4k sector ?

[fondy]

Hi, I am new to readynas.

I just bought an Ultra 4. At same time I bought 4 Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s, (SATA 3.0), 64MB Cache, 5900RPM, 3.5".

I installed the new discs in the new Ultra. The Ultra is using Readiator 4.2.19

I took a performance test with drag and drop a 3 gb file from and to the Ultra,and got 66 mb/s read and 31mb/s write.

Tried several times with different files at 1gb, 2gb and 3gb, and the write was the same, 29-32 mb/s

I am using Netgear GS716Tv2 as switch between the Ultra and the PC and Jumbo is on both at the Nic at the PC and at the Ultra, the switch is using 9216 at the ports.

I read this forum, and saw that low write til the Readynas could be that the disk sectors was 512bytes instead of 4K.

Under I have the partion.log. Am I using 4K sectors ?

Regards Paal

The partion.log:


***** partition output for sda *****

Disk /dev/sda: 3907029168 sectors, 1.8 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 3AC0628E-FAC3-40CF-BD2F-47CA398F55CB
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 3907029134
Partitions will be aligned on 64-sector boundaries
Total free space is 4092 sectors (2.0 MiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 64 8388671 4.0 GiB FD00
2 8388672 9437247 512.0 MiB FD00
3 9437248 3907025072 1.8 TiB FD00

Disk /dev/sda: 243201 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8257536 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 0+ 242251- 242252- 1953514583+ ee EFI GPT
/dev/sda2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty




***** partition output for sdb *****

Disk /dev/sdb: 3907029168 sectors, 1.8 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 90CE1EC8-F613-4B37-8987-9A5DF796BF9D
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 3907029134
Partitions will be aligned on 64-sector boundaries
Total free space is 4092 sectors (2.0 MiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 64 8388671 4.0 GiB FD00
2 8388672 9437247 512.0 MiB FD00
3 9437248 3907025072 1.8 TiB FD00

Disk /dev/sdb: 243201 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8257536 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 0+ 242251- 242252- 1953514583+ ee EFI GPT
/dev/sdb2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sdb3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sdb4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty




***** partition output for sdc *****

Disk /dev/sdc: 3907029168 sectors, 1.8 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): EBACBCC1-0CAB-4532-A27A-3713C343721D
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 3907029134
Partitions will be aligned on 64-sector boundaries
Total free space is 4092 sectors (2.0 MiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 64 8388671 4.0 GiB FD00
2 8388672 9437247 512.0 MiB FD00
3 9437248 3907025072 1.8 TiB FD00

Disk /dev/sdc: 243201 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8257536 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 0+ 242251- 242252- 1953514583+ ee EFI GPT
/dev/sdc2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sdc3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sdc4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty




***** partition output for sdd *****

Disk /dev/sdd: 3907029168 sectors, 1.8 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 5FB8E81B-D308-4440-9A8E-6D8BEC3D94E0
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 3907029134
Partitions will be aligned on 64-sector boundaries
Total free space is 4092 sectors (2.0 MiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 64 8388671 4.0 GiB FD00
2 8388672 9437247 512.0 MiB FD00
3 9437248 3907025072 1.8 TiB FD00

Disk /dev/sdd: 243201 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8257536 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 0+ 242251- 242252- 1953514583+ ee EFI GPT
/dev/sdd2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sdd3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sdd4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty

[fondy]

After som more investigation I see that the start sectors is:

1 64
2 8388672
3 9437248

and if the start sectors can be divided with 8, than it is 4K

1 64 / 8 = 8
2 8388672 / 8 = 1048584
3 9437248 / 8 = 1179656

Is that correct ?

regards paal

[mdgm]

Yes you have 4k sector partition alignment.

[fondy]

Thanks a lot mdgm, that was good.

regards

[mdgm]

The Ultra has always shipped with firmware that formats the drives with 4k sector partition alignment so only arrays migrated from older ReadyNAS (e.g. NVX/Pro) would possibly not have 4k sector partition alignment.

As for your performance issues how does disabling Jumbo Frames on all devices affect performance?

Are the NIC drivers up to date?

[PapaBear]

Read and write speeds on any ReadyNAS will vary depending on the drives used at each end, the operating systems used and the file structure. When copying files from my NVX to an external USB drive, I can sit and watch the file copy rates fluctuate depending only on the type of file. It seems the slowest when it hits my e-mail folder. Late in 2010, I did not tests using my then new ReadyNAS NVX equipped with 4x1TB Seagate ST31000528AS drives (it currently only has two of those plus 2xHitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 3TB drives). Because my PC at the time was a triple boot (Win7 HP 64bit, Win Vista HP 32bit 2/SP2, and XP Pro with SP3). The fastest of all three was the Win7 64bit which came as no surprise. I used two different drives in the PC, a Seagate ST3250806AS which happened to be the XP system drive (all three OS's were on separate drives, and boot drive selected by the BIOS menu) and a Samsung HD203WI 2TB drive connected to one of my eSATA ports on the PC. The PC and NVX were both connected to a Netgear GS108 switch, and the test file was a 3GB .wmv video file.

