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Hello all, 

I hope you are well! 

 

I have built my first NAS and have found the transfer speeds to be dissapointing, maxing at 30 MB/s. 

I have the following setup for my NAS: 

- MB: Asus PRIME B550M-A

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600x

- RAM: orsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 X 16GB) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18

- SATA SSD (for the OS): Samsung 870 EVO 250 GB

- NVME (for the cache): Intel Optane 32GB

- HDDs (storage): 3x Seagate Barracuda Pro ST12000DM0007 12TB Manufacturer Recertified

- PSU: be quiet! System Power 9 CM 400W
- Case: Fractal Design Node 804

- OS: TrueNas Core

 

Before I installed TrueNas, I updated the BIOS, ran stability tests (to do so, I installed Windows 11) and all was looking good. 

I use my ISP's provided router/modem. The NAS is plugged in to the router via the motherboard's Ethernet connection, it's a standard 1 Gbps one. I was not expecting crazey speeds which was fine for me. 

I created my pool in TrueNas in the following way: 

RAIDZ1, the Optane drive as cache, I started the SMB service, created users and it's visible on my Windows 11 desktop PC. 

 

In TrueNas I do see it's picking up the Ehternet connection correctly: 

Media Type: Ethernet; Media Subtype: 1000baseT

When I transfer files from my desktop PC, using Wifi 6 (5Ghz, signal strengh is at its maximum), it's transfering files to my NAS at aroung 16-30 MB/sec: 

image.png.d2fe617e8791dc23890283e168bc2879.png

 

In TrueNAS, I see that the CPU usage is not event at 2%... (maybe I should change the compression ratio, it's set at 1 but it's a different topic). 

Maybe I don't have enough RAM? Because I see the following on the dashboard: 

image.png.940c285f8cfb03fabc7e856b9bf3f4e6.png

I thought it would be fine because I have a total, with one safety drive, of 36 TB of storage and 32 GB of RAM, which is close to the ratio of 1GB of RAM / TB of storage, no? 

 

I was expecting transfer rates of 80-100 MB/sec but it's quite dissapointing, and I don't know what the bottleneck is, maybe the ISP's router/modem? 

 

Thank you for your help and advice. 

PJ 

 

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You will likely get faster speeds if you use ethernet instead of wifi.

Failure is part of success. I may make mistakes, that's how we all learn.

Please quote or @ me if you want me to be notified. Mark replies as answers if they solved your problem.

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2 minutes ago, Timme said:

I am not particularly familiar with Optane but TrueNAS core should be able to turn any SSD into a Cache for RAM overflow. This definitely sounds like a case of WiFi bottleneck. What at you WiFi speeds for other applications? Have you done a test over Ethernet? If dealing with encrypted data, you PC's CPU can be a bottleneck too.

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Just now, DraconisMaximus said:

I am not particularly familiar with Optane but TrueNAS core should be able to turn any SSD into a Cache for RAM overflow. This definitely sounds like a case of WiFi bottleneck. What at you WiFi speeds for other applications? Have you done a test over Ethernet? If dealing with encrypted data, you PC's CPU can be a bottleneck too.

Optane drives aren't SSDs in the storage sense and can't be forcibly assigned as storage drives. It's a proprietary Intel technology that can't be utilized outside of Intel HW.

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7 minutes ago, Timme said:

Optane drives aren't SSDs in the storage sense and can't be forcibly assigned as storage drives. It's a proprietary Intel technology that can't be utilized outside of Intel HW.

Thanks for the info, that kind of speed is overkill for a NAS anyway.

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Thanks all for your inputs! 

I should remove the Optane drive and switch to a regular Nvme SSD in your opinion to have a better cache? 

 

On my Wifi, bewteen my desktop pc and router I don't know how to test the speed on the local network, so I did an internet speed test: 

image.png.9477aa5797e2dd7894e16ad96d4d1e30.png

 

I use a 5Ghz connection and Wifi 6: 

image.png.f7ba9471827315375e6d122cb1213ced.png

I see 293 as "transmit" which would give me 36 MB/sec, it indeed looks like it's my Wifi causing the isseu... I don't h ave the opportunity to connect it via Ethernet (my desktop to my router), i can maybe explore powerline network adapters, it could help... 

 

Thanks! 

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4 hours ago, P-J said:

Hello all, 

I hope you are well! 

 

I have built my first NAS and have found the transfer speeds to be dissapointing, maxing at 30 MB/s. 

I have the following setup for my NAS: 

- MB: Asus PRIME B550M-A

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600x

- RAM: orsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 X 16GB) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18

- SATA SSD (for the OS): Samsung 870 EVO 250 GB

- NVME (for the cache): Intel Optane 32GB

- HDDs (storage): 3x Seagate Barracuda Pro ST12000DM0007 12TB Manufacturer Recertified

- PSU: be quiet! System Power 9 CM 400W
- Case: Fractal Design Node 804

- OS: TrueNas Core

 

Before I installed TrueNas, I updated the BIOS, ran stability tests (to do so, I installed Windows 11) and all was looking good. 

