DS412+ extremely slow!!!

[lschafroth]

I have 2 DS412+ units. I have put 4 2Tb Seagate 7200 rpm drives in each one.
I did the default raid that the assistant wantd to create.

When I copy files to the NAS via my Mac 10.6.8 server via AFP the performance is HORRIBLE. The same is true via my Windows Server 2008 R2 box and SMB. (windows file sharing)

I have copied several folders and they are anywhere from 50Mb to 50Gb in space. Even the 50Mb trasnfer can take over 2 hours. The next one will copy in a few minutes but still very, very slow.

If I copy from another mac to my mac server I get extremely fast transfer. The server and NAS are both using a bonded 2Gb network connection on a HP Procurve gig switch.

I purchased these nas boxes based on the reviews and read/write performance. So far they are unusable. Even a stand alone pc with a single sata drive smokes the nas box in transfer speed. SOOO much faster.

There has to be something wrong with the nas boxes, dsm version or something. I'm using the latest version from the support website. I've opened a ticket and have not heard back yet so I thought I would post here as well.

Any suggestions?

Lannie

PS If these are the speeds I will get I have to know now so I can return them and get something else.

[lschafroth]

I am copying a 138mb folder which is very small. Taking 4 hours.

This server has a 1Gb lan and the NAS has a 2Gb bond.

Lannie

[lschafroth]

Evan deleting files from the Filestation takes FOREVER!
I tried deleting 11 folders and it has been taking an hour. Really??

I removed the bond and did a standard 1Gb link to see if the bond was the issue and it made no difference.

Lannie

[Nuke288]

4 hours to copy a 138 MB folder? Hmm, something is clearly very wrong with this setup - this is not representative of the speed you should expect from your 412+. By that I mean it should be around 5000x faster - copying 140 ish MB to my 1812+ takes approximately 2 seconds.

I would follow up with Synology support to determine exactly what the problem is. It might be something wrong with your particular unit, but considering you have two of them (and they are both equally slow?) ... there might be some other cause, possibly related to setup and configuration. Good luck with it, hopefully Synology support can help you it.

But again, these devices are designed to be a lot faster than this..

[lschafroth]

I still havent heard boo from support. The copies I started last night copied for 14 hours then failed with error -50.

Lannie

[lschafroth]

Imade some progress. I have 6 year old ProCurve switches. I had the NAS boxes bonded to a 2Gb connection. In my testing last night I removed the bond and went back to single nics. The main nic was still set to my static ip and the second one got a dhcp. Since I was doing this from home on my couch I couldnt unplug the second cable. It helped but was still slow.

Today I removed the second cable from the second nic. bam, much, much faster!!!

I have brand new HP ProCurve 5406Zl switch going in next week and a new 2510 48 port gig switch in the other building. I will test the NAS boxes on the new hardware and see how bonding goes. The 1800-24 switch I'm using now is a 24 port managed gig switch but it is NOT a enterprise level switch.

It is a workgroup switch and the trunk setups and lacp setups are strange on it.

Will see how it all works with the new hardware and post back. Still havent heard boo from support. thats disheartening.

I did the default Synology RAID when I installed it. Should I be using a different RAID for the best performance? I will have an average of 300 machines per building access each box. 300 per box that is.

Lannie

[rjc]

I have brand new HP ProCurve 5406Zl switch going in next week and a new 2510 48 port gig switch in the other building. I will test the NAS boxes on the new hardware and see how bonding goes. The 1800-24 switch I'm using now is a 24 port managed gig switch but it is NOT a enterprise level switch.

I use the slightly newer 1810G-24, bonded, to a DS412+ and have seen transfers up to 100MByte/S from my iMac. Those older models did have a few issues...

My unit is using the default SHR RAID5 out of the box, just threw in 4 2Tb Seagate 5400 drives and it works a treat. Although I use mine in a home office environment so it only has to contend with up to 10 concurrent connections.

5400zl is a very nice range, quite underrated in business as is ProCurve in general IMHO.

[lschafroth]

I connected the DS412+ directly to my imac and let both use a self assigned IP. I was able to trasnfer files a blazing speed. 2Gb file in under 10 seconds.

Connected both to a 8 port gig hub. Transfer was still pretty darn fast. Plug it into my existing 1810-24G HP Procurve switch and crawled. After 30 minutes it had only copied 36.7M of data.

Installed my new HP Procurve 2510 48 port Gig switch. Default out of the box install, no vlans, flat network like a hub. Same horrible performance.

Stumped.

Lannie

[lschafroth]

I did a test and found that is I copy a folder with thousands of files in it, the DS412+ tanks badly. If I compress the folder and copy a file 1Gb or larger, or any large file it copies over the switched network extremely fast. Over 125Mbs.

There must be something will lots of small files that choke the DS412+. Should the raid be built differently for thousands of small files which mac computers create a ton or some kind of cache to turn on?

Lannie

[lschafroth]

The support I have received has been pretty pathetic. They had me on the phone and instead of working through it, they hung up saying they would email me instructions. I did the instructions exactly as they asked.

I then sent them an email and other tests I have one showing where the DS412 seems to fail. I get a "canned" response back saying only do the tests exactly the way we asked. Nothing else, no suggestions, no help.

I have already narrowed it down for them with the different tests I have done but they dont seem to care. Time to get on the phone where I purchased the two boxes and get a refund.

Anyone have experience with QNAP?

Lannie

[lschafroth]

Good news! I tried to rebuild the RAID and use a smaller stripe size only to learn the DSM does not let you choose a stripe (chunk) size at all. Dang it..... Anyone know how to do it from the command line?

Anyway, when creating the new share folder I noticed the index option. I remember turning that ON when I did the first setup. There does not appear to be any way to turn that off once a share is created. I created the new share without indexing and bam!! much faster. The process of copying large amounts of Mac home directories is still much slower than mac to mac but very useable. Once it gets to larger files it screams. Over 125Mbs. When doing the small files I get 8.4Mbs. On a mac server I sustain 38Mb regardless of the file size.

I would like to experiment with different raid strip sizes so if anyone knows how to do the raid configuration from the cli and let me choose the size I would appreciate it!

Thanks,

Lannie

PS Support still hasent responded to the first test.

[lschafroth]

Looks like it's time to part ways with Synology. The tech support is non existent. I am finding more and more reviews online of terrible AFP performance with no resolution. I wish I would have seen those reviews before I purchased two of them!

I love the DSM interface and hate the look of the qnap one but it sounds like qnap has a solid grasp on AFP and its support staff appear to respond to the forums.

Thanks

Lannie

[danielp]

Dear Lannie,

I see our engineer Andy is still working with you on this issue and his last response was only 20 hours ago.
We appreciate your patience as our engineers investigate this issue.

[lschafroth]

i've asked him several questions and no wasanswers to any of them. his last response was that he would discuss with his team.no answers to any questions.

at least answer questions while working it.

Lannie

[lschafroth]

Synology support is remotely looking at my device so lets keep out fingers crossed.

Lannie