[SOLVED]Networking issue with my new NAS

[notarat]

I have a bit of networking trouble and could use some assistance...

I had my main workstation (2700X) directly connected to my backup workstation (1600X) via a couple AC-107 10GB NICs and a cross-over cable. It worked fine for 6-8 months, with each computer able to see the other and move files between them at far better speeds than when using the 1GB NICs through my router...

I disconnected the backup workstation and connected a QNAP NAS TVS-951X, which has a 10GB connection and a 1GB connection. The 1GB connection goes to my Router so my other computers on the network can see it and stream from it/back up to it. (this works fine) while the 10GB NIC is directly connected to my main workstation.

Both the 10GB connections (on the NAS and the main workstation) are Aquantia AC107's.

APPLICABLE SETTINGS:

My router hands out IPs to devices on the network via DHCP using 192.168.1.100/24 and this connection is 1GB. Both my main workstation and my NAS pull proper IPs from the Router (192.168.1.101 for 1GB connection on the main workstation) and (192.168.1.102 for the 1GB connection on the NAS).

They see each other fine and I can copy from one to the other with no problems.

My workstation's 10GB NIC is assigned a static IP (192.168.2.1/24) and my NAS's 10GB connection is static (192.168.2.2/24) and these are connected via crossover cable (and they can see each other fine)

PROBLEM:

When I try to copy files to the NAS from my main workstation, it tries to use both the 1GB connection and the 10GB connection, but very little of the traffice actually goes over the 10GB connection, so it takes a long time to copy large data sets.

This is a problem since I sometimes copy several TB at a time and I need the 10GB performance. I am not seeing bottlenecking of the transfer due to mechanical drive limitations. I have a RAID 6 array and have 3Tb of SSD caching so my transfer speeds from my Toshiba RD-400 SSD in my workstation to the NAS should be well over 1GB/sec instead of 103MB/sec. (For reference purposes, copying from the RD-400 to my backup workstation's SSD over the 10GB connection was ~1.4GB/sec)

Checking the settings page on the NAS shows "connected" for both interfaces (1GB connection to the router and 10GB connection from the NAS to my main workstation) and I can ping each from the other with no problems

At this point, if I can't get the speed issue resolved I'll likely have to purchase a 10G switch (which I'd rather not do at this point since I only need 10G for putting data onto the NAS)

Any suggestions on what settings to check/change to get the main workstation and the NAS to communicate over the 10GB connection?

 

[Cmustang87]

How are you actually transfering the files to the NAS? Is it via Explorer through a hostname or IP? Some other web tool? I'm not familiar with QNAP but I know networking.

 

[Biznatch]

How is it even getting the IP of the 1GB adapter of the NAS? If you connect via host name, on your workstation the only IP that should resolve to is the 10GB adapter on the NAS. If you are using IP, it should only use the 10GB adapter on both unless your routing table is messed up.

Also, what are the IP config settings for the 10GB adapter? If the machines are directly connected, the only settings you should have is IP and Subnet Mask. Do NOT enter settings for DNS or Gateway. That way it will only use the 10GB adapter for traffic destined to an IP in the 192.168.2.0/24 subnet.

 

[notarat]

Not at home so I don't have all the official particulars but I browsed network in Explorer then mapped the drive in Explorer, initially.


I will try connecting via IP only to see how that works out

 

[IdiotInCharge]

How is it even getting the IP of the 1GB adapter of the NAS? If you connect via host name, on your workstation the only IP that should resolve to is the 10GB adapter on the NAS. If you are using IP, it should only use the 10GB adapter on both unless your routing table is messed up.

Chiming in, wouldn't the local DNS relay (router) be handling this?

For notarat, you could look at this US$200 Netgear for a quick fix if the QNAP remains incorrigible.

 

[Biznatch]

Chiming in, wouldn't the local DNS relay (router) be handling this?

For notarat, you could look at this US$200 Netgear for a quick fix if the QNAP remains incorrigible.

most likely not, at least not by default. He didn't list the router, but if it's not configure to register DHCP host names, it will not resolve any internal addresses. Even if it did, and was configured with both IPs for the same host, it would only return 1 entry each time (most likely round robin). That still wouldn't explain why his workstation is attempting to hit both IPs. That doesn't make any sense at all, unless he has the gateway misconfigured on the 10GB lan.

A 'route print' would be an easy way to verify this.

 

[notarat]

I connected to the NAS via IP versus just browsing the network to it using the 1G LAN connection and copy speeds are higher now to/from it.

Looks like I just mapped the wrong path (mapped the drive using the 1GB connection instead of the 10GB)

Pushing to it is a little slower than I'd like, considering I have 32GB of RAM in the NAS and a TB of SSD cache...but it's acceptable given that I chose RAID 6 for reliability rather than speed.

