Home build NAS - low performance

Hi tom's hard guys,

I've got entire network (cabling, ntw components) in the rack at home, not big it's 19" but just 4U high,
so I decided to build my new server (open case mounted directly on the rack shelf) into this rack.
I've choose low power solution and OS what I well know:
ASUS E35M1-M PRO, CPU AMD Dual-Core 1,6GHz (passive cooling)
4 GB RAM
build-in RAID controller
HDD for OS
2x2TB in RAID1
1GB internal ntw adapter
OS- WHS 2011 (Win2008r2x64)
GBit Network

I was running this several weeks after I've started interesting about my NAS performance.
I was really surprised about my storage performance.
DiskMark from WIN7 client
Read 25 MB/s
Write 18 MB/s
I aslo tried the same from OSX client, more the same result. MAC was a bit slower, but this is normal when SMB - CIFS isn't his native sharing protocol.

This is something I cannot explain where is the problem, but I suppose such as configuration could reach value at about 35-40 MB/s read and adequate write speed.

Do you have any experience with similar setup? Any idea what may be wrong?

Hmm first thing I see about your system is a weak CPU.

Second thing i see is your RAID 1.

What I think may be happening is that your RAID 1 is taking CPU cycles to write to BOTH of your HDD's - which can slow down both reads and writes.

Do you have a lot of background programs running?

Another thing you can try is going into your Ethernet properties and set your Large Send Offload to Enabled. Make sure your Duplexing is set to the highest you can set it to (1Gb) (make sure it's not on auto).

By the way what is this "1GB Interal NTW adapter"?

I would bypass the switch and router - direct connect to a computer... and test it again! this will tell you where the problem is

This implies that the hard disk in your PC is faster than the ones in your NAS. The same test on my network takes 23s from server to client and 33s from client to server where several VMs are running on a few non-RAID hard disks. The performance of your NAS seems acceptable if you use a low performace processor.

Edit: As an additional test, I transferred a 1GB file using a low-performance server with a P4 531 processor. It took 33s from server to client and 1m 30s from client to server (the hard disks in that old server are older and slower). My conclusion is that your server's processor isn't very poweful.

If direct connect, and the tranfer rate still slow.. I think the cause are:
1) the NIC is not a good card
2) something in the server that the data can not get out fast enough...

My server with drive-less hardware raid SPM394 can do minimun of 65MB/sec. some instant it go to 95MB/sec

BTW, I don't use WHS! not that I dont like it. I just want my server:
a - not prone to virus and malware
b - I dont think WHS runs efficient than FreeBSD and Linux
therefore I use FreeNAS at home and OpenFiler at work

Nowaday HDD is SO big, 10x 3TB will give you 30TB that is a lots od space.

My home media server base oneBOX-N has only 10TB (8TB raid5), I can add another 5x 3TB for another volume... But no $$$ now, got to wait the HDD come down again!

Just want to double check, did you connect directly between WHS and a computer? I mean just a cable, not switch, no hub, no router... nada, just a CAT5e or CAT6 cable?

Hi Again, I was some time out.

nice storage stuff man. Do you work as admin, probably yes ... me too ... I'm managing windows systems so I'm have one at home.
Yes, I agree that Win OS take more power of HW like other "lighter" OSs, but that's not the case.
I still think that something is wrong with my setup, but cannot find out what is it.

Lats time I check direct connection (HWS to client directly - no switch). There is no change of performance. I used CAT5e cable.

I already tried to tune WHS drivers, network card conf, etc. On WHS I reach R/W 120/90 MB/s and client is something similar, so I focus
now on the server NIC, there's Realtek GBE on board *** and it may be my problem. Most probably yes, because I transfer data client to client directly at double.
I'm going to buy Intel NIC ...

It's a good NIC.

With my eBOX-N I mess around with CIFS/SMB settings, I was able to transfer 75~95MB/sec. With the HW raid there is not much load on the NAS's CPU, also the eBOX-N CPU is a Dual Core, four thread I guess it helps somewhat.

This is what I put to SMB setting of my freenas system
deadtime = 0
getwd cache = yes
max xmit = 65535
read raw = yes
socket options = TCP_NODELAY
strict locking = no
write raw =yes

Don't know much about WHS SMB setting, but I can tell you there are SOOOOO many parameters of this protocol you can tune up to get the best performance.

Also what is the transfer rate of your WHS raid with HD tune?