Hey all,

 

Let me thank you for the help in advance, the few times I've needed this forum, everyone has always been a great help. I have been running unraid for a long time, I think around 3-beta3. My data has persisted through 3 drive failures, a motherboard failure, a complete server rebuild, 3 house moves, and 20 or so unraid upgrades. While this is amazing, and the reason I bought and loved unRaid in the first place, I can't help but think about all the hack scripts, and drive settings I've been through over the years, and since I really haven't done much between 5 beta(something) and the newest version I installed yesterday, I want to see how people would proceed to get the best performance I can.

 

It is quite possible that my system is setup just fine but to check:

 

Currently all of my drives use reiserfs, I am not sure if I should find a way to get the entire array converted to XFS

Parity-check speed after 10 minutes is 79.5

Transfer from unRaid (gigabit connected) to my windows 10 box (ssd, n900 connected) is ~9 MB/s, transfer to unRaid is ~ 9 MB/s

Transfer from unRaid (gigabit connected) to my macbook pro (ssd, 802ac connected) is ~18 MB/s, transfer to unRaid is ~10 MB/s

Transfer from unRaid (gigabit connected) to my windows 7 dell laptop (HDD, gigabit connected) is ~60 MB/s, transfer to unRaid is ~60 MB/s

Transfer from unRaid (gigabit connected) to my mackbook pro (ssd, gigabit connected) is ~78 MB/s, transfer to unRaid is broken, momentary spikes to 90 MBs, then would drop to 5MB, it probably averaged 12MBs, something else might have been wrong here, I was assuming I would get 60-80 MB/s

 

So I have been out of the unRaid game long enough, that I am not sure if these are good speeds, is the filesystem right, or what next steps to take.

 

I used to use my system to store all of the rips of the DVDs I owned and stream them to my HTPC WMC+MyMovies. Now in a new day and age, I am planning to rip all of my blu rays (specifcally the kids movies) in full glory with MakeMVK and then stream them (hopefully via a decent connection with the new powerline adapters I just bought) to the xbox one in the theater room, and the PS 4 in the living room both using plex (PHaZe plex plugin on my unraid box without trans-coding if possible). So any advice on anything I should do next for speed/quality/better workflow would be greatly appreciated.

 

I did notice the new cache/cache pooling features the last time I upgraded, so after some reading last night I grabbed two 480 GB sandisk Ultra II SSDs. Currently my plan is the put them in a cache pool, have all writes go there then be moved to the array later. I will also be cutting probably half of the cache pool to put docker instances on, not sure what I am going to use them for just yet mainly for fun since i will have the space! Now on the other hand, if there is some other way i can use the SSD's (since i will not be write capped at all on AC,N, or powerline more than likely) please let me know. Also if they are just a waste of money and I should send them back and for the same price just get 2 or 3 good 4/5TB standard drives and boost my total space by up to almost 13 TB let me know as well.

 

System Specs:

CPU: Intel® Core™ i3-4340 CPU @ 3.60GHz

M/B: ASRock - Z87 Extreme4

HVM: Enabled

IOMMU: Disabled

Cache: 128 kB, 512 kB, 4096 kB

Memory: 4096 MB (max. installable capacity 32 GB)

Network: eth0: 1000Mb/s - Full Duplex

Parity WDC_WD20EARS-00MVWB0_WD-WMAZA0423072 - 2 TB (sdb)

Disk 1 WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ0335272 - 1 TB (sdd)

Disk 2 WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ0347711 - 1 TB (sde)

Disk 3 WDC_WD20EARS-00MVWB0_WD-WMAZA0656127 - 2 TB (sdc)

Disk 4 ST3320620NS_5QF3CSZS - 320 GB (sdg)

Disk 5 WDC_WD5000AAKS-00YGA0_WD-WCAS84477191 - 500 GB (sdh)

Size: 6.82 TB

Free: 3.91 TB

 

Thanks again

oxide

 

Some of those transfer speeds sound like a bad network connection has degraded to 100mb ethernet. Maybe replug or replace cables.

trurl,

 

Just wanted to point out, the first 2 tests are from wireless connected clients (the unraid is gigabit), so aside from the issue with the macbook pro gigabit upload (not sure on that one), I am not sure the transfer is all that off. A single gigabit port can do a maximum at perfect conditions of 125 MB/s, I don't have a good test yet (until I have the cache drives) of what full transfer from gigabit to gigabit (no parity) would be. But in relation to 100mb Ethernet, the max theoretical speed would only be 12.5 MB/s so I don't think the connection itself degraded or that the cables are an issue. The parity-check ran at ~80 MB/s, I assume that is the maximum my array can currently write, I am not sure that is good or not...looking for input here. If I am not mistaken on my conversions I don't think I complain if I could get anywhere between 80-100 MB/s from a hardwired client (and hopefully 25+ over the powerlines). My over-arching goal would be to be able to stream 2 different full quality blu-ray rips from unraid over the network with no slow down, but I also want to make sure my unRaid is configured for optimal performance if for no other reason than "it should be so"

 

If I am wrong on any of this, please someone let me know =)

 