Pulling from it is better, and lines up pretty well with the 3x faster reads from RAID 6.

 

[tedych]

... (For reference purposes, copying from the RD-400 to my backup workstation's SSD over the 10GB connection was ~1.4GB/sec)...

How's that? 10Gbps link's theoretical throughput is a little over 1.16GB/s so you might have overcome the physic's laws.
Or you just ran into caching 'issues' which is the most probable explanation.

Just as a side note - there is a known "feature" of Windows when using Windows networking. It's called SMB Multichannel which can use multiple NICs to transfer files if Windows finds more than one route to the other side or it can auto-choose another NIC if it finds it (or it reports it as) faster. I always disable Multichannel.
Also when I copy large files, to avoid cache thrashing of working applicatinos (and system cache for that matter) I always use unbuffered copy/move which doesn't cache what's being copied and during the entire process it reports the real copy/move speed without a cache affecting the reported speed like speed spikes (or drops which is also possible in some circumstances after an initial spike). Unbuffered copying is a tricky area because Windows Explorer doesn't support it and you have to use external software such as Teracopy or XYplorer (which supports it via hidden config setting).

 

[notarat]

How's that? 10Gbps link's theoretical throughput is a little over 1.16GB/s so you might have overcome the physic's laws.
Or you just ran into caching 'issues' which is the most probable explanation.

Just as a side note - there is a known "feature" of Windows when using Windows networking. It's called SMB Multichannel which can use multiple NICs to transfer files if Windows finds more than one route to the other side or it can auto-choose another NIC if it finds it (or it reports it as) faster. I always disable Multichannel.
Also when I copy large files, to avoid cache thrashing of working applicatinos (and system cache for that matter) I always use unbuffered copy/move which doesn't cache what's being copied and during the entire process it reports the real copy/move speed without a cache affecting the reported speed like speed spikes (or drops which is also possible in some circumstances after an initial spike). Unbuffered copying is a tricky area because Windows Explorer doesn't support it and you have to use external software such as Teracopy or XYplorer (which supports it via hidden config setting).

It may have been caching but here's the screenshot of my copy speed from back in November of last year when I got the connectivity issues between my 1600X and 2700X resolved. Oh...looks like the "1" in my previous post wasn't present. That should have read 1.14 not 1.4. My bad

 

[notarat]

I played around a bit...

Upped my Jumbo Frames settings to 9000 on the PC and NAS, and then I deleted my SSD cache and re-created it as read/write RAID0.

Test File is a ~21GB file pushed and pulled to/from the NAS to my desktop.

Performance when Pulling data from the NAS to the PC has increased by ~60MB/sec from 773MB/sec to ~838MB/sec.

The bigger change is when pushing data from the Desktop to the NAS unit. I've gone from ~207MB/sec to 573MB/sec which is pretty outstanding for my needs, TBH

 

[notarat]

most likely not, at least not by default. He didn't list the router, but if it's not configure to register DHCP host names, it will not resolve any internal addresses. Even if it did, and was configured with both IPs for the same host, it would only return 1 entry each time (most likely round robin). That still wouldn't explain why his workstation is attempting to hit both IPs. That doesn't make any sense at all, unless he has the gateway misconfigured on the 10GB lan.

A 'route print' would be an easy way to verify this.

Late reply, I know...but I was a bit busy yesterday and haven't gotten a chance to respond. Seems my QNAP Operating system is set by default to allow one to aggregate the connections...I turned that off and it cleared up the "I'm using both connections at the same time" issue...

I'm new to QNAP and NAS in general so it's taking a bit of time to adjust things.

I gotta say, however, that I'm very pleased thus far with the QNAP TVS-951X hardware. I'm sure I'd see better performance if I had the 4-core version but the little Celeron is passively-cooled so it cuts down oon the noise quite a bit. The unit seems well-built and it's compact and VERY quiet. As in so quiet I can hear my workstation over it even though the NAS is closer to me than my workstation is...

I think the documentation sucks and, from what I hear, their support does as well...but the hardware seems solid enough at first glance.

I'm probably going to pick up another QNAP (Maybe the one which comes with the 4-core 2.0GHz AMD chip...dunno) and deploy it when I get the rest of my drives.

 

[FNtastic]

Thank you for posting your resolution

 

[IdiotInCharge]

I gotta say, however, that I'm very pleased thus far with the QNAP TVS-951X hardware.

Biggest difference I've seen between vendors has been the software. They're all consumer-grade hardware unless you're spending for what amounts to a compact SAN, that I've seen.

With respect to 'speeds', the CPUs might make a difference for parity calculations or just max throughput, but the better CPUs in the consumer-level devices are generally there for stuff like transcoding video, volume encryption, and hosting services / containers / VMs. Useful stuff for especially when the server functions are lightweight to stand in for full server hardware, but they only make a minor difference in realized NAS transfer speeds.