I use my ISP's provided router/modem. The NAS is plugged in to the router via the motherboard's Ethernet connection, it's a standard 1 Gbps one. I was not expecting crazey speeds which was fine for me. 

I created my pool in TrueNas in the following way: 

RAIDZ1, the Optane drive as cache, I started the SMB service, created users and it's visible on my Windows 11 desktop PC. 

 

In TrueNas I do see it's picking up the Ehternet connection correctly: 

Media Type: Ethernet; Media Subtype: 1000baseT

When I transfer files from my desktop PC, using Wifi 6 (5Ghz, signal strengh is at its maximum), it's transfering files to my NAS at aroung 16-30 MB/sec: 

image.png.d2fe617e8791dc23890283e168bc2879.png

 

In TrueNAS, I see that the CPU usage is not event at 2%... (maybe I should change the compression ratio, it's set at 1 but it's a different topic). 

Maybe I don't have enough RAM? Because I see the following on the dashboard: 

image.png.940c285f8cfb03fabc7e856b9bf3f4e6.png

I thought it would be fine because I have a total, with one safety drive, of 36 TB of storage and 32 GB of RAM, which is close to the ratio of 1GB of RAM / TB of storage, no? 

 

I was expecting transfer rates of 80-100 MB/sec but it's quite dissapointing, and I don't know what the bottleneck is, maybe the ISP's router/modem? 

 

Thank you for your help and advice. 

PJ 

 

So... a few things here.

 

Why did you go with Core? Core will be EOL "relatively soon". Before you get too far into this, switch to Scale. Its a simple upgrade, but I would do it sooner than later in case something does go sideways on you.

 

Second, Wifi is likely your issue, but its very difficult to say. You can use iperf to test speeds, but, I would bet its wifi regardless. I have a very nice Ubiquiti Wifi 6 setup, anbd my macbook maxes out at about 800 mbps at the best, and 400 at the worst. 400 mbps would be roughly the speeds you are seeing.

 

When you said optane cache.... what do you mean? Truenas doesn't have "cache" drives. Are you talking L2 Arc, SLOG..? For your use case, you almost certainly don't need an SSD, it likely isn't going to help anything. On that note, what exactly is your use case?

 

I run truenas with a 10x4tb Z2 array, 0 SSD's, and I can read and write at about 4-7gigabit/s depedning on the files. Very large sequential files end up near the high end, lots of smaller files (not tooo small, that definitely goes a lot slower) end up near the bottom end. I run 10 gigabit networking between my PC and NAS, thus how I am able to get such fast speeds. But, that helps prove my point that you don't need SSD's, and the issue is almost certainly a network bottleneck.

 

1 hour ago, P-J said:

I should remove the Optane drive and switch to a regular Nvme SSD in your opinion to have a better cache? 

No. Optane is the best option... but its an option you don't need. Again, what do you mean by cache? ZFS doesn't work in that paradigm. Things like unraid will allow you to write to a cache SSD and then it will slowly over time dump that data out to the main array; ZFS does not have this, the cloest thing it has would be a SLOG. But... unless you are running a database off this system (if you intend to, do that in a VM on the SSD for example), you don't need a SLOG. 

 

Truenas, and its ZFS filesystem are very advanced, and designed for enterprise. I am 100% not trying to gatekeep, everyone starts somewhere and has to learn the basic. I would advise you go on the truenas forums and poke around the documentation - there are a lot of good pinned posts to help new people to ZFS learn what is going on and how things work. Poke around those forums, give them a good read, and then things will start to make more sense 🙂

 

Oh, forgot to ask, how is the array set up? Another note... ZFS 1 GB per 1 TB of storage is not very applicable to home use, you can easily run that system on 16 GB of RAM with no real noticable slowdowns. BUT.... RAM doens't help at all for writes, it ONLY helps for reads WHEN the data you are trying to read is already in the ARC cache, which wipes on every reboot, and takes time to fill because the way ZFS fills ARC and L2 ARC is by learning what pieces of data are hit most often, and then populates the RAM cache with that data. This won't help with writes, though, and honestly, most of the time I read data off my NAS, it isn't in ARC since I rarely access the exact same data. I will say, just for testing purposes, if I do read a large file, and then read it again right after, it easily saturates my 10 gigabit pipe since the ARC is doing its job.

Rig: i7 13700k - - Asus Z790-P Wifi - - RTX 4080 - - 4x16GB 6000MHz - - Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe Boot + Main Programs - - Assorted SATA SSD's for Photo Work - - Corsair RM850x - - Sound BlasterX EA-5 - - Corsair XC8 JTC Edition - - Corsair GPU Full Cover GPU Block - - XT45 X-Flow 420 + UT60 280 rads - - EK XRES RGB PWM - - Fractal Define S2 - - Acer Predator X34 -- Logitech G502 - - Logitech G710+ - - Logitech Z5500 - - LTT Deskpad

 

Headphones/amp/dac: Schiit Lyr 3 - - Fostex TR-X00 - - Sennheiser HD 6xx

 

Homelab/ Media Server: Proxmox VE host - - 512 NVMe Samsung 980 RAID Z1 for VM's/Proxmox boot - - Xeon e5 2660 V4- - Supermicro X10SRF-i - - 128 GB ECC 2133 - - 10x4 TB WD Red RAID Z2 - - Corsair 750D - - Corsair RM650i - - Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA - - Intel RES2SC240 SAS Expander - - TreuNAS + many other VM’s

 

iPhone 14 Pro - 2018 MacBook Air

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18 hours ago, Timme said:

Optane drives aren't SSDs in the storage sense and can't be forcibly assigned as storage drives. It's a proprietary Intel technology that can't be utilized outside of Intel HW.

