Does unraid support dual gigabit network connection?  When copying multiple files and streaming at the same time I can get chunky video, and want to eliminate network as the potential cause over hard drive speed.

 

 

Yes it does, but that is not your problem.

How do you know network isnt the bandwidth problem?

 

e.g. If I have two file copies going from different hard drives in the array, to 2 different USB 3.0 external drives, this would seem to max out my network connection?

You can put in multiple GBE, or even 10GBE, and you still will stutter if you try multiple copy operations while trying to stream, because the bottleneck is disk, not LAN.

 

Check you I/O Wait times, and you'll see.

The bandwidth of unraid is limited to a single disk speed then?

 

Can't I read from 2 different disks at the same time and max out a single Gigabit connection to my unraid server?

 

e.g. my read speed from disk is 85-90 MB/s.  Two drives then should be able to consume 170-180 MB/s. 

 

Isn't single gigabit network limited to 1000Mbit/s = 125 MB/s, making it a bottleneck and not the disks?

 

 

 

 

If you you start saturating ANY disk, you will see impact on I/O to other disks.  A caching controller with aggressive read ahead will help, but  Once IO waits start going up, is impacts practically all disk I/O.  You often don't see it on other copy jobs because if they hand for a sec, it is no big deal.  Streaming is different.

 

It's like VOIP is fine for humans and voice, but fax over a VOIP line (T.30 over G.711) will suffer dramatically poorer performance.

 

Try increasing the buffering on your playing device you are streaming to.

 

If you really want to do NIC bonding, see my thread here:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=16887.msg155145#msg155145

 

So ignoring streaming then, if I want to get the most out of my read performance when copying to multiple USB 3.0 external drives, will dual gigabit help, or it won't make a difference?

First, there are a lot of variables.  You know you can't get full GBE speed on Ethernet.  Whether you are copying large contiguous files will give you very different performance than smaller files.  You can't do NIC binding under Windows except for failover support (i.e. you can't do mode 0 to aggregate bandwidth).

 

Where are the USB drives?  On unraid?  On a Windoze host?  On multiple hosts?

Thank you for your help, greatly appreciated.  I read through some of the link you sent me, but it is over my head.

 

The files I copy are large, so they would benefit the most from NIC bonding.

 

The USB drives are 3.0 external 2 & 3TB drives, 7200RPM WD.

 

I currently use 2 different windows machines as hosts, and I could split up the external drives, 1 each.

 

I could change out 1 of the windows machines to a different OS if required.

 

 

Thank you for your help, greatly appreciated.  I read through some of the link you sent me, but it is over my head.

 

The files I copy are large, so they would benefit the most from NIC bonding.

 

The USB drives are 3.0 external 2 & 3TB drives, 7200RPM WD.

 

I currently use 2 different windows machines as hosts, and I could split up the external drives, 1 each.

 

I could change out 1 of the windows machines to a different OS if required.

 

Or just attach them to the unraid host and not worry about the network in the first place.

Last time I attached my USB 3.0 drive to unraid directly, it only ran at USB 2.0 speeds.

 

Is USB 3.0 now supported?  I am running 5.0 rc6

Yes, USB3 is supported, but all USB bridges are not the same.... some are supported but some may not be.

Previously I mounted the external drives using the NTFS-3G instructions found here:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Mounting_an_external_USB_drive_having_an_existing_NTFS_file_system_in_READ/WRITE_mode_to_transport_files_from/to_unRaid_server

 

Is this the procedure that will give me USB 3.0 support, or is there more to do?

All USB3 devices are not using the same hardware.  It depends on the hardware in your USB3 device.... some will work at USB3 speed under unRAID, some may not.  It also will depend on the USB3 host controller on your mobo.  I have:

 

   description: USB Controller
   product: uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller
   vendor: NEC Corporation
   physical id: 0
   bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
   version: 03
   width: 64 bits
   clock: 33MHz
   capabilities: pm msi msix pciexpress xhci bus_master cap_list
   configuration: driver=xhci_hcd latency=0
   resources: irq:17 memory:fd9fe000-fd9fffff

 

 

 

What command do I run to determine whether the USB 3.0 controller on my mobo is supported by unraid or not?

I'm not sure there is a way to tell, definitively.  If you have the same HW as someone else that they have determined is running at USB3 speed (i.e. me) and you have the same hardware, that is a good check.

 

You can try lsusb and see if "Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub" is listed.

When I type lsusb it responds with command not found.

Install the usbutils-002-i486-1.txz and lshw-B.02.15-i486-2mfb.txz packages.

I hope this output from lsusb is a positive sign that my USB 3.0 hardware is supported by unraid?

 

root@Tower:~# lsusb

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0781:5406 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Micro U3

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 009 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

Bus 010 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 011 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

root@Tower:~#

The xhci driver is in unRAID, so if the system is seeing it as USB3 I'm assuming the proper driver was initialized for it.

 

Get a powered USB3 hub, and test the disk I/O with hdparm.

Is the USB3 hub important, or just for convenience, versus plugging an external USB3 drive right into my server? 

I ALWAYS use powered hubs for HD devices in particular.  I have had many experiences with bad results from unpowered hubs or pluging HD devices directly into USB ports on the mobo.

 

But if you ain't got one, you ain't got one.

I will pick one up today, thank you for the advice.