Apple Video Environment -SLOW

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07-10-2008, 09:40 PM
robertdalco

Apple Video Environment -SLOW

Hello,

I am playing with a buddies Open-e home brew appliance in a video editing environment and am having problems with read performance.

Appliance Configuration: SuperMicro, Dual Quad core 2.5GHz XEON, 4GB RAM, Areca 12x0 RAID controller configured for RAID5 with 512MB cache, 16 1TB Seagate disks. five iSCSI volumes are formated in XFS format by apple OS. Two 1Gbe Intel Pro1000 trunked

USER CONFIG: Qty 5 Apple file servers serving Apple Desktop running Final Cut Pro, dual port Intel Pro1000 trunked on each server. So I theoretically am maintaining a 2Gbe pipe from each server to their associated iSCSI volume

NETWORK CONFIG: dual Cisco 2960's

FILE SIZES: 500MB to2TB most typically 1GB in size

PROBLEM: This config is yielding read transfer speeds between any one server and its associated iSCSI volume of only 30 MB/s. Now it is a little faster for the smaller 500MB video files but not much.

I was hoping by trunking the ports I would get close to 300MB/s. So I tried just a single 1Gbe line network config and the performance remained the same - slow 30MB/s. I tried reconfiguring the RAID controller to RAID3 and played with stripe size. Same old same old 30MB/s.

I have a ton of horsepower, lots of memory so I must be missing something here. Can someone help out here?

Thanks,

Robert.
07-11-2008, 01:23 AM
asaph07

Apple Video Environment - SLOW

Robert,

You're not going to increase your transfer speed by bonding the ports.

But here's a question: Have you enabled all the cache settings on your Areca controller?

And here's a suggestion:

Go download your log file from the GUI and look at the test.log.
Look specifically at the hdparm and see what it's showing.

Go to the Status, Hardware tab, scroll down to Logs.
Download to your hard disk. Then right click on it to view the files. Look for the test.log.
Right click on that to view the file.

-Asaph
07-14-2008, 03:07 PM
robertdalco

Apple Video Environment - SLOW

I have the log files and can find the HDPARM but don't know what I am looking at. What do you want to see.

Robert
07-14-2008, 09:52 PM
vkeven

Quote:

Originally Posted by robertdalco

I have the log files and can find the HDPARM but don't know what I am looking at. What do you want to see.

Robert

How much MB/s
07-14-2008, 10:18 PM
robertdalco

Apple Video Environment -SLOW

Max I get on large video files is 30MB/s. As a NAS or iSCSItransfer. Was thinking I should get between 60 and 90 MB/s -preferably on the high side

Robert
07-14-2008, 11:06 PM
vkeven

Quote:

Originally Posted by robertdalco

Max I get on large video files is 30MB/s. As a NAS or iSCSItransfer. Was thinking I should get between 60 and 90 MB/s -preferably on the high side

Robert

open test.log with a text editor and find this line

hdparm -t

you should find a line like this one ( but with your number )

Timing buffered disk reads: 208 MB in 3.02 seconds = 68.95 MB/sec

post here the xx.xxMB/s you have
07-15-2008, 02:07 AM
To-L

What MAC OS are you running ?
07-15-2008, 01:26 PM
robertdalco

Apple Video Environment - SLOW

I have two different postings under HDPARM

hdparm -t /dev/sda *----------*/dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 60 MB in 3.09 seconds = 19.43 MB/sec

hdparm -t /dev/sdb *---------*/dev/sdb: Timing buffered disk reads: 1014 MB in 3.20 seconds = 316.85 MB/sec

This is telling me what? Are there any key setting I can change?

V10.5

Robert
07-15-2008, 01:43 PM
vkeven

Quote:

Originally Posted by robertdalco

I have two different postings under HDPARM

hdparm -t /dev/sda *----------*/dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 60 MB in 3.09 seconds = 19.43 MB/sec

hdparm -t /dev/sdb *---------*/dev/sdb: Timing buffered disk reads: 1014 MB in 3.20 seconds = 316.85 MB/sec

This is telling me what? Are there any key setting I can change?

V10.5

Robert

This is telling you how much MB/s Open-E is able to obtain directly from your system , every time Open-E boot it does a series of test and put it into file test.log so with this information technician could help you.

Could you send me PM(Private Message)your complete .gz file , I will look at it because I don't know why you have sda with so much slow transfer , sdb is ok , do you have some external USB Drive or any other hard drive than the one connect to your ARECA Raid Card?
07-16-2008, 04:50 PM
robertdalco

Apple Video Environment - SLOW

One RAID set carved into two volumes. sda is XFS formatted and sdb is NFS formatted. Does open-e have any volume format issues?

Robert
07-16-2008, 05:55 PM
vkeven

Quote:

Originally Posted by robertdalco

One RAID set carved into two volumes. sda is XFS formatted and sdb is NFS formatted. Does open-e have any volume format issues?

Robert

Without logs file I can't do nothing
07-16-2008, 09:14 PM
Keenondots

Quote:

Originally Posted by robertdalco

I have two different postings under HDPARM

hdparm -t /dev/sda *----------*/dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 60 MB in 3.09 seconds = 19.43 MB/sec

hdparm -t /dev/sdb *---------*/dev/sdb: Timing buffered disk reads: 1014 MB in 3.20 seconds = 316.85 MB/sec

This is telling me what? Are there any key setting I can change?

V10.5

Robert

sda is probably the USB dongle and ranges from 20-30MB/s in our systems. sdb is probably the first SAS logical volume.
07-16-2008, 09:25 PM
To-L

Open-e will format the disks to xsf when you create the volume group