Yes they can. Without the fancy software Intel offers, they work just like ordinary NVMe drives from the system's aspect, and may be utilized by any platform with PCIe slots. I took three of them to host TrueNAS and all the Docker containers.

 

I actually prefer the use of Optane, but not as a dedicated cache vdev, as their improvements in performance tend to be negligible in most home labs. I once made them work as SLOG, but recorded negligible throughput on these drives during the first days when files were being copied back. They could be repurposed to L2ARC, but as LIGISTX said, improvements might still be negligible.

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Thanks for the comments. 

When I use the term cache I mean vdev cache, when I created the pool in Truenas it allowed me to assign one drive to it, so I used the optane one. 

As to why I use truenas core and not scale, I went ot the official website and took the non entreprise one that semmed to be the latest, I am ignorant on all the variants there, I hope this won't be too much of an issue if it's discontinued... I have no GPU in the NAS and upgrading/doing a fresh install would be a pain. 

 

It seems that it's not the NAS itself the bottelneck but the Wifi, so I'll try and see if I can use powerline network adapters. 

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On 1/27/2025 at 10:28 AM, Bersella AI said:

Yes they can. Without the fancy software Intel offers, they work just like ordinary NVMe drives from the system's aspect, and may be utilized by any platform with PCIe slots. I took three of them to host TrueNAS and all the Docker containers.

 

I actually prefer the use of Optane, but not as a dedicated cache vdev, as their improvements in performance tend to be negligible in most home labs. I once made them work as SLOG, but recorded negligible throughput on these drives during the first days when files were being copied back. They could be repurposed to L2ARC, but as LIGISTX said, improvements might still be negligible.

"Intel® Optane™ memory uses non-volatile Intel® Optane™ memory media with the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology driver to accelerate your PC's access to non-volatile data."

 

"Optane Memory is built using Intel's 3D XPoint Technology, a form of non-volatile memory similar to the NAND used in most other SSDs, except it relies on changing material properties rather than storing charges.

 

So please tell me how you'd use a non-NAND device without a relevant storage controller as a regular NAND-flash SSD. There's Optane™ Persistent Memory  but these are prohibitively expensive.

Could you perhaps were referring to Intel's ssd+optane?

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31 minutes ago, Timme said:

So please tell me how you'd use a non-NAND device without a relevant storage controller as a regular NAND-flash SSD.

Because it works just the same as a regular NAND flash SSD. The "secret sauce" is all in Intel's Rapid Storage Technology software.

 

I've got a TrueNAS Scale system booting off of an M10 32 GB Optane module in a PCIe riser.

I sold my soul for ProSupport.

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54 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Because it works just the same as a regular NAND flash SSD. The "secret sauce" is all in Intel's Rapid Storage Technology software.

 

I've got a TrueNAS Scale system booting off of an M10 32 GB Optane module in a PCIe riser.

Well, I stand corrected. But have benchmarked it? What are the speeds?

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59 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Because it works just the same as a regular NAND flash SSD. The "secret sauce" is all in Intel's Rapid Storage Technology software.

 

I've got a TrueNAS Scale system booting off of an M10 32 GB Optane module in a PCIe riser.

Also, doesn't that mean that the device is simply not recognized as a RapidStorage cache device and won't function as such?

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1 minute ago, Timme said:

Also, doesn't that mean that the device is simply not recognized as a RapidStorage cache device and won't function as such?

ZFS caching is completely different. All that needs is high-speed flash storage.

 

(And it really doesn't help "speed up" a NAS like you may expect it to.)

I sold my soul for ProSupport.

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35 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

ZFS caching is completely different. All that needs is high-speed flash storage.

 

(And it really doesn't help "speed up" a NAS like you may expect it to.)

Well, 32Gb isn't that useful for anything but a single HDD cache. Although, Intel configuration has a capability of multi-RAID fs management. 

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57 minutes ago, Timme said:

Well, 32Gb isn't that useful for anything but a single HDD cache.

As a ZFS cache vdev that's a lot for a home NAS, because it's keeping 32 GB of whatever the most recently written data was. Though honestly, you'd be better off with a larger conventional SSD used for either Docker containers or the metadata for a media library. ZIL vdevs are more for data integrity than speed. (If you want more speed, you should look at maxing out system memory first.)

 

 

I only used an M10 as a boot drive because TrueNAS doesn't even need that much space, and they have ridiculously high endurance.

I sold my soul for ProSupport.

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