I'm using rsync to mirror one unraid server to another via smbmounting the disks and rsyncing one disk to another.

 

Neither server has parity enabled.  Raw write speed from windows with teracopy is solid at 48mb/sec for both of them.

 

Using rsync, however, I'm getting on avg 15mb/sec.  Now maybe I shouldn't complain too much as it's verified; effectively 30mb/sec if I factor that in.  But still, is there something I can do to improve this?

 

I did read somewhere that the SMB layer might provide some delay, but I'm suspicious that it introduces this much performance hit.  Still, I will try running "rsync --server" and eliminating it.

 

Anything else?

I will try running "rsync --server" and eliminating it.

 

This eliminates the smb layer. You would not get much faster then this would provide.

There are rsync options for buffering and expanding this may help.

Do you have compression enabled?

 

Also, reiserfs is slow at new file allocation when it gets around 70-80% full.

Sometimes I dread dropping a file onto my server in the full directories because I know it will take a long time just to allocate the directory entry.

 

I'm more or less using defaults on large files and incompressible material.  I don't think buffering is going to help much unless it defaults to something absurdly low.  I haven't noticed the new file allocation "feature" you described, but thanks for the heads-up. 

 

I can tolerate 15mb/sec, especially as it's a "once a day" or "once a week" turn-on, sync-up, turn-off sort of thing.  But I'd like it to be better if possible..

 

I can tolerate 15mb/sec, especially as it's a "once a day" or "once a week" turn-on, sync-up, turn-off sort of thing.  But I'd like it to be better if possible..

 

Come to think of it, during some rsync transfers I was doing recently I was getting from 23MB/s to 29MB/s.

There were spikes in the upper 30s to 50s. but only spikes.

 

This is from a machine that has a GB interface, but on a PCI bus to an unRAID server with a GB interface on a PCIe bus.

 

So I know I have bottlenecks in there. in any case rsync to rsync server was from 23-29MB/s in the later revs of unRAID.

 

Before 4.5.3 I was getting from 8-16MB/s.

 

.

HUGE difference going directly to rsync server and cutting samba out.  HUGE. 

 

13-15 MB/sec with Samba; 25 MB/sec with "rsync --daemon" (in my simple test).  Going to let it run on the big files now and see how it goes.