Thanks,

You parity check speed will be limited by controller bottleneck or slowest disk, I assume you’re using onboard SATA for all disks so no issues there, slowest disk used will be real limit, e.g, during the first 320GB it will be limited by the Seagate’s speed, which should start at around 80MB/s and end at 50MB/s, after that it should improve a little but not much because it will be reading the WD’s 500GB inner tracks, your other disks are also not very fast so I would expect an average speed of about 75MB/s

 

Using slower disks will also affect read and write speeds, you won’t be able to do full gigabit speed (~114MB/s) reading from slowest disks, depending from which disk you’re reading/writing I would expect from 60 to 110Mb/s for reads and 25 to 40Mb/s for sustained writes, write speed will be higher for a few seconds at start while Unraid caches to RAM.

 

Note also that writing to Reiserfs disks in V6 causes erratic (see saw) speeds, although in my tests actual copy time is similar to XFS.

 

You should still be able to stream 2 simultaneous blurays, although slower disks could struggle if both streams are being read from same disk.

 

Best way to improve performance would be to replace disks by newer models, you can also add a cache disk to improve write speed.

 

By far the best performance you could make in your overall network is to run Ethernet cable so all of your clients are wired instead of wireless.

 

But as long as they can stream glitch-free, that's not really necessary ... although if you're trying to stream 2 BluRays and both are sharing wireless bandwidth you may have an issue.

 

As for the system itself -- as already noted, it sounds like you have a cable issue with the wired MacBook Pro => most likely one pair has a continuity problem, which is causing it to drop to 100Mb speeds (You indicated it is averaging around 12MB/s, which is right or a 100Mb connection.    It could, however, also be a defective switch port, which can have exactly the same behavior.    Note also that it's common for this to only impact transfers in one direction -- it depends on which wire isn't making contact (or is sporadic).

 

Johnnie's already noted the restrictions you'll have because of the low areal density of your drives -- I wouldn't expect any issues streaming one or two movies anyway, but it's hard to say -- especially if both movies are very high bit-rate BluRays and they're on the same slow disk.

 

I don't really see much benefit in having two 500GB SSD cache drives for your config.  It seems like a lot of money that could be better spent else ware like on larger and more modern array drives.  Even a WD GREEN drive can read and write faster than gigabit network.  You could get a 1TB spinning hard drive for cache and then two or three 5TB hard drives for the "array" and parity.  You'd have more space than you do now and everything would be fast.

 

craigr 

Thanks Guys!

 

Here are my two options now, same line and radical change :

 

First Option, expand current unRaid

Note: note the 480 GB SanDisk Ultra II were on sale for 133each

2x 1TB cache pool drives (Its worth an extra 50 to make sure the pool is protected, and there are no price points for smaller drives that make sense)

-- 1TB Toshiba DT01ACA100 32MB cache @ 49.95 or

-- 1TB WD Blue 64MB cache (2015) 54.99

2x New 4 or 5 TB drives to add the array, retiring the 320GB 500GB very old HD's

-- 5TB Toshiba MD04ACA500 7200RPM @ 144.99

-- 4TB WD Blue (2015) 5400 RPM @ 134.99

 

Depending on which big drives I take, i would end up with 12 or 14 TB usable array, and 2x1TB drives in my cache pool.

 

Second crazy option, thanks to the limetech blog:

 

Let me start this by saying I have a windows 10 gaming rig from a few years ago, I barely game anymore on it. So If I could condense my NAS, plex server and gaming rig on the same box, there would deff be some power saving, and one less computer to manage for a little monetary cost and a slight degradation in gaming performance. Here is the hardware I would have to put the build together:

Choice of MB: ASRock - Z87 Extreme4 or MSI x79a-gd45 plus - I'm leaning towards using the ASrock (more sata, usb and built-in video will save me from buying a new discrete card)

Ram: 16GB of DDR3, i  will not be able to go over 16GB if I stay with the ASRock as my kits are 4x4 and 2x2 and the ASRock only has 4 slots

Proc: i7-4820k (has vt-d for IOMMU, will retire the i3-4340)

Cooling: Corsair Hydro H100i, if I want lots of drives and this, I will have to do some modifications or swap my gaming case to the Thermaltake Armor, maybe retiring my icydocks =/

Video: Nvidia Geforce 770GTX, I plan on leaving this alone, I will only buy a cheap 2nd video card if I need to use the MSI MB without any built in video

Power:  SeaSonic X-1250

 

Cache Pool Drives:

My gaming machine does not run redundant drives currently, so while that would be nice, I could actually invest nothing here and just use my 256GB SSD as a standalone cache pool drive. Or I could keep one of the 480GB SanDisk ultra ii drives, then either use that or build a weird slow pool where the 480 and 256 are together, but it would be 256GB and only as fast as my old SSD (gaining more speed doesn't matter for me here,)

-- Current gaming drive:  SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC256D

 

Array Pool Drives:

Same changes as above, I might just buy a couple of 2 or 3TB instead, replacing my 320GB & 500GB and keeping the cost inline

 

So what do you guys think?

 

Thanks,

Tom