Need a honest answer about the situation of Unraid an macOS

[Audio01]

Hi, I already watched a bunch of Linus Tech Tips (basically promoting it), another bunch of tutorials in YouTube (like the Spaceinvader One's). Everything looked fine and from every perspective Unraid was the best option for a DIY server. I paid my license, etc.

 

But it looks like nobody mentions the "elephant in the room": using Unraid with a Mac is practically useless.

 

The SMB transfer speeds are abysmal! And no, the problems isn't macOS.

 

For example, If I copy a folder from one Mac system to another Mac system (obviously using SMB) the transfer speed is great! Over Gigabit Ethernet it never goes down 90-100 MB/s and most of the time is over it. Trying to do the same with a SMB share in the Unraid server (a good performing Xeon computer, with fast storage) the speeds are 30-40 MB/s and stalls for periods of time. The same folder from Mac to Mac takes 1-2 hours, the same folder from Mac to Unraid server reports 10 hours or more!!! What the heck???

 

Please, I already looked for solutions everywhere. Nothing really improved the slowness.

 

I need a definitive answer, does this product (Unraid) is really compatible with macOS or should I look somewhere else?

 

Thanks!

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Audio01

[JonathanM]

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/123132-am-i-just-expecting-the-wrong-capability-from-unraid/?do=findComment&comment=1122528

 

[Audio01]

Hi, thank you for the answer.

 

Already tried that configuration, didn't change anything. Still the transfer speeds are very slow and intermittent. The transfer rate goes from a few KB/s up to 40 MB/s, and very rarely a little more. But it doesn't compare at all with transferring from a Mac to another Mac machine, or even another Windows machine for instance.

 

Any other solution? Should I try some of the 6.10 RC versions? Should I downgrade to 6.8.3? (BTW I'm on Unraid 6.9.2). Should I discard completely Unraid and look somewhere else?

 

[trurl]

Are you writing to an uncached user share on Unraid?

[Audio01]

Yes, I'm writing to an uncached user share. Which would be the problem? I'm not seeing high amounts of CPU core utilization (nothing moves over 10%) or disk throughput saturation. The culprit seems to be the SMB implementation.

 

If I copy files from a Windows machine to the same uncached user share in the Unraid server, there's no problem, the performance is ok.

 

Also the culprit is not macOS, I can copy files from a macOS machine to another and always results in top performance. The same from macOS to Windows, and vice versa. The slowness is only between macOS and Unraid.

 

Just for clarification, I'm always using SMB for all these shares/transfers.

 

[Audio01]

Just for the record, I just updated Unraid to 6.10 RC8, did some testing, nothing changed.

[JorgeB]

8 hours ago, Audio01 said:

up to 40 MB/s

Is this to the array or cache? That's about right for an array transfer without turbo write.

[1812]

17 hours ago, Audio01 said:

I need a definitive answer, does this product (Unraid) is really compatible with macOS or should I look somewhere else?

 

 

 

M1 MacBook Pro > OWC Thunderbolt Pro Doc > 10gbe ethernet cable > mikrotik 4 port 10gbe switch > direct attach copper cable > mellanox connectx-2 card > hp ml30 gen9 unraid server. 

 

 

 

file copy from the server, off a cache pool of 6 data ssd's in raid10, writing is about 100MB/s slower.

 

Reading from my spinning array gets me about 170MB/s give or take using exos drives. Writing is a little slower.

 

 

 

So, it works for me and my Mac. YMMV depending on server/client hardware specifics and tuning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[trurl]

14 hours ago, Audio01 said:

writing to an uncached user share

Writes to the parity array are somewhat slower than single disk speed due to realtime parity updates.

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Storage_Management#Array_Write_Modes

[Audio01]

13 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Is this to the array or cache? That's about right for an array transfer without turbo write.

 

What I still don't understand, why it would be a problem only with macOS? Doing the same exact transfer with a Windows machine to the same server running Unraid gives me much better performance. At least double and it doesn't stall every few seconds. When I mean stall, I'm saying that there's practically no transmission between the macOS system and the Unraid server. It just transfer a few KB/s!

Edited May 12, 2022 by Audio01

[Audio01]

5 hours ago, 1812 said:

 

 

M1 MacBook Pro > OWC Thunderbolt Pro Doc > 10gbe ethernet cable > mikrotik 4 port 10gbe switch > direct attach copper cable > mellanox connectx-2 card > hp ml30 gen9 unraid server. 

file copy from the server, off a cache pool of 6 data ssd's in raid10, writing is about 100MB/s slower.

 

Reading from my spinning array gets me about 170MB/s give or take using exos drives. Writing is a little slower.

 

So, it works for me and my Mac. YMMV depending on server/client hardware specifics and tuning.

