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Copying large amounts of data to WHS is slower than expected

Answered Copying large amounts of data to WHS is slower than expected

  • quarta-feira, 21 de fevereiro de 2007 23:36
     
     
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    Firstly I would like to say that the Home Server product is great – I’ve been using several other products to backup my home PCs and store shared data, but this is better.

     

    I use Robocopy scripts to copy data and I’ve noticed that copying very large amounts of data to the WHS computer (several hundred Gigabytes) is taking a lot longer than when I copy the same data to say a Windows Server 2003 or Vista computer. The WHS computer is fairly highly speced, Dual Core, 3GB ram, Gigabit network, SATA disks, but a copy that takes over night to a Windows Server 2003 computer with a similar spec takes longer than a day to the WHS computer. I’ve tried turning duplication off, pushing the files from an XP PC, a Vista PC, and logging onto the WHS console and pulling from there, it just takes a lot longer.

     

    Another example, I often bring home software or other files from work (usually a couple of Gig) that are on a USB hard disk connected to my laptop running XP Pro SP2. I run a script that uses Robocopy to copy them from the laptop to my home computer which is running Vista Ultimate. I have modified the script to also copy these file to WHS. The copy to Vista is more than twice as fast as copying the same files to WHS.

     

    My network is gigabit; all computers have gigabit network connections.

     

    Any ideas??

     

    Thanks

     

    DON.

     

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  • quarta-feira, 21 de fevereiro de 2007 23:54
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    This may not be your answer but Windows Home Server has a hidden process of caching files on it's primary disk and moving them onto the Drive Extender.  This process could be the reason you are seeing slower transfers.
     
  • quinta-feira, 22 de fevereiro de 2007 00:25
     
     
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    Thanks Joel,

    Than could be it, I do notice that the hard disk light is pretty much on constantly. As I'm busy moving my data from my 'old' file server to WHS hopefully things will settle down. Nearly finished.

    Cheers, DON.

     
  • sexta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2007 00:19
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    Also, because of how Vista does it's transfering and the way Windows Home Server does the caching for duplication, Vista can run slower with Windows Home Server than Windows XP.
     
  • sexta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2007 00:52
     
     
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    Don,

    I posted about the same issue.  I am getting only about 10MBs when transferring files to WHS also on an all gigabit LAN.  Is that about the speed you posted?

    Aaron

     
  • sexta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2007 01:36
     
     
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    I am also getting around 6 to 10MBs when transfering files. Gigabit lan, fairly fast processor 3.2ghz Intel P4 processor, SATA II seagate 750 gig on a Promise SATA II controller. Lots of file activity on the WHS. Hopefully this will improve as the beta marches onward.
     
  • sexta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2007 01:59
     
     
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    Thanks for the reply.

    Yes, that seems to be about the speed. When I use Task Manager on the WHS box I'm seeing around 3-5% Network Utilization on my 1Gb NIC. I have 3 x 300Gb SATA disks and 3 x 250Gb SATA disks, some connected to the motherboard (an intel D945GNT - latest bios) and some connected on a VIA raid card. This PC was running WIndows Server 2003 as my file server and I certainly didn't have access speeds this slow when copying files to it.

    I have noticed that copying files off seems to be a lot faster.

    I really like the product, so I'm just going to let stuff copy over the next few days. After that I'll know what it's going to be like to use it day to day. I really hope future builds don't reformat the disks, I'd hate to have to recopy everything after each install!!

    I've logged this as a bug, so it should improve in beta 3 or an RC.

    Cheers, DON.

     
  • sexta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2007 15:07
     
     
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    Don, can you link to that bug report?

    Also, I've seen the same thing, copying from Vista to WHS was around 7 MB/Sec. However, from WHS, I was able to pull the files at about 10x the speed. So, from WHS I copied from the share on my Vista machine to the share on WHS and was pulling around 70 MB/Sec.

    Also, while doing this, one of the Processors on my Dual Core Vista rig was near 90% usage. When pulling from my Vista rig, the processor was around 10% usage. Server side though, the processor usage was low, both when being pushed from the Vista PC and pulled from the Vista PC.

    I've noticed this before too. It seems pushing a file from one PC to another is always significantly slower then pulling. At least from my experience, however, normally on home shares, I was always pulling because I didn't want to give write permissions to shares.

    Either way, since we aren't intended to login to WHS and pull the data we want, it seems like a good idea to make this more efficient and faster. I'm also wondering if it would work better to do it through the web console, login to http://server/ and try Uploading it through the console there.
     
  • sexta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2007 16:41
     
     
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     - I'm running WHS on a Tyan s5360 server motherboard with Dual 3.2 Xeons, and dual onboard Intel PRO gigabit adapters. The WHS server has 2GB of RAM.

