How to measure?!? (NAS/LAN speed)

[patrad]

Ok probably a noob question but I built a FreeNAS box over Thanksgiving and installed cat5e, a GBE switch and a couple GBE NICs. The whole project goal is a backup server on my LAN. (I bought a Dlink DGS-2208 switch, a RocketRaid 1740, DLink DGE-530T NIC and some WD 1TB drives)

I'm now trying to tweak the performance of the network and I'm just having a tough time finding a good, free, tool that will log my file transfer speeds (XP>FreeNAS) for analysis. I notice this site uses IxChariot but after researching that tool and trying to evaluate it really seems overkill for what I'm trying to do.

I've found Wireshark and it seems like a sweet program for analyzing my LAN traffic (it's already raised a bunch of traffic questions for me) but I can't find a way to use it to measure file transfer speeds.

So. . . . what do YOU use? What are the trade-offs?

Thanks! This site is great!

 

[Dennis Wood]

This tool is the best I've seen..and it's free: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=769

Cheers,
Dennis

 

[00Roush]

You could try Disk Bench from this website... http://www.nodesoft.com/DiskBench/ You need to have .NET installed though. I have found it useful for testing on Win XP.

Not sure what kind of speed you are looking for but my understanding is Freenas is not the best performing OS for file sharing. In most of the tests I have seen Ubuntu offers better performance. Just letting you know.

00Roush

 

[thiggins]

I notice this site uses IxChariot but after researching that tool and trying to evaluate it really seems overkill for what I'm trying to do.

I use IxChariot for wireless and router throughput testing. But use iozone for NAS transfer rate testing.

I am able to use IxChariot only because Ixia generously has provided a license. Jperf is a no-cost alternative for network throughput testing.

 

[patrad]

Thanks everyone. That Intel NAS Tool is really nice! I will definitely be bringing that to work to test some of our $15k NetApp/Cisco solutions.

Ok, so with the Intel tool I've discovered my performance is awful!
9.1 copy to NAS. 6.9 copy from. On average usually somewhere around 9 MB/s.

Any suggestions on where to start? It would seem to me that the network would be the first place note? Any other sort of tests I should try to narrow down the issue? I think trying net connections with iperf would be the first step to eliminate those. I wonder if I can run iperf within FreeNAS?

 

[00Roush]

You could try testing with a program like Iperf and check your network throughput. Although I am not quiet sure how easy it would be to get Iperf up and running on FreeNAS.

First up I would try to find out if all of your computers are connecting at gigabit speeds. Then see about network throughput testing if possible.

My personal thought would be to test out Ubuntu Server or another OS for comparison. Using the install guide here---> http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30573/77/ made it very easy to install Ubuntu when I was testing OSes for my home file server. Read through the article as it compares both FreeNAS and Ubuntu on the same hardware. Openfiler would also be another one to try but I found it to be much more difficult to setup a basic samba share than either FreeNAS or Ubuntu. (using Webmin)

00Roush

 

[thiggins]

Why do you think it's the network and not the NAS?
Strip down the network to just the NAS and the machine running the Intel NASPT.
If the NAS and test machine both have gigabit NICs, assign static IPs to both and connect them directly (no crossover cable needed).

What are the CPU and memory configurations on both machines? Also the NIC on the test machine. How are the drives configured on the NAS?

 

[Dennis Wood]

What Tim is saying is that the weakest link is what slows down the data transfers. That dlink 530T is a PCI card...so there's one potential bottleneck. The other thing you need to get good numbers is Vista SP1 on the workstation (or SAMBA) and SAMBA running on the NAS. Are those 1TB WD drives the "green" 5400rpm ones? They're green...but they're a lot slower than the 7200rpm versions.

The Intel NAS numbers for file copies to and from the NAS are substantially lower (like 1/5) of what you'd see if you actually measured a copy. I'd only use this tool as a comparative, repeatable test to see how one tweak compares to another. As the network traces come from a Windows model, they would not I'd guess translate too well to performance on a Linux based workstation either.

Now I'd really like to see a test on that 15K Cisco solution

 

[00Roush]

On a side note... The latest versions of the WD green drives are actually faster than one would expect. See this article for more info... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/green-terabyte-1tb,2078.html

00Roush