Supermicro X8SIL-F read/write HDD speed internally

S

shftup

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 22, 2006
Messages
191
Hey guys, after some research I built my WHS around:

Supermicro X8SIL-F
I3-530
2 GB ram ECC
4 - 2TB Green WD HDD's

Everything is setup and works, reads work great but:

When I transfer files from share to share (and to some extent internal disk to disk on the WHS). ie download share to movie share, the transfer rate is like 12-18MB/s. I assume this is very slow, can you someone assist in resolving this problem.

Also, over my network the most i get is 35-45 MB/s - everything is wired Cat 6a


Also, I am using a dlink 8 port GBit unmanaged switch until I get a good 16 or 24 port managed GB switch. In the mean time, can i setup link aggregation with the dual intel NIC, if so how do i do this??

Thanks Guys
 
You need proprietary Intel drivers to make link aggregation under Windows work; its all in the drivers no support in Windows itself for lagg.

But your problem might be the CIFS/SMB protocol more than network bandwidth; i assume you can reach 1Gigabit network bandwidth but your throughput is alot lower. You don't fix this by adding more throughput; that would be increasing the speed limit from 100 to 200 miles an hour for bicycles; while they never can reach those speeds anyway.

WHS is still based on XP. Clients using Vista/Win7 can use ASYNC I/O using SMB/CIFS; which greatly increases speeds. So my question: can you try without any XP-like PCs on the network; only Vista/Win7 and Samba with async I/O; then do some tests.

You can use iperf (or one of many clones) to determine network bandwidth; which usually is about 950 megabit.
 
Both my pc and lappy are W7. You are right, throughput is alot lower. On my WHS, from HDD to HDD using internal SATA - I should get more than 18MB/s transfer speeds, right? I dont understand why I can get higher than 18MB/s/....really weird.

I will update all drivers today and see if that helps with internal transfers.


I will also do the network test and find ASYNC I/O too.
Thanks
 
Internal transfers this sounds a bit odd. A lot of us on here use that Supermicro board with great results since it uses very standard hardware (like ESXi is happy with everything out of the box). Same config earlier this week with 1.5TB Greens and 4GB of RAM (all under WHS) was giving me 98MB/s over one GigE port two weekends ago.

What size files were you copying? 2GB+? Actually 18MB/s for small files between WD Green drives is not bad at all. For big files, that would indicate something being wrong.

One other thing to try is disconnecting one of the Ethernet ports so you can test that transfer and eliminate a variable.
 
My problem is 2 fold -
1) On my WHS box, transfering from rip share to movie share on 22-30GB files (actually all file sizes), transfer rate is 18MB/s using teracopy
2) on the network, its better ~ 35-40MB/s, but still this is very slow.

what steps should i take to resolve?
 
Last edited:
Here's what I would do:
1. Install all latest drivers from Intel/ Supermicro.
2. Disconnect second Intel LAN port to eliminate that variable.
3. Use the KVM-Over-IP (or monitor/ keyboard/ mouse if you have those attached) and copy items between shares on the local system and Windows explorer. Eliminate the teracopy variable and the variable of using a remote system. Hopefully you will see >18MB/s.
Something is clearly wrong with the copy method since you are getting faster network speeds and at that speed read/ write should not make a difference. 32-bit Windows 2003/XP running on an Intel ICH is a configuration that literally must have tens of millions if not more installations, so your hardware/ OS combination is a known quantity.
4. Test copy to and copy from speeds between the WHS. If you are copying a file from the WHS to a local PC at 40MB/s but are copying to the WHS at 70-80MB/s then I would suggest trying a SSD in the local PC and you will see your transfer speeds rise by a lot.
On WD greens, if you can consistently get 80MB/s, that is not bad.
5. What is the system's CPU utilization?
6. Are you using any torrent clients?
7. Are you using AHCI?

Post progress here and we can see what we can do.
 
pjkenned said:
Here's what I would do:
1. Install all latest drivers from Intel/ Supermicro.
2. Disconnect second Intel LAN port to eliminate that variable.
3. Use the KVM-Over-IP (or monitor/ keyboard/ mouse if you have those attached) and copy items between shares on the local system and Windows explorer. Eliminate the teracopy variable and the variable of using a remote system. Hopefully you will see >18MB/s.
Something is clearly wrong with the copy method since you are getting faster network speeds and at that speed read/ write should not make a difference. 32-bit Windows 2003/XP running on an Intel ICH is a configuration that literally must have tens of millions if not more installations, so your hardware/ OS combination is a known quantity.
4. Test copy to and copy from speeds between the WHS. If you are copying a file from the WHS to a local PC at 40MB/s but are copying to the WHS at 70-80MB/s then I would suggest trying a SSD in the local PC and you will see your transfer speeds rise by a lot.
On WD greens, if you can consistently get 80MB/s, that is not bad.
5. What is the system's CPU utilization?
6. Are you using any torrent clients?
7. Are you using AHCI?

Post progress here and we can see what we can do.
Click to expand...

