I'm going to be moving my server from my LIAN LI PC-Q25B (currently holding 5 drives) to a Rosewill RSV-L4411. A rackmount with 12 hot-swappable drives at the price point seems like a better deal than any alternative with a tower. The only thing I'm not sure about is if I should upgrade my C60M1-I. This board has done just fine with the five drives I'm currently using, but would it be able to handle 12? This server is used purely for storage. I think a few portable apps are run off the server, but aside from that it is mostly used to store high quality media and important files. Will I need to upgrade my motherboard or would I even see any sort of performance gain?

If you're strictly using it for NAS duty, with no CPU-intensive applications (e.g. transcoding with Plex, etc.), then the CPU should be fine for a dozen drives.

 

The motherboard has a PCIe x4 (x16 physical, x4 electrical) slot, so you can easily add an 8-port SATA card so you can support all the drives you want.  That's all you need to buy (and of course the requisite cables).

 

This would be a good card:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101358

 

What cables you need depend on how the backplane on the case is configured.  It looks like that case uses individual SATA connectors, so you'll probably need 2 of these:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116097

 

Alright, as long the board won't be acting as a bottleneck in any way, that's good. I guess that leads up to my followup question then: I was wondering if 24MB/s is a resonable transfer speed on unRAID? I was told my CPU was the reason for the relatively low speed on a gigabit network. Someone else said that it was a normal speed but the addition of a SSD would improve transfer rates. Some clarification would be appreciated.

No, 24MB is NOT a good speed.    Is this your read or write speed?

 

Also, what drives do you have attached?

 

As a point of comparison, I get 30-35MB write speeds, and over 100MB read speeds on a Gb network with my Intel Atom-based server using 3TB WD Red drives.    The CPU performance of an Atom D525 is a bit more than 50% higher than your C60, but I would not expect that to make things appreciably slower.

 

But it IS possible.  I do NOT think that adding more drives will make it worse, however, as except for parity checks and drive rebuilds, the system isn't any busier with 12 drives installed than with 2 (unless you have a lot of simultaneous external accesses).

 

But to really understand why you're getting those speeds, you need to post your system's configuration details (how many drives, and the make/model of them).

 

Well, currently I have 5 drives (1 parity and 4 storage). They are all 3TB Seagate drives. The exact model is this one: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000DM001/dp/B005T3GRLY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373602384&sr=8-1&keywords=seagate+3TB

 

The server is directly wired to the router (ASUS RT-N65U) while every other computer is wired with a 500Mbps Netgear Powerline. All computers including the desktop wired to the router expierence the same speeds. I mean it's enough to stream even my most rigorous files, but it just doesn't seem to be the same as what other people are getting. Also the read/write speeds are the same. Whether I'm copying to or from the server I get about 24MB.

 

EDIT: Don't know if this is relevant, but my last parity check averaged at 74.6 MB/sec

Those drives should give far better performance than you're seeing.  In addition, your read performance should be MUCH better than your write performance ... so it seems that you have a network bottleneck at 24MB/s.

 

Are you using Cat-5, Cat-5e, or Cat-6 cables to connect the UnRAID server to the router?

...  have you tried using a different router port?

...  have you tried a different Ethernet cable?

 

SOMETHING is bottlenecking your performance ... and since the read and write speeds are identical, I suspect it's the network -- NOT the actual UnRAID box.

 

Your parity check speed doesn't have any bearing on how fast the network transfers are, but it does show two things:  (a)  the system can handle data rates FAR faster than the streaming speeds you're seeing; and (b) the CPU apparently can't keep up with the maximum possible data rates during a parity check with the high-capacity, high-areal-density drives you have.  This will, of course, also be true if you add additional drives ... but as I noted before, your performance should be basically the same it is now except for potentially longer parity check times.

 

But I'd do the upgrade you want;  THEN consider whether or not to upgrade the motherboard.    You'll still need an add-in controller; so there's no disadvantage to using your current motherboard initially.  If you can resolve your network speed issue you'll likely be much happier with its performance.

 

Everything is wired with CAT6 cables. Before I upgraded to a gigabit router I was dealing with 2MB/s, so 24MB/s was actually impressive for me. Is there some sort of settings that I should mess with on my router. Everything is running off the default settings and my network isn't setup that complex. I have no clue was exactly could be the source of this bottleneck. I'll try playing around with the wiring, but I doubt it's something that simple. There's a lot of cables near the router, perhaps some sort of interference?

 

That aside, I guess it wouldn't hurt to upgrade my motherboard. Mostly because with the C60M1-I the CPU is integrated. Upgrading will at least give me some headroom for the future. Any recommendations for a decent board, nothing over the top, that I can pair up with a decent CPU for purely NAS purposes?

Everything is wired with CAT6 cables. Before I upgraded to a gigabit router I was dealing with 2MB/s, so 24MB/s was actually impressive for me. Is there some sort of settings that I should mess with on my router. Everything is running off the default settings and my network isn't setup that complex. I have no clue was exactly could be the source of this bottleneck. I'll try playing around with the wiring, but I doubt it's something that simple. There's a lot of cables near the router, perhaps some sort of interference?