    - There's 10 250GB SATA II hard drives on the server connected via a Sil 3124 based controller and 2 Sil 3726 based port multipliers. The Sil3124 has 4 eSATA ports each capable of port multiplying to 5 drives. Right now, I'm using only 2 of those ports for the 10 drives. Each port is capable of 3Gbps and the port multipliers are FIS based, and perform read and write aggregation to make full use of that bandwidth. The server shows around 2.4TB available.

     - The client PCs are a mix of MCE 2005 boxes and XP Pro. All of them have onboard gigabit nics.

    - All these machines are connected to a Netgear JGS516 16 port gigabit switch using CAT6 cables.

    My transfers to the WHS server (using just copy paste in Windows Explorer) run at a rock solid 35-37MBps. I'm transferring DVD backup files that are average 4.7GB. When I transfer smaller files, it usually transfers at a consistent 18-20MBps. The server shows a CPU usage of 5-7% when these movie files are transferring, although the client PCs show almost 50% CPU usage, pushing data out at that rate. The network utliziation runs at a consistent 29-30% when these movie files are transferring.

    I have tested 4 clients connected to the WHS server, with 2 of them writing movie files to it and 2 clients playing different DVDs from the server, all at the same time, and the server never hicupped. No jitters or dropped frames. The network utlization on the server while doing these tests was almost 60-70% and throughput at ~75MBps.

    Hope this helps.

     
  • sexta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2007 16:51
     
     
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    has anyone tried local file transfers?  Like taking a USB disk and temporarily hooking it up to the WHS box to transfer files?  I'm wondering if that would be just as slow. I'm seeing similar performance (8-10% utilization on a gigabit connection) transferring files using robocopy from my XP workstation to the WHS box.  CPU utilization on the WHS system is very high but isn't truly pegged - usually 95-98% utilization - while the transfer's going on.

    After I finish this copy (its been going on for about 16 hours now) i'll try a local copy off a USB disk if someone else hasn't tried it already.

     

     
  • sexta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2007 21:15
     
     
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    Hi, Thanks for all the posts.

    The bug report is https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=259428, File copies really slow. I logged the bug and then thought about it some more, so this thread has more information.

    For info, I've seen that when a backup is running from my Vista PC I'm getting up to 20 mps, so it just seems to be the file copies to the WHS PC that are slow. Last night I watched a movie on my MCE 2005 home theater PC with the file on the WHS computer and it worked perfectly. I've nearly finished all of my file copies, which I started on Wednesday evening, 850Gb, so I'm going to start trying a few more things, like timed copies, plugging in a local USB hard disk as suggested, etc.

    I guess that's what beta tests are for, to find the kinks and get them fixed, I'm certainly a fan of the product so far.

    Cheers, DON.

     
  • segunda-feira, 26 de fevereiro de 2007 06:38
     
     
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     kapone wrote:

     - I'm running WHS on a Tyan s5360 server motherboard with Dual 3.2 Xeons, and dual onboard Intel PRO gigabit adapters. The WHS server has 2GB of RAM.

    - There's 10 250GB SATA II hard drives on the server connected via a Sil 3124 based controller and 2 Sil 3726 based port multipliers. The Sil3124 has 4 eSATA ports each capable of port multiplying to 5 drives. Right now, I'm using only 2 of those ports for the 10 drives. Each port is capable of 3Gbps and the port multipliers are FIS based, and perform read and write aggregation to make full use of that bandwidth. The server shows around 2.4TB available.

     - The client PCs are a mix of MCE 2005 boxes and XP Pro. All of them have onboard gigabit nics.

    - All these machines are connected to a Netgear JGS516 16 port gigabit switch using CAT6 cables.

    My transfers to the WHS server (using just copy paste in Windows Explorer) run at a rock solid 35-37MBps. I'm transferring DVD backup files that are average 4.7GB. When I transfer smaller files, it usually transfers at a consistent 18-20MBps. The server shows a CPU usage of 5-7% when these movie files are transferring, although the client PCs show almost 50% CPU usage, pushing data out at that rate. The network utliziation runs at a consistent 29-30% when these movie files are transferring.

    I have tested 4 clients connected to the WHS server, with 2 of them writing movie files to it and 2 clients playing different DVDs from the server, all at the same time, and the server never hicupped. No jitters or dropped frames. The network utlization on the server while doing these tests was almost 60-70% and throughput at ~75MBps.

    Hope this helps.

    Did some more testing and copying data FROM the WHS server and the array of drives to a client is blazing fast. It maintains almost 43MBps with occasional bursts of 45-46MBps. That's impressive. This is over gigabit LAN btw.

     
  • segunda-feira, 26 de fevereiro de 2007 17:29
     
     
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    I posted the following last night:
    http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1270202&SiteID=50

    Not sure if any of those items will affect you or not, but it's worth toggling a few of the items in question to see if you get any change.  My latest test was #6 (disabling QOS and IPV6).  It's all a bit subjective, but things definitely seem faster for me now when transferring from Vista to WHS.