First off, thanks for your help. I tried to do as much as i could

1) done
2) i am only using 1 nic thus far, havent used the 2nd intel nic, nor the realtek one for IMPI
3) Cant use IMPI as its not setup, but did try another method - i did get higher results of 25MB/s
4) i actually got 50MB/s on 2.5GB files - so getting better over the network. share to share is still about 25MB/s
5) cpu is low usage, around 10-15%, using a i3-530 with 2 GB ram
6) i was using utorrent - but during testing, it was turned off
7) uhm, in the bios is says IDE - how do i setup AHCI?

i assume that step 7 is the problem....? how do i setup AHCI on WHS??

Thanks
 
#7 is not a killer issue it was more of an informational thing. To re-do AHCI on WHS it is easiest to just re-install WHS which can be a pain if you already have data on the system.

Just connect the Realtek NIC and navigate to whatever IP address it gets assigned (I think you can assign this in BIOS too though if you do not have DHCP on your network). It will make your life 50x easier.

Share to share seems really slow, but WHS is not the fastest moving share to share. I just set up a Hyper-V WHS VM (running on a X8SIL-F actually) with 4x 1.5TB WD Green drives. Here's what I saw transferring the Windows Storage Server 2008 ISO from TechNet (about 3.4GB image):
Client PC (OCZ Vertex SSD) to WHS: 83MB/s
WHS to Client PC: 91MB/s
Mapped two WHS shares to M and N drives on client PC then tried the transfer: 29.4MB/s
RDC Share to Share on WHS: 48.7MB/s

Watch a transfer with the Disk Management add-in installed. That should at least tell you which drives are active. Also, something like AdminiMe will let you see vital stats like disk usage/ network usage/ memory usage and etc.
 
shftup said:
First off, thanks for your help. I tried to do as much as i could

1) done
2) i am only using 1 nic thus far, havent used the 2nd intel nic, nor the realtek one for IMPI
3) Cant use IMPI as its not setup, but did try another method - i did get higher results of 25MB/s
4) i actually got 50MB/s on 2.5GB files - so getting better over the network. share to share is still about 25MB/s
5) cpu is low usage, around 10-15%, using a i3-530 with 2 GB ram
6) i was using utorrent - but during testing, it was turned off
7) uhm, in the bios is says IDE - how do i setup AHCI?

i assume that step 7 is the problem....? how do i setup AHCI on WHS??

Thanks
Click to expand...

i also have a X8SIL and i3 530, albeit with 4gig Crucial memory

my drives are set to IDE

i will do some tests later /tomorrow and post my transfer rates.
 
Thanks for you help.
I used to have a giga mobo and I swear that share to share transfer were faster - cant remember exactly, but faster...
 
There is no real architectural reason why it would be faster. I just tried on an X58 platform and saw the same thing.

I do not have a torrent client on any of my PCs so this may not work for you, but why not just have data go directly to the share you want it to instead of copying so much data?
 
Yah, I will have to see if I can do something like that.
I get TV shows, movies, music etc...so a couple of different type of media that end up in different shares.
 
I'm moving the contents of my WHS (Intel DG45ID) to a Norco 4220 w/ a Supermicro X8SIL /Xeon 3440. Through an HP procurve 8 port gig switch. I'm seeing transfer speeds of 84.4MB/second. All drivers are the most current listed on Supermicro's site.

The WHS used 5x Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB drives and 1x Samsung F4 in an external esata. The Norco w/ the x8sil is running server 2008rc2 on a 500gig Samsung F3 and 5x Samsung F4 2TB drives.

I sometimes see as much as 105MB/Sec. I have windows task manager open and am monitoring the transfer from my old whs to the new Norco. RIP WHS.
 
Knucle-Head - Great setup! One thing to think about would be to mirror that 500GB drive. Fairly common transfer speeds for that setup.

Aposium - You are making me want to play around with this a bit! Your results with faster share to share versus server to client are different than either shftup or I saw. Will see what I can do although I am doing this in a VM which usually has some negative effect on performance.
 
pjkenned said:
Knucle-Head - Great setup! One thing to think about would be to mirror that 500GB drive. Fairly common transfer speeds for that setup.
Click to expand...

I actually bought 2 of the Samsung F3s for that reason. I'm not sure what I want to do yet. I'm really looking at flexraid right now, and that motherboard port is 'Reserved'. Could get a parity drive yet. But I would like the peace of mind having the os drive mirrored...
 
Aposium - Wow, those were the speeds that I was expecting from the SM mobo

I wonder what is going on with my setup, can you post all your driver versions, bios settings, other setting, etc

I will copy ur setup and retest - I have to be missing something, even though I am using WD Green drives I should be more speed.
 
shftup said:
I wonder what is going on with my setup, can you post all your driver versions, bios settings, other setting, etc
Click to expand...

Here are some [bios screen shots] I made earlier.....
I will add more info in due course.
Since these screen shots I have added a further hard drive in SATA 5

Hard drives (in use in the WHS) were Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB
Hard drive in Desktop PC was Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB
Mobo in Desktop PC was an Asus P5E64 WS Evolution
CPU in Desktop PC was an Intel E8500 3.16GHz
Desktop PC had 2Gig RAM
Network switch (between WHS and Desktop PC) was a Netgear GS605

In the meantime....
__________
Original BIOS
bios1.jpg

__________
SATA drive set-up
bios2.jpg

__________
Updated BIOS
bios3.jpg

__________
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top