Raidz2 4+2 NAS

[dimnt]

Hi All,

I was trying to stay away from large data capacities for a while but it gets more and more time consuming to manage digital content and backups on a workstation. So I decided to bite a bullet and build a NAS server. For me it should have certain lever of redundancy that is why I went with Raidz2.
So here it is:
MB: Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H (inexpensive and has 8 native SATA3 ports)
CPU: AMD A6-5400K Dual-Core, 3.6GHz, 1Mb Cache
RAM: 8Gb DDR3
NIC: Intel® PRO/1000 T Server Adapter
Case: NZXT H2
PSU: Enermax 385W (40A on 12V rails) 82+
HDD: 6x2Tb WD Greens with idle set to 300s. Ordered 2+2+1+1 from different places of the North America.
NAS4Free: Embedded on 16Gb Kingston USB stick.
Server connected to Asus rt-n66u through Cat-5e

What else? So far no tuning been done except for setting kmem and arc in loader.conf

rps20130916_090659_916.jpg

Done some copying yesterday for a large video files. Hit the wall at 60MB/s (honestly expected faster speed).

two_smb_and_ftp_sessions.jpg

[hotalot]

Seems good, but is your ram ECC? If not you have a single point of failure, if memory get corrupted you can lose your pool. Another thing, you can use the smallest usb stick you can find, 16GB is too big - no problem with the size just it is wasted money.

The speed you are getting may be caused by the onboard nic (Realtek, is not it?). Using an Intel nic can improve speed.

[dimnt]

No ecc support for any FM1 or FM2 CPUs unfortunately.

On board nic is disabled. I am using pci Intel Pro card. I'll try to play with parameters. My NAS is 1 day old but if you guys have any suggestions where to look first (power options, asynch, prefetch, etc ...) please share them.

[b0ssman]

please read
http://forums.freenas.org/threads/so-yo ... ons.12276/

if the nic is really pci you are limiting your performance. the entire pci bus is limited to a theoretical 133 mbyte/sec.

[dimnt]

please read

Good reading, thanks. If i would be 100% sure that having ECC and server mobo would eliminate backups I'd go for it. But don't you think it is better to invest 300$ difference into backup down the road?

if the nic is really pci you are limiting your performance. the entire pci bus is limited to a theoretical 133 mbyte/sec.

It is pci. But would not mind hitting pci bus limit. Having 60Mb/s is nowhere near that limit.
edit: Checked pci-e adapters. All of them are for x1 slot. I could be wrong but x1 = pci speed. I know pci-e is dedicated channel but I do not have anything else on my pci bus except for network card.

[b0ssman]

pcie x1 1.0 is 250 MB/s
pcie x1 2.0 is 500 MB/s

try the onboard realtec card for comparison

[siftu]

I could be many things.. I have some tips you can read to track down your bottleneck

http://n4f.siftusystems.com/index.php/2 ... leshooting

[Lee Sharp]

please read
http://forums.freenas.org/threads/so-yo ... ons.12276/

if the nic is really pci you are limiting your performance. the entire pci bus is limited to a theoretical 133 mbyte/sec.

That is the bandwidth for 33mhz PCI, which I doubt you can even find anymore.

A good synopsys is here... http://superuser.com/questions/67425/pci-max-throughput

PCI 32-bit, 33 MHz: 1067 Mbit/s or 133.33 MB/s
PCI 32-bit, 66 MHz: 266 MB/s

SATA (SATA-150): 150 MB/s
SATA II (SATA-300): 300 MB/s
SATA III (SATA-600): 600 MB/s
Fast Ethernet (100base-X): 11.6 MB/s
Gig-E (1000base-X): 125 MB/s

[b0ssman]

the pci slots on nearly all consumer motherboards are 32-bit, 33 MHz:

for 66 mhz and above the nick on the slot has to be in the front.
for more than 32 bit the slot is longer.



see this picture, PCI-X 64 bit
http://www.planet3dnow.de/artikel/hardw ... _slots.jpg

[Lee Sharp]

Amusingly enough, most 64 bit cards will plug into a 32 bit slot and work if there is enough room in the case. I have put a bunch of these in old Wyse WinTerms for firewalls. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-2-Dell-P ... 1056815431 (Dell Poweredge 2850 Intel Dual Port Gigabit Network Card)

Do not expect full speed out of them in an old Wyse based system.

[slaycock]

Where are you copying from. If it is from a single disk in another PC then the bottleneck is likely the single hard drive which is the source of the copy. You can test your network performance using iperf and disc performance using dd. If you search in this forum you will see posts about these activities.