[SOLVED] Extremely SLOW Network Transfer Speeds in Virtualized Unraid.


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Hello all thanks for looking at my thread, I am tearing my hair out trying to figure this one out.

 

I am getting slow copy and read speeds on my unraid VM. Around 10-12 MB/s write at best with a cache drive. I was getting somewhere around 60-70 before.

 

SPECS:

ESXi 5 installed to a USB

Intel Core i5 2400 Quad-core

Intel BOXDQ67SWB3

Onboard Intel HD2000 graphics

Gigabit NIC built into Mobo (using chilly's driver for ESXi 5 and all of the VMs except for UNRAID)

(4x4gb)16GB DDR3 1333mhz

Corsair 750W

(500gb x 2 7200 RPM drives attached to mobo for VMFS datastore)

 

UNRAID CONFIG

Unraid 5 Beta 14 Professional - On a different USB from ESXi5 of course

Intel Gigabit 1x PCI-e NIC passed through via VT-D for UNRAID

SASLP PCI-e Sata card passed through via VT-D for UNRAID with INT13 disabled following the ATLAS tutorial for making the card work in ESXi.

2x2TB WD Green (one of these is parity)

2x2TB Seagate Green

1x1.5TB WD Green

1x1.5TB Seagate Green

1x1TB WD Black as a cache drive.

 

Troubleshooting that I have performed:

1.) Reboot the VM

2.) Reboot ESXi and all of the VMs.

3.) Power cycled the router (Apple Airport Extreme)

4.) Power cycled the switch (dlink 5 port gigabit dumb switch)

 

All computers are connected via Cat5E or Cat6 cables.

___________________

 

I swear this setup worked fine for like 2 weeks after I built it with great copy speeds and everything. Then one day I had to reboot my UNRAID to move the physical computer. When I tried to stop the array it completely hung. I waited like 4 hours to see if I could get it back before finally just manually powering it off via the vsphere client.

 

Plugins installed: unmenu, preclear, Plex 9.5.2, dropbox, iStat, PS3 Mediaserver, JRE, dynamic DNS, and SNAP.

 

All drives were precleared twice before being installed into the array.

 

When I rebooted everything seemed fine, I ran a parity check and everything passed with an average speed of 70MB/s or so. After that I tried copying a few files to a share and it was slow.

 

It doesn't seem to matter if I copy files from my desktop via gigabit ethernet to the array or if I copy files from a VM via virtualized gigabit ethernet it only writes at about 12MB/s.

 

I have no idea why but could there be a conflict between IRQ's with the PCI-e NIC and the PCI-e SASLP card?

 

Do I even need a dedicated NIC for unraid?

 

Could chilly's modded intel drive for my onboard NIC for ESXI5 be my issue since I am using that for the rest of my VM's except unraid?

 

Could passing through the USB 3.0 controller to one of my Win7 VMs cause issues or IRQ conflicts?

 

VMs:

Ubuntu 11.10 - Running a siri proxy (1 vCPU) 1GB ram

Unraid 5 B14 - (2 vCPU) 4GB ram - VT-D SASLP PCI-e card and VT-D Intel PCI-e NIC and USB flash drive with unraid

Win7 x64 - (1 vCPU) 2GB ram 

Win7 x86 - (1 vCPU) 2GB ram  - VT-D passed the USB 3.0 from the mobo to this VM

 

I think that is as much detail as I could put in this.

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It is interesting it started to happen after you physically moved it.  Bumped and dislodged something perhaps?

 

I would put the unRAID server onto the virtual switch and drop the NIC passthrough.  No real reason for it.  Back before we made the switch to 10gb at work we were running over 40 VM's out of a single 1gb NIC (with a 100mb NIC as a passive backup), chances are you won't notice a difference between the vSwitch NIC and a dedicated NIC.  ESXi has an internal switch, any VM to VM traffic stays internal to the ESX server in the virtual switch.  When you pass through a NIC to a VM you bypass this nice little feature. 

 

I would do the above regardless.  As far as the rest, start eliminating possibilities.  Shut down all other VM's and see if it still happens.  Remove the extra NIC and see if it still happens.  Remove the USB 3.0 passthrough and see if it still happens.

 

 

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Well I shutdown the array, removed the: iStat, PS3 Mediaserver, JRE, and SNAP plugins.

 

I also switched the NIC in the settings to use a virtual NIC and removed the passthrough NIC from the VM settings and started the unraid back up.

 

Copy speeds are still abysmal. :-\

 

 

That is all I can do right now since I am working remotely. When I get back this evening I can physically removed the NIC from the PCI-e slot. I'll also try not passing that USB 3.0 controller from the board through and see if it helps as well.

 

In the back of my head I'm starting to wonder if my cache drive is dying on me or something. It passed pre-clear, but it is my oldest drive in the array. I'll have to listen to it while I am copying data to it. You'd think I'd see some indication in SMART logs if it was dying though.  Should I run the extended SMART on the cache drive? How can I be sure my cache drive setup correctly?

 

 

I'll also check all of my connections for the SATA and power connections and make sure they are plugged firmly in place.

 

 

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UPDATE:

 

I finally solved it. The onboard usb 3.0 ports were conflicting with my SALSP card plugged into the 4X PCI-e slots.

 

I moved the SASLP card into the empty 16X pci-e and I have no issues now!

 

It'd probably be good to know the Model of your PCI-e SASLP just in case someone else has the same issue :D

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I'd love to be able to sit down and test to see which slots are shared on this board, but I simply can't if I want to keep the WAF (wife acceptance factor) high.

 

This box serves our media from unraid->Plex so when that's down we have no "TV".

 

It also backs up her computer, it has a VM running PC software for her that she remotes into from her Mac for work so there aren't many times in the day I can shut it down.

 

Before

16X  ___empty___________

1x  _Intel NIC_

4X  _SASLP Card ____ 

PCI  __empty____

 

After

16X  ___SASLP Card_______

1x  _empty_

4X  __empty ____

PCI  __empty____

 

So the 4X slot shares with the USB3, I'm wondering if the 1x slot also shares that same pci-e lane.

 

I mean technically the supermicro saslp and the usb 3.0 both worked installed as they were before, but it was just painfully slow to use with unraid.

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