XigmaNAS

I just built a new nas4free to replace an aging 8x500gb zfs2. No problems with any of the disks just running out of room. Upgraded to 6x3TB ZFS2. When transferring data to the new box I got very slow network speeds of 30-40 MB/s. I was using an Intel PCI gigabit network card in the new machinne. I then discovered that I also had a spare Intel PCI-e gigabit network card so I stopped the file transfer, swapped in the PCI-e card and was gratified to see 110 MB/Sec network transfers. This was out of the box with no system tweaks other than the native tuning options (but not zfs kernel tune).

Memory used was between 25 and 30% of 8GB during the transfer of 2.81TB of data. Processors were a Q6600 Quad core and 2500. The Q6600 showed above 85% utilisation at some points during the transfer so I'm happy that the new box has the 2500.

File transfer was done using rsync.

Just posted for information rather than to start a thread of comments.

What models are the cards? strange that two Intel have so different performances.

I believe his first card was a PCI card, hence the slower speed

Oh I see. Interesting! Standard PCI should have 3x that bandwidth.

yes buts its shared between all pci devices plus overhead