SOLVED: Copies *to* the server are very slow? (5-10-mb/sec?)

[lgreenman]

Greetings. First time poster here. Thank you to everyone behind-the-scenes for all the hard work on this very cool server software. I recently set-up my first Amahi server, running Greyhole. All went smoothly; server is now up and running.

I am having one strange issue though:

Copying files *to* the server is very slow (5-10 mb/second). FYI, I'm copying files over wired Ethernet from a Windows 7 box w/a Gigabit NIC. (Copying files *from* the server to my Windows 7 box is fast, around 80mb/second.)

What could be causing this slow copy behavior? Oddly, I've noticed that copy speed starts out fairly high (50-60mb/sec , as reported by Win7) and then, over the course of a minute or so, slowly drop down to about 5mb/sec.

Some things I've tried:

- I've run the "free" command on the server during file copies, even when copying 100GB of video files, and I'm not noticing anything strange with memory or swap file usage (very little additional memory or swap is utilized during copies, actually).
- I've made sure NIC duplex and speed are at full/1000 (on both the client & server).
- I've tried copying files from a different Windows 7 computer; same problem.
- I've tried copying files from one share to another (so, an internal copy within the server) and also experienced this slow copy behavior (5-10 mb/second). So I suspect this is not Ethernet related.
- I changed my Swappiness value from 60 to 1. No change.
- Moved SATA drives to different SATA ports. No change.

Is there something wrong with my Greyhole configuration that is causing this? Or perhaps the use of a USB boot stick? My hardware/set-up is below (fpaste is ur1.ca/od2mo). Any help appreciated... thank you!

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Hardware/set-up details:
- Dell PowerEdge t110 ii, 4GB RAM, onboard Broadcom BCM 5722 nic.
- Fedora 21, Amahi 8.0.1-1, "Advanced Settings" is checked, plus Greyhole (installed automatically as an app).
- Boot OS is on a Patriot 32GB Supersonic Rage Series USB 3.0 flash drive (PEF32GSRUSB). This boot stick is plugged into one of the server's two internal USB 2.0 ports. (Patriot stick is USB 3.0, but it's backwards compatible to 2.0.)
- Two SATA hard drives (ext4) used for storage ONLY, plugged directly into motherboard SATA (not RAID), both are in the Greyhole storage pool:
1) Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA II w/32MB Cache (WD20EADS)
2) Western Digital Red 2TB SATA III w/64MB Cache (WD20EFRX)
- Router is an Asus RT-N66U Dark Knight (gigabit). Cables are Cat5 rated.

[bigfoot65]

Or perhaps the use of a USB boot stick?

This is likely the issue. A server is not designed to be run on a USB flash drive. There are cons to using the medium for the OS that you will find by searching the internet.

[lgreenman]

Or perhaps the use of a USB boot stick?

This is likely the issue. A server is not designed to be run on a USB flash drive. There are cons to using the medium for the OS that you will find by searching the internet.

Thanks for the quick reply Bigfoot... I will switch over to an SSD and see if the problem resolves.

Just out of curiousity, what is the problem with using a USB boot stick for the server? That is, assuming swap is off? I couldn't find a decent explanation from Google.

[bigfoot65]

Just out of curiousity, what is the problem with using a USB boot stick for the server?

Speeds of the flash media vary and are often slower than a hard drive.

Also USB flash drives are not meant to take the pounding constantly that a hard drive receives with read/writes. They are designed for file storage primarily.

While the quality has gotten better, their life span often does not compete with a hard drive. The read/write speeds are slower most of the time compared to a hard drive or SSD.

You will find varying opinions on the internet, but what you don't find is many people using them for a server OS often. USB speeds just don't compete with integrated SATA connections.

Keep in mind this is mostly my opinion from experience and what I have read on the internet.

[lgreenman]

Thanks Bigfoot. Interesting stuff.

So I'm guessing there must be some bottleneck slowdown through the USB drive, happening during file copies to my larger, non-USB drives. Perhaps some data gets cached there during the copy... anyway, I appreciate the help. Will move onto the SSD approach and see how things improve.

[bigfoot65]

No problem. Please let us know if this is resolved so it can be closed.

[lgreenman]

Will do... plan to make the swap this weekend. Thanks again.

[lgreenman]

Ok, brand new drive is installed as the boot/root disk (it's a Sandisk 120GB SSD Plus). I cloned the USB boot stick onto this drive, and it's working. Now the boot stick is removed from the system.

Next, I test copied some files onto the server. Speeds are improved:

Larger files (video files 1GB+): 60mb/sec
Smaller files (hundreds of MP3s): 25-30mb/sec

Does that look about right? I was seeing faster file transfer speeds than this with my old Windows Home Server v1 box (which this Amahi set-up has now replaced). The WHS box had the same or slower SATA drives, and I saw 70-80mb/sec. transfer speeds, both to/from the server.

I think I can live with this speed though. Transfers *from* the Amahi server are still 70-80mb/sec. It's just the copies to the server that are speed limited.

I imagine this speed hit is due to the Greyhole implementation?

[bigfoot65]

That does not look too bad.

There are so many variables that affect the speed of copying files. It could be the Samba configuration, cables, network cards, etc. You get the idea.

The main thing is it's working better than the USB Flash Drive as I expected.

I presume this one can be closed as resolved.

[lgreenman]

Yep, close it and thank you for the excellent support.... happy new year!