 

 

Hi, so what's your hardware specifics and tuning for the Unraid server? I already tried all SMB configurations suggested here, no change.

 

My systems' specifications:

 

Server computer: Xeon E3-1281 v3 (3.7 GHz 4 core with Hyperthreading), 32 GB RAM, 4 x 6 TB WD Red Pro (7200 RPM drives), now running Unraid 6.10 RC8

 

macOS Client computer: Mac Pro (6,1), Xeon E5-1650 v2 (3.5 GHz 6 core with Hyperthreading), 64 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, running macOS 10.14.6 (Mojave).

 

Windows client computer: Intel Core i7 8700K (3.7 GHz 6 core with Hyperthreading), 64 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, running latest revision of Windows 10.

 

All conected with Gigabit Ethernet, using Unifi networking gear.

 

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Audio01

[ijuarez]

are you using vlans? what's the router you are using?

Edited May 12, 2022 by ijuarez

[Audio01]

Hi! the problem is not the network. I repeat: I can transfer from Windows to Windows, Mac to Mac, Mac to Windows, Windows to Mac, always saturating the Gigabit connection (100-125 MB/s).

 

The problem is only with Mac to and from Unraid server. Not any other combination, not Windows to and from Unraid.

 

I'm using a UDM-Pro router/switch, working perfectly. Not using VLANs, nothing fancy, nothing strange. Just plain interconnection between machines. The network is completely out of question, the iperf tests give complete saturation of Gigabit from and to any of the computers.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Audio01

[CS01-HS]

+1

 

Performance was much better with AFP before it was dropped (I think in 6.9)

Finder sometimes takes 10-20 seconds to list a directory with a dozen files on a cache-only share.

 

I assumed it was generally poor SMB performance in MacOS but maybe not.

I've tried all the recommended tweaks, client and server, but it's still pretty poor.

 

Relatedly, has search from MacOS clients (which hasn't worked since last November) been fixed in the recent betas?

I'd think that'd be a pretty major issue but I don't see many complaints. 

 

 

 

 

 

[spxlabs]

A bit late to this topic but I daily drive a MBP and have been using Unraid for maybe 5 or 6 years now (same time with MacOS) and I can get 1GBps transfer speeds to my Unraid server.  But I am using NVMe cache when making those file transfers.  Now, if I send data directly to the array, then yes the transfer speeds are much slower, limited by the slowest drive in your array.  Occasionally I also have to edit video off of my Unraid server's NVMe cache and that works great.

 

I almost never write any data directly to the array.  Even in Windows/Linux I have found performance to be lack luster when writing to the array.  Personally I believe the array is more for long term storage than regular access.

 

Some things that I have done in the past were to create SSD arrays and NVMe arrays and the transfer speeds were much better between MacOS and Unraid.  But the cost to have 20TB of SSD storage is way to high for me.  So I bought 4 used 1TB NVMe drives off ebay forever ago and use them as a RAID 10 cache.  Ever since then I have never even thought about slow transfer speeds anymore.

 

Of course there are some problems with this.

1.  Data in your cache isn't safe until it gets moved to the array at night

2. It can be expensive

3. You will probably want a UPS to protect your Unraid server from random power outages while your data is in the cache

 

If you have any specific questions about MacOS and Unraid I will do my best to answer them.

[1812]

20 hours ago, Audio01 said:

 

Hi, so what's your hardware specifics and tuning for the Unraid server? I already tried all SMB configurations suggested here, no change.

 

My systems' specifications:

 

Server computer: Xeon E3-1281 v3 (3.7 GHz 4 core with Hyperthreading), 32 GB RAM, 4 x 6 TB WD Red Pro (7200 RPM drives), now running Unraid 6.10 RC8

 

macOS Client computer: Mac Pro (6,1), Xeon E5-1650 v2 (3.5 GHz 6 core with Hyperthreading), 64 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, running macOS 10.14.6 (Mojave).

 

Windows client computer: Intel Core i7 8700K (3.7 GHz 6 core with Hyperthreading), 64 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, running latest revision of Windows 10.

 

All conected with Gigabit Ethernet, using Unifi networking gear.

 

 

 

I already listed my hardware specs.

 

So moving on:

 

Firstly, don't write to the array. If you have to, make sure you're on reconstruct write. For cache use ssd/nvme cache disks if you want fastest performance.

 

second, see here:

 

 

Try that and see if your experience changes. *Note* I don't have this setting on anything but a fast network share. The speeds I posted yesterday are just a a basic share that uses a cache drive. 

 

[bjdraw]

I was having the same problem and found this thread useful. Thank you.

 

For me the fix was adding a 1TB NVMe cache drive. Making only that change eliminated errors when writing data from my Macs to the unRAID nas. It also fixed Time Machine.