Truenas/networking q

[ThePog]

So a while ago I built a nas thing out of a sff pc, some rando drives I had lying around and using Truenas to drive it all.

Its pretty lol cos I had to graft a second power supply in there to run all the drives I wanted to, find some random unit that switches on the second psu when the main one turns on, and get a pcie card to give me enough sata ports.

It has two arrays set up, 500gb and 1tb.

The problem I have is that the transfer speed is less than 10mbps, this is sad if I wanted to backup my entire shadowprotect folder at 275gb for instance.

Obviously something is limiting this, so is it likely to be the sata card or the motherboards ethernet?

[ajg193]

Shirley parts are cheap enough these days that you could move to SSD in a barebones modern machine for less than the price/effort of upgrading such an old machine that will be getting unreliable?

[ThePog]

8 minutes ago, ajg193 said:

Shirley parts are cheap enough these days that you could move to SSD in a barebones modern machine for less than the price/effort of upgrading such an old machine that will be getting unreliable?

Probably but this is built 95% out shit i had just lying around. I only intended it to be a secondary backup of my backup so not mission critical.

[kws]

Have you checked that the ethernet connection isn't the limiting factor? I don't use truenas, but there should be a way to see what connection it has (10/100, 1000mbps etc). If it is, then it could either be the cable, the switch its connected to, or the ethernet on the machine.

[ThePog]

12 minutes ago, kws said:

Have you checked that the ethernet connection isn't the limiting factor? I don't use truenas, but there should be a way to see what connection it has (10/100, 1000mbps etc). If it is, then it could either be the cable, the switch its connected to, or the ethernet on the machine.

It is connected directly to the ethernet ports on our 4g modem, and I have another *real* nas connected direct to this as well that runs at proper speeds.

[Bling]

I would check MB / chipset specs first as that would be my guess.

[ThePog]

Yea its just a rando machine inherited from somewhere, ill check it out.

[h4nd]

5 hours ago, ThePog said:

So a while ago I built a nas thing out of a sff pc, some rando drives I had lying around and using Truenas to drive it all.

Its pretty lol cos I had to graft a second power supply in there to run all the drives I wanted to, find some random unit that switches on the second psu when the main one turns on, and get a pcie card to give me enough sata ports.

It has two arrays set up, 500gb and 1tb.

The problem I have is that the transfer speed is less than 10mbps, this is sad if I wanted to backup my entire shadowprotect folder at 275gb for instance.

Obviously something is limiting this, so is it likely to be the sata card or the motherboards ethernet?

Mobo No bro?

[ThePog]

10 minutes ago, h4nd said:

Mobo No bro?

 

Nothing super obvious apart from this. Its an HP.

Still has the green and mauve mouse and keyboard sockets so not very current.

[ThePog]

HP ProDesk 600 G1 Small Form Factor PC

HP 795972-001 motherboard

Intel I217LM Gigabit Network Connection

So probably the pcie sata card shitter is the culprit, I know it was cheap.

I should probably just find a case that supports more channels. But that might be money.

[h4nd]

Hmmm. HP ProDesk 600 G1, should be Gb https://support.hp.com/id-en/document/c03846648

I've used an 800 for a long time, surprising solid platform. Not super-duper shit cables?

[h4nd]

Snap, lol

[h4nd]

Mobo should have 4x SATA built in, should get you there if you ditch the CD drive, with no need for extra PCI /SATA? Could maybe boot the NAS OS off USB if it doesn't let you store itself in the target drives

[h4nd]

Or put the OS on the shit PCI/sata and data on the onboard sata

[ThePog]

2 minutes ago, h4nd said:

Or put the OS on the shit PCI/sata and data on the onboard sata

Snap!

I was just writing that I should put the os disc on the shit sata. There are 4x drives in 2x mirror arrays...

No cd drive.

[ThePog]

I just had a look and it seems the major decision to use the pcie sata ports was based entirely on having a couple of right angle sata cables that didnt fit the mb ports.

I probably have aquired more cables since I built this. I will do a re route and see what happens.

[ThePog]

Well that had no effect whatsoever apart from fucking up the boot order, requiring me to find not only peripherals but also a vga cable which is a scarce resource.

I dont know much about pc architecture but surely read/write operations wouldnt need to pass through the os channel?

@h4nd?

[h4nd]

Oh, that suggests the PCIe wasn't the limiting factor (yet).

1/ Does a speedtest.net from that box give you better speeds?

the 1st answer here has a good set of steps for diag linux networking: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/515365/how-do-i-to-debug-a-slow-network-archbang

2/ how fast does the box copy a file from one array to the other? (Sata-Sata test)

[h4nd]

14 minutes ago, ThePog said:

surely read/write operations wouldnt need to pass through the os channel?

@h4nd?

Wouldn't think so. Memory - maybe, DMA probably.

Any bios options to wedge the Ethernet or SATA into slow modes?

[ThePog]

44 minutes ago, h4nd said:

Wouldn't think so. Memory - maybe, DMA probably.

Any bios options to wedge the Ethernet or SATA into slow modes?

I had a look and there is nothing super obvious in that regard.