Writing to the NVX from the Seagate 250GB drive, 51MB/s. Writing to the NVX from the Samsung 2TB drive was 47MB/s.
Writing from the NVX to the Seagate 250GB drive, 71MB/s. Writing from the NVX to the Samsung 2TB drive was 99MB/s. Since this last exceeded the published specs, I ran it twice with the same result.

Using Bonnie, an x-86 addon to test performance, with the 4xST1000528AS it gave me 110MB/s with 2xST1000528AS and 2xHDS5C3030ALA630 it gave me 108MB/s. Note that this will only test the internal speeds.

The slowest write speeds to my NVX were recorded with XP Pro SP3, also not much of a surprise. Writing to the NVX from the ST3250806AS to the NVX was 36MB/s.

Don't know if this helps or not. You could also try a direct connection to ensure your switch is not slowing things down any.

[fondy]

Hi

thanks for your reply mdgm and PapaBear

I will check the Nic driver on the test PC and if update I will ran a new test.

I have testet the performance between the the Windows 7 32 bit PC and the Ultra, when it was connecting the gs716t switch and also connected the same PC directly to the Ultra.

The PC have 2GB ram, the nic is Intel 82567LM-3 Gigabit, the disk is ST91600412AS ATA

I used drag&drop and iometer (256kb), the file was 3GB :

Drag&drop connecting via the switch I got 75 mb/s read and 32 mb/s write
Iometer when connecting to the switch I got 64 mb/s read and 59 mb/s write

Drag&drop connected the PC directly to Ultra I got 61mb/s read and 31 mb/s write
Iometer connected the PC directly to Ultra I got 74 mb/s read and 81 mb/s write

regards

[fondy]

Have checked the drivers for the Nic and disk and both is up to date.

Forgot to mention that I use new Cat6 cable, both Ultra Nic is connected til the switch and has to static Ip adress

[StephenB]

Your switch collects network stats, do you see any issues there?

Note it will show you packet counts of various sizes (for instance "Packets Received > 1522 Octets"). You might check before and after each test, and confirm that jumbo frames are consistently used.

[fondy]

Thanks StephenB

when checking port statistics on the port that the Ultra is connected to on gs716t I got this:

Total Packets received without Errors: 238552331
Packets received with Errors: 0
Broadcast Packets received: 9887
Packets transmitted without Errors: 355471250
Transmit Packet Errors: 110816019

Maybe I have to disable jumbo as mgdm said and run a new test.

Write from PC to Ultra is slow but read from Ultra to PC is ok.

It is therefore strange that errors on the switch port is a lot of transmit errors and receive error is zero

[fondy]

When tested with Jumbo Frames off on the PC nic and Ultra, the port is set to 1518, the Transmit Packet Errors on the switchport is now zero.

But read and write is almost the same, no better performance

I connected the PC directly to the Ultra, Jumbo Frames is off in both. No better performance, 62.5 mb/s read and 30 mb/s write

[StephenB]

Ok. But if you get millions of transmission errors with jumbo frames on, then you are better off turning them off for now.

What PC are you using to test with? Laptops (without SSDs) often have relatively slow disk performance.

BTW, transmit statistics are from the switch's point of view - the switch is transmitting them, the NAS is receiving them (i.e. they are relevant stats for writing to the NAS from the PC). Keep an eye on them - the errors might not be related to jumbo frames.

[fondy]

Hi StephenB

I use a HP 8000 Ultra slim
Windows 7 32 bit
2 gb ram
Nic is Intel 82567LM-3 Gigabit
disk is ST91600412AS ATA

It is strange that when I am connecting the PC directly to the Ultra and not through the switch, I dont get a better performance.

[TeknoJnky]

I just bought an Ultra 4. At same time I bought 4 Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s, (SATA 3.0), 64MB Cache, 5900RPM, 3.5"

these drives are not very performance oriented, that is very likely why the write speed is relatively slow.

for best write speeds you want higher performance drives, ie 7200 rpm, not green, etc.

[fondy]

Hi TeknoJnky

Thanks for your reply

maybe it is the Seagate Barracuda discs that is the limit here with 5900rpm and low performance write from PC's to it?

I wondered of it because I have no better performance when I connected the PC directed to the Ultra

Considered to take a backup of the Ultra and resetting to factory defaults, and then test the performance