 

Okay, CLEARLY something is amiss with your network topology or settings.  With a 100Mb router you should have had ~ 11MB/s speeds for both reads and writes, since that's the limit of a 100Mb connection (and it's slower than UnRAID's write speed, so the bottleneck isn't UnRAID).    Note that this could NOT have been your CPU, since you're now seeing speeds FAR above 11MB (even if they are too slow).

 

Do you happen to have a gigabit switch?  If so, try connecting BOTH the UnRAID system AND a PC with a gigabit NIC to that switch .. and see if copying things from UnRAID to the PC are any better.

 

If not, what is the make/model of the router you're using?

 

 

That aside, I guess it wouldn't hurt to upgrade my motherboard. Mostly because with the C60M1-I the CPU is integrated. Upgrading will at least give me some headroom for the future. Any recommendations for a decent board, nothing over the top, that I can pair up with a decent CPU for purely NAS purposes?

 

For a pure NAS, I'm VERY happy with my SuperMicro Atom D525 board:  http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-X7SPA5

 

Runs VERY nicely;  rock-solid; writes are over 30MB/s; reads over 100MB/s;  parity checks (on 6 3TB WD Reds) are about 108MB/s.    AND it's VERY efficient ... my power draw when the drives are spun down is ~ 20 watts        I have not used it with more than 6 drives;  but there shouldn't be any issues with the possible exception of slightly slower parity check speeds.  Obviously with an add-in card the idle power draw will be higher, but I'd still expect it to be quite low.

 

If you want something with more "horsepower" ...    I haven't used this board for UnRAID, but I built a system with it for a friend and it works nicely:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131832

 

Has 6 SATA ports, and a couple PCIe x16 slots (one at x4 electrical) ... so it will support the same add-in card I suggested earlier.

 

An i3-3225 would provide PLENTY of "horsepower" for anything you might want to run in UnRAID.

 

 

The server is directly wired to the router (ASUS RT-N65U) while every other computer is wired with a 500Mbps Netgear Powerline.

Isn't this likely to be the problem...?  I bet you don't see anything like 500Mbit/sec through it.  The 500M figure is an ideal, likely seldom to be achieved in practice.

 

As suggested above, try cabling one of the PCs to the a port on the router (or via a separate switch) and then see what speeds you get to/from that PC.

 

Isn't this likely to be the problem...?

 

I had the same thought UNTIL I carefully read the entire paragraph.  Note the following sentence (after your quote):  "All computers including the desktop wired to the router experience the same speeds."

 

... in particular, note "... including the desktop wired to the router ..."

 

I DO, however, agree that the powerline setup could somehow be involved.

 

anime513 ==>  The ONE performance parameter you've noted that does indeed indicate that your motherboard/CPU is a small bottleneck on performance is the parity check speeds.  And even this may just be a matter of adjusting the "tunable" parameters.  So before changing out the motherboard, you should isolate WHY the network performance is throttled so much.

 

Try this:  Disconnect EVERYTHING from your router (internet, powerline adapter, etc.) EXCEPT the UnRAID server and your desktop PC.    Then copy a reasonably large file (at least a few hundred MB) from the server to your PC and see what kind of speed you get.  BEFORE you do this copy, use the Web GUI to spin up all drives, so drive spinup time isn't a factor in the speed.

 

Just realized you have never indicated your system configuration.

 

(a)  How much memory do you have installed in the system?

 

(b)  What version of UnRAID are you running?    If anything except v5RC16c, upgrade to that BEFORE doing any more testing ... you may simply have the problem from earlier versions that caused slow transfers with systems with > 4GB installed !!  [That's been fixed in RC16c, along with quite a few other issues]

 

Isn't this likely to be the problem...?

I had the same thought UNTIL I carefully read the entire paragraph.  Note the following sentence (after your quote):  "All computers including the desktop wired to the router experience the same speeds."

 

... in particular, note "... including the desktop wired to the router ..."

 

I wondered if the OP might have considered the Powerline connections as wired...

Ok, I upgraded my system from 5.06 to the latest version. While that didn't resolve the speed issue, I was able to isolate the issue to a bad cable. I replaced the cable going from the router to the server and now am seeing speeds similar to the parity check (~80MB/s). The computers with powerline adapters are still about the same, but that's to be expected.

...  I was able to isolate the issue to a bad cable. I replaced the cable going from the router to the server and now am seeing speeds similar to the parity check (~80MB/s).

 

As I asked in the first post when we discussed the speed issue:  "... ...  have you tried a different Ethernet cable?"   

 

Network speed issues are almost always (a) a bad cable or connector;  (b) a bad NIC; or © a bad port on a switch or router.    They can also be parametric issues in the driver, but the vast majority of time it's one of those 3 things.

 

At this point, I'd move your setup to the new case; get an add-in SATA card; and see if the performance notably degrades.    I do NOT expect that it will ... but there MAY be a slight degradation in the parity check performance.

 

If you want to try them now, we can discuss the tunable parameters that may impact your parity checks ... or you can wait until you've moved it and have the new card installed and do it then.