new build a couple questions.

I just built my new unraid server using the parts in this thread:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11191.0

I am currently working on moving my data over from my whs and am seeing about 11 MB/s. does that seem right for a gigabit network?

From what I have read here, and did on initial transfers to my server, you will get much higher speeds if you unassign parity during the transfer. Once everything is moved over, assign parity and have it calculated. Since everything is on your WHS, it is still "protected" until parity is calculated.

It's on the slow side for a newer system so you should check if you are actually running gigE and not 100Mbps on one of the links.

Peter

You can run on the console or Telnet "ethtool eth0" and see what you get. Look to see what "speed" and "duplex" you are running at...

This link has some info as well on write speeds...

Shawn

I have not assigned parity yet. here is what I got when running ethtool

root@Unraid:~# ethtool eth0

Settings for eth0:

Supported ports: [ TP MII ]

Supported link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                        100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                        1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full

Supports auto-negotiation: Yes

Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                        100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                        1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full

Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes

Speed: 1000Mb/s

Duplex: Full

Port: MII

PHYAD: 0

Transceiver: internal

Auto-negotiation: on

Supports Wake-on: pumbg

Wake-on: g

Current message level: 0x00000033 (51)

Link detected: yes

What is the speed at WHS? How exactly are you transferring?

I just remoted into the whs and started the transfer using windows explorer. The above speeds are from a disk management add-in to the whs console. Is there a way to get  transfer rates from an unraid telnet session? The drive pool on whs is about 98% full.

Well, I would wonder about a program within Windows getting a very accucrate speed throughput... they still can't seem to get those percentage complete bars working right. 

But, copying via Windows Explorer will be the slowest, overhead. I use a program call Beyond Compare, some other on the forum use it and others. I installed this on my WHS server, fired it up and started copying. Got lot faster speeds on it. I think they have 30 day trial version. Also supports resume and such depends on which option you choose. Very nice.

Shawn

Well it has taken more than 5 hrs to transfer less than 300 GB of data so it can't be going very fast.

The data is transferring from WHS to your PC and then to the unRaid server. But the speed is still too slow. Check to make sure that none of the machines are connecting below 1000MBps.

Definitely not going through my mac. I rdp into the whs to do the transfer. When the transfers over I need to reboot to pick up the pro license so I will check the networking then.

It does not appear to be a network issue. everything gigabit and I am only using about 8% of my network according to task manager.

Is there a setting in unraid that I need to change to make sure its running gigabit? Ethtool says its running at a 1000Mb/s

In the unRaid settings, you can lock in your speed/dup settings, but if ethtool says you are 1000Gb/s, then that is fine. Have you tried copy data to unRaid from another system? Just copy a big file from another system to it just to test. Also, are these a lot of small files or a few large ones? This can affect your overall throughput.

Depending on your WHS setup, you could be copying a batch of files that are actually spread across a couple fo disks. I also read that turning off folder duplication can also help in transfers to/from WHS.

Shawn

It's all blurry rips that I Am moving so pretty large files. I am starting to wonder if the atom processor or the built in realtek nics are the issue. It's going to take months to move my data at this rate. I am out of town all week but when I get home I will try a large file from a different machine.

What sorts of things should I look at in the bios?

So I moved the whs so that its on the same gigabit switch as the unraid server and am getting the same results. Ping is showing 0ms anything I should check next?

I am getting about 10 MB/s with no parity drive assigned.

Well, the only things that come to mind, are try disabling the onboard nic on the unRaid server and try adding in a PCI or PCI-E nic and see if that helps, also, maybe try a different switch? Maybe that switch is the root of the problem...

You have to narrow it down and figure out which machine is the issue. Share a folder on another computer and see how quickly the WHS can push the file to that computer doing it the same way as your writes to the unRAID box. Then, see how fast you can write the file from the test computer to the unRAID box.

Make sure you don't have some other process using the same disk you are trying to copy from or copy to. for example, torrenting will kill the IO speed of a disk if you try to access it at the same time.

FYI, right at 11Mbps was the speed I consistantly got when running a 100Mbps router. Just saying the fact that your speeds are right at the expected 100Mbps speeds is why everyone is questioning your network.

What filesystem is on WHS disks and can you read them outside of the WHS array?

Peter

So I moved the whs so that its on the same gigabit switch as the unraid server and am getting the same results. Ping is showing 0ms anything I should check next?

 

I am getting about 10 MB/s with no parity drive assigned.

Is the WHS also getting a 1Gb/s link?  I once had a Netgear gigabit switch that would not play fair with one particular motherboard and would drop back to 100Mb/s when the PC was rebooted.  If I power cycled the switch it would come good again.  Not saying your switch or router is at fault, but like others I also think this is most likely a network issue.

You have to narrow it down and figure out which machine is the issue. Share a folder on another computer and see how quickly the WHS can push the file to that computer doing it the same way as your writes to the unRAID box. Then, see how fast you can write the file from the test computer to the unRAID box.

 

Make sure you don't have some other process using the same disk you are trying to copy from or copy to. for example, torrenting will kill the IO speed of a disk if you try to access it at the same time.

 

FYI, right at 11Mbps was the speed I consistantly got when running a 100Mbps router. Just saying the fact that your speeds are right at the expected 100Mbps speeds is why everyone is questioning your network.

 

What filesystem is on WHS disks and can you read them outside of the WHS array?

 

Peter

 

I think that its network as well but on the unraid side since the whs has worked flawlessly for the past few years. I did a reboot of unraid last night and now I am getting 24-25 MB/s.

I realized that I never posted a system log. It is complaining about the bios possibly being corrupt. What does that mean?

It means that you might have to flash your BIOS.  Post your syslog and let us take a look at it before taking any action.

I meant to attache it.....

unraidsyslog.zip

I have been doing some testing and I think that the issue might actually be with the nic in my whs. I have a transfer going from whs to unraid and the network maxis out at about 12.5% of the gigabit connection. I started a second file transfer from the whs to my mac and I expected the transfer rate to increase but it did not. this leads me to believe that the whs is the issue and not necessarily the unraid server. does that logic make sense?

Once I have this blu ray rip on my mac I will transfer it over to the unraid server and see if the speeds are better taking the whs out of the equation.