Speed Inconsistent when xfering between shares with Win Server VM

[dkm3]

Hello All,

 

First post here and pro user. Love the product.

 

I tried searching through the forums first for an answer but I couldn't find something specifically on point.

 

I'm having in consistent transfer speeds when moving data between shares. They start at 120-160MB/s and then goes to 5.54MB/s then back up like a roller coaster. I'm simply moving files in a Windows Server 2016 VM between two shares. The RAM usage in activity monitor in the VM is rather high but no application is chewing it up.

 

When I use an external workstation on the network to move files between shares the result are better but the behavior is similar.

 

What am I missing here? Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm seeking to do (moving files from share to share)?

 

Here are my specs:

Model: Custom
M/B: Supermicro - X9DRi-LN4+/X9DR3-LN4+
CPU: Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2630L v2 @ 2.40GHz
HVM: Enabled
IOMMU: Enabled
Cache: 384 kB, 1536 kB, 15360 kB
Memory: 64 GB Multi-bit ECC (max. installable capacity 1536 GB)
Network: bond0: fault-tolerance (active-backup), mtu 1500 
 eth0: 1000 Mb/s, full duplex, mtu 1500 
 eth1: 1000 Mb/s, full duplex, mtu 1500 
 eth2: 1000 Mb/s, full duplex, mtu 1500 
 eth3: 1000 Mb/s, full duplex, mtu 1500
Kernel: Linux 4.14.40-unRAID x86_64
OpenSSL: 1.0.2o

 

Thanks all!

storage-diagnostics-20180726-1057.zip

[JorgeB]

6 minutes ago, dkm3 said:

They start at 120-160MB/s and then goes to 5.54MB/s then back up like a roller coaster. I'm simply moving files in a Windows Server 2016 VM between two shares.

If both shares are on the array, this is expected and normal behavior for unRAID, speed can improve a little with turbo write but not a lot since on e disk will need to do simultaneous reads.

 

8 minutes ago, dkm3 said:

When I use an external workstation on the network to move files between shares the result are better but the behavior is similar.

It should be exactly the same, Samba supports for some time now Server Side Copy, i.e., as long as use Windows 8/Server 2012 or newer the data is copied inside the server, never goes through the network.

[dkm3]

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

Yes, both shares are on the array. So is it that I have to just change my behavior of where I put my data to be more final than having the flexibility of moving data between shares at speed after it gets on the array?

 

Does more RAM make it better at all?

 

Thanks.

[JorgeB]

Just now, dkm3 said:

So is it that I have to just change my behavior of where I put my data to be more final than having the flexibility of moving data between shares at speed after it gets on the array?

Yes, you should avoid moving data between array shares, since unRAID doesn't stripe disks it's never a fast operation, you can possibly use a cache device or pool and then move the data to the array.

 

1 minute ago, dkm3 said:

Does more RAM make it better at all?

No, it would for a few seconds at copy start while the data is cached to RAM but it would them become the same.

[dkm3]

Thanks Johnnie

 

Any ideas regarding the RAM usage on the VM? The usage doesn't show through on the dashboard. I guess this is something with KVM?

 

[dkm3]

Figured out the RAM bit. Set the initial memory and max ram in the VM to the same. Fixed it.