput that Win7 reports for a large file drag-and-drop?

 

[kdmitchell27]

The DS213 isn't much of a step up from a DS212j. From:
http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/What_kind_of_CPU_does_my_NAS_have

DS213 2 GHz Marvell Kirkwood 6282
DS212J 1.2 GHz Marvell Kirkwood 6281

What are you looking for for transfer speed? Marvell based NASes generally are in the 40 - 60 MB/s range or so for large file transfers.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/bench/1156-synology-ds413j

Can you keep it simple and just post the read/write throughput that Win7 reports for a large file drag-and-drop?

On average I'm seeing 23-25MB/s on large transfers from the PC to NAS using block. I figured that extra MHz on the processor would help, guess not. Well at least I know what I'm using some of my taxes for next year sine I'm going to be moving a former colo server in house on Fios business class.

That said while I'm not new to NAS's I am new to the home / consumer level NAS's, I use VNX's and EMC NAS's at work and I'd love to have one of those for home =)

 

[icerabbit]

Which hard drives are you using? And in what Raid configuration?