nfs server speed issue

[firwareslut]

I set up a remote folder from Ubuntu to the nfs on the lacie and ran some rsync transfers. Initially , all looked well with speeds appearing to be around 40MB/s but after a short time the transfer stalled and then slowly got moving again and built up to around 40MB/s. This happens several times on the same file and then subsequent files.

I left the rsync running over night and 8 hours later it still wasn't finished transferring 500GB across to the drive.

I have my mount defined like this

192.168.0.150:/share/1000/public /media/NETWORKHD nfs _netdev,rw,users,auto 0 0

Are there any client/server optimisations I can perform to try and solve the problem?

[fvdw]

40MB/s is not bad ;)

The question is if what you describe is caused by rsync or the nfs server or even the LAN itself

What happens if you copy them directly form the nfs server and not using rsync ?

[firwareslut]

Hmm the reason I used rsync was so I could see the transfer speed as the file was being copied , which I cannot see with a regular cp command.

Obviously, the transfer is not going that fast when it took 8 hours to copy half a terrabyte of data.

I used to use curlftpfs to create a remove directory to the NAS with the lacie firmware and that was stable but I really want to use NFS since the ftp has other limitations.

I am pretty sure its the NFS server at fault. I have no issues transferring to other computers on the network with FTP or SSH.

[fvdw]

the nfs server is out our scope of control, part is in the Linux kernel and part is optware if I rmember wel. I don't use NFS myself so it was a long time I looked into this. But I will have look to see if we can do some trials with other versions. PS we are working on a firmware version of the nwsp2 with linux 2.6.39.4 kernel.

[fvdw]

I looked at it and our version installed is rather old (2007) and an update could not harm. But firts I will do a check on nwsp2 to see what download speeds I can get. In windows it easy to see with task manger, theat can show network traffic

[fvdw]

the results,

Reading.
downloading from the NAS using NFS goes well, for big files (for instance a video file of 4 GB) I get 25-30 MB/s and steady. For a directory with smaller files you can see the speed reducing for directory with many small files to 10 MB/s.

Writing
Here I can confirm an issue, it starts well but soon after start indeed the transfer seems to stall and taking its time to restart and then fall back again. I tested it on the nwsp2 and spd8020, with fvdw-sl-9-0 both give same issue.

So one more point for the do list...trying to see if upgrading the nfs server to a more recent version solves this problem.

PS I tried the same files with the samba server, that has no problems and reach same speed as NFS, so I can suggest that you might consider to use the samba server for the time being ;)

[firwareslut]

I also tested reading from the nfs share and it was very fast but the writing is an issue (as you have found out). Hopefully, a newer kernel can solve it.

I can test the samba again but the reason I always used NFS was becaus samba was so slow between the linux systems (I don't use windows at all).

I will make some tests with samba and see.

Thanks a lot for the attention you gave to my problem.

[firwareslut]

Copying a file across the samba share to the NAS is a disappointing 6.7MB/s. I assume this is a Ubuntu client issue if you are able to reach higher speeds from windows?

[fvdw]

Copying a file across the samba share to the NAS is a disappointing 6.7MB/s. I assume this is a Ubuntu client issue if you are able to reach higher speeds from windows?

or a network issue,
but I assume you use a gigabit network. On 100Mbits networks 7 MByte/s is about the max you can get. I use a gigabit network and can reach typically 25-30 MB/s using samba for bigger files, of course again when copying many small files it drops

[firwareslut]

I have a gigabit lan, of course.

It's always been the same with Samba and Ubuntu no matter what router, computer or set up I use. It's never fast.