upgraded to v5 and I want to try network bonding

[optiman]

I read in the v5 threads that we can now turn on bonding and combine two gig lan ports.  That should just about double the server network bandwidth.  Of course you have to have a network switch that supports that to make it work.

 

My mb only has one nic, so I would like a recommendation on what addon nic card I can add.  My specs below in sig.

 

I was thinking I would get a card that had two nics on it, and just disable the onboard.

 

 

[mr.sparkle]

Are you seriously hitting 125MB/s read-write on the NIC you have now that you're looking to increase your bandwidth?

[optiman]

No, not yet.    I have all gig switches now will be doing some testing.  Also looking at moving to nfs because I read in some thread they were getting faster speeds with nfs than smb.

 

I get in the high 80's right now - when doing a copy to my win 7 rig.

 

The main issue is not so much top speed.  I use my unraid server for Plex and we now have ipads, my popcorn hour, HTPC - all watching different movies - all at the same time - on the unraid / pms server.  Using bonding would help the server side, at least that is how I understood it.

 

If there was no improvement, why would Tom add this feature?

 

 

[garycase]

First, you'll need a pair of NICs that support bonding.

Something like this will provide that capability:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106014

 

Some Realtek-based boards with dual NICs support teaming the adapters in the Windows driver;  I don't know if there are Linux drivers for that or not.

 

Second, as noted above, it's very unlikely that you can sustain data at a rate faster than a single Gb rate except for outer cylinder reads from 1TB/platter drives.    It is, of course, true that if you have multiple users simultaneously accessing different disks on the array, that you could see some benefit from NIC bonding.    But otherwise this seems more an academic exercise than an actual performance enhancement.

 

[garycase]

The main issue is not so much top speed.  I use my unraid server for Plex and we now have ipads, my popcorn hour, HTPC - all watching different movies - all at the same time - on the unraid / pms server.  Using bonding would help the server side, at least that is how I understood it.

 

Every 5 or 6 simultaneous streams isn't going to tax a Gb network.    Where you'd notice a real difference with bonding is if you were doing several simultaneous COPIES from the array with data sourced on different disks.    But streams are effectively throttled by the data rate of the video you're playing.    I can easily play 5 different videos on various devices around the home with no problems on my Gb network ... with bandwidth to spare.

 

 

If there was no improvement, why would Tom add this feature?

 

Because he could 

... and also because folks have in fact asked for it.

[optiman]

wow, doesn't sound like its worth it.  I do copies, but only from my win7 machine (which only has 1 nic too.  It would be great to reach speeds above 120 when doing a copy from my win7 to my unraid.

 

Thanks for the info, helps a lot.

[garycase]

It would be great to reach speeds above 120 when doing a copy from my win7 to my unraid.

 

If you're copying to the protected array, you're NEVER going to get even close to Gb speed (120) ... let alone a faster speed.

 

If, on the other hand, you have a SATA-III SSD for your cache drive, then you should be able to get significantly faster copies to UnRAID from your Windows 7 box IF you had teaming NICs on both the Win7 box and your UnRAID server.

 

But the reality is that it's not worth the bother      Completely unnecessary for streaming (the primary use for many of us);  and irrelevant if you're writing to the protected array (which a lot of us always do);  and of minimal benefit even if you're writing to a high-speed cache drive (120Gb/s is plenty fast for the vast majority of transfers !!).

 

[optiman]

Ok, thanks.  I won't bother with the bonding stuff.

 

So what protocol do you use and how fast of copy speeds can I expect with my existing setup, if dialed in?  I get mostly 50's to 80's, with the average in the middle.  Seems to matter if files are one large vs. several small files. 

[garycase]

My clients are all Windows clients (SMB).

 

Copying TO the array is typically ~ 35MB/s ... limited by the need for 4 disk I/O's per write to maintain parity (I don't use a cache drive ... I want everything I write to UnRAID to be fault tolerant)

 

Copying FROM the array I typically get 90-110MB/s ... occasionally 120MB/s.      My drives are all 1TB/platter 3TB WD Reds.    Drives with lower areal density will be somewhat slower.

 

[optiman]

I never hit 120 and I'm using smb.  Seems that I'm leaving something on the table here, as I should be seeing better speeds with my existing setup.

[garycase]

I never hit 120 and I'm using smb.  Seems that I'm leaving something on the table here, as I should be seeing better speeds with my existing setup.

