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pvanmol
Contributor
Contributor

verry poor iscsi/nfs performance

Hi guys,

Since a while we have been toying arround with vsphere and a synology DS1010+

Outside the esx enviroment we have tested the DS1010+ and had real impressive speeds, like 800mbit/sec or more.

Now we wanted to test this in our development environment, but ever since we did that, we had major problems..

We used linksys 48ports giga switches to test, but when we saw a throughput of 20-60 mbit /sec (so not even 100 megabit lan speed), we where realy shocked...

Since we thought it was maybe the cheap linksys hardware, we implimented a cisco catalyst 24port full gigabit.

However, now, with the catalyst, DS1010+ and multiple servers (HP DL360, DL380 and ML350 servers) we still get a verry poorly performance.

Since the catalist has a basic setup, (actualy a "blanc config" just to test), and all our vmkernel's have a dedicated port (or 2) to the witch, and we know the DS1010+ is capapble of high speeds, im not so sure anymore about what to do with this...

we have tried iscsi targets and NFS targets, iscsi is even slower as NFS in our case...

does any of you had similar problem's or do you guys have any "tips" on what to do?

please give me your advice.

br,

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14 Replies
rogard
Expert
Expert

jumbos?

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pvanmol
Contributor
Contributor

Jumbo frame is not enabled / not configged

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englerconsultin
Contributor
Contributor

Are you sure you're looking at the statistics correctly? I'd be surprised to see any NAS putting out 800MB/s on a gigabit connection but I would expect to see it pushing 80-100Mbps (800MB/s is equivalent to 100Mbps, 8 bits to the byte). If your raw network speed is 100Mbps, then getting 80-100Mbps seems right for NFS and 60-80Mbps for iSCSI seems right too.

For many iSCSI implementations I've seen, high-end seems to be 80Mbps.

Best,

Rob

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pvanmol
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

i maybe i didn't make myself clear.

i meant 800 megabit per second.

so 80~90 megabytes per second.

my network is gigabit so i should be able to pump more 5 megabytes per second from the nas device.

now im not even getting 10 megabytes per second.

so i'm not even getting 100megbait lan speed...

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rogard
Expert
Expert

What protocol did you get 800Mbit from? how did you test it?

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pvanmol
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

i tested it with 2 windows servers connected to a small dlink giga switch.

mapped as a network drive. started a copy to local disks.

one server got 750 megabits according to the hp network tools and another one 800 megabits according to the hp tools.

(from the synology to Raid5 on a P400 controller

when i did a copy from it on my laptop i got 85 megabytes per second according to windows (SSD drive)

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englerconsultin
Contributor
Contributor

Here are some links that might help. First is a link showing a performance graph for a particular file size (about halfway down the page). Second is a link to Synology's forum; seems that some users had an alignment issue on certain disks that is fixed in the latest software version but applying the fix requires wiping the unit. Your mileage may vary...

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31075-new-to-the-charts-synology-ds1010

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=156&t=22719

Best,

Rob

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pvanmol
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks,

I'll check this out.

I dont think it would be an allignmen issue, but i will test tomorow.

--- oorspronkelijk bericht ---

Van: "englerconsulting" <communities-emailer@vmware.com>

Onderwp: New message: "verry poor iscsi/nfs performance"

Datum: 26 mei 2010

Tijd: 18:30:39

,

A new message was posted in the thread "verry poor iscsi/nfs performance":

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1541001#1541001

Author : englerconsulting

Profile : http://communities.vmware.com/people/englerconsulting

Message:

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mike_laspina
Champion
Champion

Hi,

80-90MB/s large block R/W is not very good at all. I have two suggestions.

1- Retest using SQLIO and a variety of I/O sizes.

2- Run iperf to see what your network can do.

I just can't see that box serving normal VM IO load well with three ESX hosts.

Expect ~30-60MB/s averages.

Regards,

Mike

vExpert 2009

http://blog.laspina.ca/ vExpert 2009
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scottlindner
Contributor
Contributor

I have the same problem with the DS1010+. I'm using it at home and have noticed outstanding performance over CIFS on a gigabit LAN but awful (something is wrong, not just slow) performance over NFS. I can scream upwards of 800Mbps for read and write around 550Mbps from the NAS on CIFS, but on NFS I'm around 5Mbps. I have seen this behavior with Ubuntu and OpenFiler as well, so I doubt it's a VMware issue. Although, just yesterday I tried using the NAS as a datastore for ESXi 4 over NFS and I couldn't get a machine to convert using vConverter. It would timeout on me due to the problem.

I haven't figured it out yet but I feel it's related to DSM on the Synology rather than VMware products or networking products.

Cheers,

Scott

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pvanmol
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

it seems to be indeed a nfs problem with esx.

I testes everything with iscsi from the same DS1010+, and i got speeds up to 800Mbps.

We have now a opensolaris with the zfs file system in test.

The speeds are stable (not like the synology which peaks and drops constantly) upt to 1000Mbps...

We are going do discontinue the synology devices, because theyre nothing else but trouble...

br,

pieter

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scottlindner
Contributor
Contributor

When you say Synology is nothing but trouble, are you referring to NFS only, or something else? Most people hold Synology is high regard for low end NAS, so I'm curious where you statement is coming from.

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pvanmol
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Im not only talking about nfs..

Iscsi performance is good, but verry unstable.

Nfs performance on other devices are way better.. its only limited to the synology devices.

Also, 1 of our devices lost 600GB of free space (realy, dissapeared, not te be found ond the disk in any file..)

Another device eats about 3 disks a month,the disks are enterprise storage from wd, 3 different suppliers, so not fromt he same batch.

nothing but trouble with these devices..

p

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rogard
Expert
Expert

Change to one of the Readynas Devices - the are "vmware ready" and only have a slight premium over your device.

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