WDS Network Speeds

[Nikolithebear]

Hey all,

 

I recently built a WDS Server for work and all has been nice and wonderful in the world of WDS Land.  However the network usage is only around 100-200mbps even though its on a gig switch.  Any ideas on why it would be only at this speed?   

[Sir Asvald]

12 minutes ago, Nikolithebear said:

Hey all,

 

I recently built a WDS Server for work and all has been nice and wonderful in the world of WDS Land.  However the network usage is only around 100-200mbps even though its on a gig switch.  Any ideas on why it would be only at this speed?   

Hardware bottleneck. Do you use SATA I and SATA II? what motherboard? 

 

 

 

 

Quote

Difference between SATA I, SATA II and SATA III

What is the difference between SATA I, SATA II and SATA III?

SATA I (revision 1.x) interface, formally known as SATA 1.5Gb/s, is the first generation SATA interface running at 1.5 Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 150MB/s.

SATA II (revision 2.x) interface, formally known as SATA 3Gb/s, is a second generation SATA interface running at 3.0 Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 300MB/s.

SATA III (revision 3.x) interface, formally known as SATA 6Gb/s, is a third generation SATA interface running at 6.0Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 600MB/s. This interface is backwards compatible with SATA 3 Gb/s interface.

SATA II specifications provide backward compatibility to function on SATA I ports. SATA III specifications provide backward compatibility to function on SATA I and SATA II ports. However, the maximum speed of the drive will be slower due to the lower speed limitations of the port.

Example: SanDisk Extreme SSD, which supports SATA 6Gb/s interface and when connected to SATA 6Gb/s port, can reach up to 550/520MB/s sequential read and sequential write speed rates respectively. However, when the drive is connected to SATA 3 Gb/s port, it can reach up to 285/275MB/s sequential read and sequential write speed rates respectively.

 

[Nikolithebear]

Just now, Abdul201588 said:

Hardware bottleneck. Do you use SATA I and SATA II? what motherboard? 

Sata3, 7200rpm Enterprise Drives, 4790k, 16gb 1600mhz RAM.  Its going to be moved to a rack mount server so even stronger hardware soon.  I dont think its a bottleneck.. 

[Oxydoreduction]

Hi,

 

Does it feel any slow when connecting to it or using services?

 

Try enabling jumbo frames if the switch supports it.

[Sir Asvald]

3 minutes ago, Nikolithebear said:

Sata3, 7200rpm Enterprise Drives, 4790k, 16gb 1600mhz RAM.  Its going to be moved to a rack mount server so even stronger hardware soon.  I dont think its a bottleneck.. 

Look at my other post again. I've posted about SATA connections and speeds. Sata II has speeds of 300MB/s and Sata III has 600MB/s

 

[Nikolithebear]

Just now, Abdul201588 said:

Look at my other post again. I've posted about SATA connections and speeds. Sata II has speeds of 300MB/s and Sata III has 600MBs

 

But how would it be a sata bottleneck if my transfer speeds are only 100-200 Megabits per second? 

[unijab]

Shouldnt it be using BITS by default?

[Sir Asvald]

1 minute ago, Nikolithebear said:

But how would it be a sata bottleneck if my transfer speeds are only 100-200 Megabits per second? 

Because that's the speeds of sata... 300MB/s for sata 2 and sata 3 is 600MB/s..

 

 

[Oxydoreduction]

3 minutes ago, Abdul201588 said:

Look at my other post again. I've posted about SATA connections and speeds. Sata II has speeds of 300MB/s and Sata III has 600MB/s

 

He's talking of Mbits not Mbytes so roughly 25 Mega bytes/s.

[Sir Asvald]

1 minute ago, Oxydoreduction said:

He's talking of Mbits not Mbytes so roughly 25 Mega bytes/s.

He's not using the full Mbits. There is a bottleneck somewhere... 

[Oxydoreduction]

6 minutes ago, Nikolithebear said:

But how would it be a sata bottleneck if my transfer speeds are only 100-200 Megabits per second? 

Try copying a large file to the server to see what kind of speeds your getting at full load.

[Sir Asvald]

8 minutes ago, Nikolithebear said:

But how would it be a sata bottleneck if my transfer speeds are only 100-200 Megabits per second? 

Also where you transfering to? Is the other device gigabit or 100Mbps?

[Oxydoreduction]

I was wondering about the switch, is it managed? I little misconfig can sometimes cause bottlenecks at that level.

[leadeater]

Is WDS configured to use Multicast? That can be rather problematic and cause slowness if clients are having speed issues and WDS has to managed multiple multicast streams or slow itself down to the slowest client speed. It's usually better to not use multicast at all unless you do some very good testing, network optimization and have tightly controlled client desktops (all similar spec etc).

 

 

[Nikolithebear]

Just now, leadeater said:

Is WDS configured to use Multicast? That can be rather problematic and cause slowness if clients are having speed issues and WDS has to managed multiple multicast streams or slow itself down to the slowest client speed. It's usually better to not use multicast at all unless you do some very good testing, network optimization and have tight control client desktops (all similar spec etc).

 

 

I will and disable multicast and see how that works.   Also I really dont think its a sata bottleneck... I get great transfer speeds outside of WDS usages. 

[Nikolithebear]

13 minutes ago, Oxydoreduction said:

I was wondering about the switch, is it managed? I little misconfig can sometimes cause bottlenecks at that level.

unmanaged.  

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, Nikolithebear said:

I will and disable multicast and see how that works.   Also I really dont think its a sata bottleneck... I get great transfer speeds outside of WDS usages. 

It's not SATA bottleneck, it might be HDD related but unlikely. Look on the server during imaging and open up Resource Monitor and check disk utilization % and disk queue.

[leadeater]

Also what is the actual image file size you are deploying and how long does it take start to finish, I'll be able to tell based on that how bad the performance actually is.

[Nikolithebear]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It's not SATA bottleneck, it might be HDD related but unlikely. Look on the server during imaging and open up Resource Monitor and check disk utilization % and disk queue.

After turning on Jumbo frames as someone mentioned earlier, and turning off multicasting as you said Im sitting at around 300-600Mbps, still not a full gig but much faster!  I might play with a few other networking settings however Im not sure what else could make it faster. 

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, Nikolithebear said:

After turning on Jumbo frames as someone mentioned earlier, and turning off multicasting as you said Im sitting at around 300-600Mbps, still not a full gig but much faster!  I might play with a few other networking settings however Im not sure what else could make it faster. 

Jumbo frames needs to be on across every point in the chain: server, network switch and clients. If it's not you'll cause yourself more pain than good when packets get dropped for being over the configured allowed size.

 

Disabling multicast is most likely the reason for the speed increase, it's so common to cause problems. Just google WDS multilcast slow etc and you'll see what I mean.