 

Are your disks 1TB/platter disks?  ... at BOTH the UnRAID end and in the PC you're copying to?

 

What speeds do you get copying between two PCs on your network?  (NOT involving UnRAID)

 

[electron286]

  Just a quick note on speed performance... I have various unRaid builds, on various hardware.  I have now fully switched my NICs in my unRaid servers from realtek Gb to Intel Gb NICs.  Running speed tests to and from Windows clients, also running Intel Gb NICs in ALL of these specific tests, I was able to get a very consistent speed increase FROM the unRaid servers of 5-15%, depending on the drives and other hardware.  Write speeds to the unRaid servers were pretty much un-affected due to the parity writing overhead and calculations.

 

  One more thing, I ONLY use SMB...

[garycase]

I've also found that Intel NICs tend to provide better ... and, more importantly, more consistent ... speeds.    I DO have one system with a Realtek NIC that easily maintains 120MB+ transfers when the source can sustain it ... so it's maxing out the Gb connection;  but on systems where I couldn't do that, I've always been able to improve their speed by adding an Intel NIC.

 

... and I also only use SMB

 

[optiman]

Ok, thanks guys.  I will buy a Intel addon nic card with dual ports.  That way I can disable the onboard and also play with the bonding feature.

 

I also need to do some testing without unraid, good point to confirm there isn't a slow switch in the mix somewhere.

 

any recommendations on a addon card brand / model?

 

I was looking at this one,

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=A2165191&ST=pla&dgc=ST&cid=262075&lid=4742361&acd=12309152537461010

 

It's made by Intel.

 

Oh, and I just realized that my nic chipset on my evga mb in my main Win7 rig, is Realtek, so I was going from Realtek to Realtek.  I will now buy two addon cards, one for unraid server and one for my main pc.  That should fix things up. 

[StevenD]

Dont spend that kind of money!  Ive been buying these and they work just fine in unRAID and ESXi.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-EXPI9402PT-Pro-1000-PT-DELL-X3959-Dual-Port-PCI-E-x4-Server-Adapter-/171119497681?pt=US_Internal_Network_Cards&hash=item27d78451d1

 

[optiman]

cool, thanks.  If that will get top speeds, great!  Why the hell is the other card so much more?  Looks like the specs are the same WTF?

[StevenD]

cool, thanks.  If that will get top speeds, great!  Why the hell is the other card so much more?  Looks like the specs are the same WTF?

 

The cards I listed are used, but I don't really care.  NICs don't go bad that often.

[optiman]

so where can I find out what the different bonding modes are, basically, which one should I select?

 

I have Intel dual nic card now running and configured on the switch side and the only thing left is to enable bonding and select the mode.

 

Thanks!

[StevenD]

so where can I find out what the different bonding modes are, basically, which one should I select?

 

I have Intel dual nic card now running and configured on the switch side and the only thing left is to enable bonding and select the mode.

 

Thanks!

 

It really depends on what your swicth supports. Mine all support 802.3ad, so that's what I run.

[optiman]

I have the Cisco / Linksys SLM2008 and uses LAG.  I don't see that one in the list on unraid.

[dgaschk]

Any 2 NICs can be used for bonding. I've configured bonding of 3 different NICs: one onboard, one Intel, and one cheap random NIC. It's all done in software, so as long as the NIC works by itself it can be included in bonding.

[optiman]

I found a post by BubbaQ where he explains that mode 0 is the correct settings to join two nics for increased in bandwidth (1gig + 1gig = 2 gig).  Therefore I turned on bonding with mode 0.

 

Before with one Realtek nic, I tested my setup and I used a mkv movie file about 7gb in size.  The copy from Win7 to unraid gets me 60,000 kbytes/s

Going from my unraid to my Win 7 gets me 116,000 kbytes/s

 

After turning off the onboard Realtek and adding a dual Intel nic card with bonding, I'm getting 85,000 to 113,000 kbytes/s - with most copies reaching the 113k number - this is going from Win7 to unraid.  Going from my uraid to Win7 I'm still getting about 116,000 kbytes/s.

 

I also noticed that I can reach good copy speeds even while streaming a movie or two, where before that would choke me down.  So the bottom line is bonding does help and my copy speeds are better.  I just had to turn on LAG on my switch.