Extremely slow file transfer WHS2011

A

Activate: AMD

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 6, 2004
Messages
1,994
I'm experiencing extremely slow transfer rates between computers on my network and my WHS2011 box. I built the system to host large HD movie files for playback on several different systems. Unfortunately i'm getting such slow transfer rates that playback is excruciatingly choppy and inconsistent. Seeking through such files exacerbates the problem. Currently, I'm trying to transfer the file manually for local playback and I'm getting transfer rates of 1MB/s. I've tried restarting the WHS, restarting my router etc but file transfer speeds are still in the toilet

Current setup

asus mobo (G41)
downclocked E6500 (1.6ghz)
IBM br10i
6x2TB drives (4 5k3000, 2 WD20EARS)

no RAID or anything, these files are currently on the WD drives.


Oh and since i'm posting, if anyone knows why i'd get an "error starting service" message while using drivepool, feel free to comment on that too.. my 4 5k3000's are in a pool and its not showing up after I left it transferring some files overnight
 
Interesting. I've got multiple computers on the network, connected through a single GbE switch. I'm getting such inconsistent file transfer speeds that I have no idea whats going on. Currently transferring from WHS to gaming rig at 70MB/s. Transferring the same file to my laptop would go at 1MB/s. Streaming on the main rig OR my HTPC (e-350) is crap too, with network utilization peaking around 10Mb/s (or roughly 1.2MB/s) It seems as though streaming and transferring to certain rigs is capping around 1MB/s but not always.. WTF is going on?!


EDIT: well now i have no idea.. file transfers between rigs are quick again, but streaming performance remains total shit from WHS
 
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I got so sick of inconsistent performance from WHS (v1) that I decided to build a all-in-one ZFS (napp-it) machine. I would open system monitor and watch the HDDs get hammered for unknown reasons on the WHS box. No backup, no other clients accessing, just random hammering. It would bring the box from ~40-60MB/sec to ~1MB/sec, as you're describing. As soon as the mystery process stopped, performance improved. On long file copy operations, drives would "drop out", and windows would freak. Reboot, drives have magically appeared.

I don't like WHS, and I don't like WD's green drives. Sorry to hear about your suffering.
 
Activate: AMD said:
EDIT: well now i have no idea.. file transfers between rigs are quick again, but streaming performance remains total shit from WHS
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I can stream fine on my Atom D510 + WHSv1 over Gigabit lan, but as soon as the server does something like uncompressing a file i get lag/stutering, i even have this issue with Intel 2100T + Win7 when uncompressing also, im not sure if its normal, but i just accepted not to decompress while streaming, and i havent had any issues since.

Now remember transfer rates not only depends on your hardware, but also very dependent on the files, small files will go slow, on big ISOs, i get from 80 to 90 mb/s, but on small files like photos, mp3, etc, it crawls down to 30s.

Here a pic of transfering a large ISOs from my Server (WHSv1) --> Desktop ---> USB3 enclosure

tranfersservertocoolmax.png
 
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when i enable jumbo frames on my box, my transfer speed starts at 512 kb and slowly works it's way up. disabling jumbo frames makes it go at 80meg /second.
 
Abula said:
I can stream fine on my Atom D510 + WHSv1 over Gigabit lan, but as soon as the server does something like uncompressing a file i get lag/stutering, i even have this issue with Intel 2100T + Win7 when uncompressing also, im not sure if its normal, but i just accepted not to decompress while streaming, and i havent had any issues since.

Now remember transfer rates not only depends on your hardware, but also very dependent on the files, small files will go slow, on big ISOs, i get from 80 to 90 mb/s, but on small files like photos, mp3, etc, it crawls down to 30s.

Here a pic of transfering a large ISOs from my Server (WHSv1) --> Desktop ---> USB3 enclosure

