FreeNAS on N36L

Hello,

I hope this is on-topic here, if not please let me know.

I have a HP Microserver N36L, with 8GB of RAM and 4x 3TB Caviar Green.
I've tried installing FreeNAS, but I only get piss-poor performance.
Client is a MacBook Pro with 10.6.8.

Does anyone know what I could use instead of FreeNAS?

Thanks.

 

I'm running FreeNAS8 on the same model, 5gig RAM, 4x2Tb, ZRAID1, with
Mac clients including an MBP. It flies, shifting anything up to
80meg/second around the GigE network, read and write.

Are you using AFP/netatalk, or SMB/Windows shares? All mine is AFP.

Are you wired, or wireless? Could the wireless speed be the issue? Is
the wired network GigE?

Cheers - Jaimie

 

Could it be the 3TB harddisks?

Straight cable between the N36L and the MBP. So I assume it is, but I
wouldn't know how to test it. I've replaced the cable with another one,
and I've just reinstalled the latest version of FreeNAS, 8.20 beta2,
let's see what happens.

 

I wouldn't have thought so... but then I don't have any. My 2Tb disks
are "advanced disk format" ie 4k sectors, so shouldn't be any
different from yours except in raw size.

Oh, did you by any chance create your RAID set on a smaller set of
disks and then migrate it? It may have screwed up on the conversion to
4k sectors, unless you ticked the "force 4k sectors" originally.

It ought to be. You can check at the Mac end, in Terminal type
'ifconfig'
and pick out your ethernet - it's probably en0. It'll say something
like

I've run most releases between 8.0b2 and 8.2rP6, and never seen any
speed problems with AFP.

Cheers - Jaimie

 

Nope, I'm trying with a volume created from scratch. Even tried UFS
instead of ZFS, same story.

It is a 1000base-T connection, only service running is AFP, I've tried
booting the MBP from a virgin 10.7.3 system, same story. It copies a few
hundred MB, then stops and does nothing for what seems forever, then
copies a few hundred MB, then stops again.

I'm out of ideas.

 

Peculiar. Either direction, or just one?

You could run a SMART test on the disks, maybe one is being dubious.

FreeNAS have their own forums where people are somewhat helpful, if
you'd prefer to chase this down. I wanted ZFS for my 8Tb, which is the
reason I picked FreeNAS in the first place (couldn't be arsed with
using a full Solaris/Nexenta implementation, I'm more comfortable in
FreeBSD).

Otherwise - OpenMediaVault and Openfiler both seem rather good. SME
Server gets decent reviews too.

Cheers - Jaimie

 

Either direction.

I suppose this is not good:

Apr 6 21:55:05 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, 63 Currently
unreadable (pending) sectors
Apr 6 21:55:05 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, 53 Offline
uncorrectable sectors
Apr 6 21:55:05 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, previous
self-test completed with error (read test element)
Apr 6 21:55:05 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, Self-Test Log
error count increased from 6 to 7
Apr 6 22:25:05 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, 63 Currently
unreadable (pending) sectors
Apr 6 22:25:05 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, 53 Offline
uncorrectable sectors
Apr 6 22:55:04 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, 63 Currently
unreadable (pending) sectors
Apr 6 22:55:04 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, 53 Offline
uncorrectable sectors
Apr 6 22:55:04 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, previous
self-test completed with error (read test element)
Apr 6 22:55:04 freenas smartd[3602]: Device: /dev/ada2, Self-Test Log
error count increased from 7 to 8

 

Guarantees on the disk?

 

I meant to ask what happens if you remove the offending disk from the RAID?
Does it all speed up?

 

I should hope so, they're less than a year old.

Yep, WD website says they're "in limited warranty" until the end of July
2014. Guess I'll find out what exactly that means.

Next step, find out which one it is, the third from the left or the
third from the right. ;-)

 

It seems to. Created a new volume, raidz1, and I am now copying 265 GB
over to the N36L. Finder says about 2 hours which is better than the 17
hours it indicated before I aborted yesterday.

When watching the numbers in the Finder copy dialogue it still seems to
be a bit hiccupy, it'll pause for a second every half GB or so. Not sure
what that tells me though. (Apart from: maybe I should save up for a OWC
Mercury Elite Pro Qx2 attached to a Mac Mini...)

 

I had a WD 1TB Green HD go faulty on me in my home server a few months
ago, and WD replaced it no bother.

 

Ace. Nice to find the issue in a non-data-losing manner!

I think that's normal with AFP - I seem to get that between Macs too.

Meh. FW800's okay for this sort of thing (it should be able to use
most of your GigE), though I suppose you could bodge out an eSATA from
the Mini for proper connection. You need a Thunderbolt device really.

Cheers - Jaimie

 

Running NFS? This is behaviour I see under NFS file transfer. Grab and stop
as I call it. The files get there so I have come to accept this.Just a
thought.