tranfersservertocoolmax.png
Click to expand...
Yea i figured large file performance should be fine, and when transfers work correctly i DO get 80-90MB/s.. its just incredibly inconsistent to the point of working fine for 20 minutes while streaming the movie across the network then bogging down. some files will work just fine right away then bog down, others will be stuttering the whole time, but which ones do what isn't consistent.. as in, a file will work for 20 min then another time it'll start stuttering right away. watching resource monitor while doing this is showing utilization of 10mb/s and bouncing down to 5mb/s. the BD spec is up to 40mb/s and while it is typically much lower, i'm getting the feeling that the 10mb/s is too low. It also jives with the numbers when i'm getting slow file transfers (aka not watching the movie at the same time), since those are also going at 10mb/s (~1.2MB/s). For reference, i'm using it almost exclusively at this point for BD rips in an mkv container with lossless audio tracks
danman said:
Check if one of your controllers is in PIO mode.
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all drives except OS are on the br10i sas controller. I don't see anything related to DMA/PIO in the device manager for the controller card
af22 said:
when i enable jumbo frames on my box, my transfer speed starts at 512 kb and slowly works it's way up. disabling jumbo frames makes it go at 80meg /second.
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Jumbo frames (jumbo packet?) is set to disabled. I'm using an intel GbE adapter in the home server. all other systems are using onboard PHY's


Should i be doing something for playback other than just pointing my media players at the files on the other hard drives? are there settings for media playback that need to be properly enabled on either client or host (WHS) before i try playing back? Media Server is set to "on" in the dashboard. I guess it should be noted that for all devices i'm having issues with, local playback is flawless, its strictly streaming and file transfers that are bad, so local problems are not the issue
 
currently, pushing and pulling between main rig <-> WHS and laptop <-> WHS appears equal and working fine. laptop transfer rates were slow but its only a 5400rpm drive.. 75 MB/s writing to main rig vs 45 MB/s writing to laptop.

BUT streaming performance is crap right now. I used windows explorer to find the file on the home serve and am trying to play it with MPC-HC on my main rig and it is choppy as all hell. As i'm writing its choppy with network utilization bouncing between 5-10 mb/s. it went smooth for a little bit with network utilization spiking up to 20 mb/s and then went choppy again. BD rip of Hot Fuzz with untouched audio

Now i've shut off the movie and tried transferring the file via drag & drop and speed is normal.. thats whats so frustrating about it. its not especially reproducible
 
Have you ruled out software firewalls like zonealarm? I was having trouble with backups and it took me a while to figure out it was zonealarm. ZA burned me twice now, never will use it again.
 
plunger said:
Have you ruled out software firewalls like zonealarm? I was having trouble with backups and it took me a while to figure out it was zonealarm. ZA burned me twice now, never will use it again.
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just using the built in stuff, no 3rd party right now
 
benogil said:
try to disable the Large Send Offload IPv4 AND IPv6, it's in "advanced tab" in the local connection.
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At first glance this appears to have worked. seeking through movies while playing them across the networks is vastly faster and I watched about 40 min of a BD rip without any slowdowns whatsoever.. i hope that was it! thanks!
 
wow nice tip! i will be sure to see if this helps my streaming issues with WHS 2011 as well :)
did you do it on both machines?
 
If possible, you should try and enable Jumbo Frame support. This of course is dependent on your NIC as well as switch. If one of them doesn't support this feature, it will not work (e.g. the NIC in your server, the switch and the NIC of your playback device all need to support and have this feature enabled).

To rule out the switch, I would suggest you use a cable connection between the server NIC and the playback device (e.g. use a cross-over ethernet cable or if one of your NICs support auto-MDIX, then you can also use a straight ethernet cable).

Have you tried to share the exact same file on your laptop and try to stream it to your main rig? What speeds do you get between those two computers?
 
I signed up just so I could reply to this post and say that the disabling of "Large Send Offload IPv4"/"*IPv6" worked. When i say it worked, I mean worked immediately. I went form negotiating the transfer taking 10 minutes and then at a rate of 50mb/s to immediately once disabled to nearly instant initiation and running 110mb/s+

Thank you so much for the tip Benojil !
 
Joshua Dearman said:
I signed up just so I could reply to this post and say that the disabling of "Large Send Offload IPv4"/"*IPv6" worked. When i say it worked, I mean worked immediately. I went form negotiating the transfer taking 10 minutes and then at a rate of 50mb/s to immediately once disabled to nearly instant initiation and running 110mb/s+

Thank you so much for the tip Benojil !
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Glad to hear this old thread helped. Thinking back, that fix didn't solve all my problems though it did improve things hugely. I probably had multiple problems, which is why they were so tough to diagnose. I think ultimately my fix was to move pretty much every PC over to dedicated Intel NICs, as performance with the built-in realtek's was pretty awful. I'm still actually using WHS 2011 and don't have any issues
 
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