Slow data transfer on DS1812+

[acebase]

Hi.

Wasn't sure where to post this but I'm pretty sure it is under the performance category..

My DS1812 is setup with a SHR and DSM 4.0, I was mainly hoping to use this storage device for streaming movies and TV-shows to my entertainment system. But it seems whatever mediaplayer I use the movie that is getting played freezes up, either its 720p or 1080p content, on my computer or mac..

As for FTP transfers I took a little screenie, which clearly show dips in the speed-performance.
This example shows uploading and downloading of a .mkv file that's 23GB:

Upload:

Is there a way to setup priority for traffic on a DS or is it just not suitable for streaming movies?


Regards -Disappointed new customer.

[jagrjones]

I can't see your screen shots for some reason. I have a couple of questions just to rule out some of the simple stuff. I'm sure you've already checked this but just to make sure:

Does the file play natively on the device that you are trying to play it on?
What is the bitrate of the file? 23GB is pretty huge if its a movie even if it is 1080p.
What network infrastructure are you using? Wifi? 100MB unmanaged switch? etc?

I use a DS409 to stream 1080p movies every day. I've never had any issues. I also have a DS1812+ and it can stream multiple 1080p streams to multiple computers with no problems.

[acebase]

Hi, and thank you for the reponse.

The file plays natively just fine on any device, and I dont suspect the file as it happends to any movie I try to stream.

The network infrastructure is simply a Cisco E4200 router.
Mediacenter is wired to the gigabit switch in the router as is the NAS.

Edit: All my drives are on the synology's compatible list aswell..

[hedcase]

I'm getting slow data transfer, around 53mb/s, from client computers to the NAS. Is this normal? I've tried both small and large files. Most of the client computers are Macs but there are a couple Windows boxes that I've not tested yet.

My setup is eight 3TB drives in an SHR config over a gigabit network. I did try link aggregation but couldn't figure it out so I'm setup with on the single network port.

[macinnesm]

We have tried every combination of setup (shared folder, iSCSI file level, iSCSI block level using volumes, owning the disks, RAID 0, 5, 6 10 etc) on the DS1812+ and can't achieve advertised speeds. Nothing makes sense on this box, the file level SCSI performs better than the block level on every benchmark test we do. Go figure.

[hedcase]

Yah, I transferred around 1.5TB of large video files from my Mac to the DS1812 at about 30mb/s yesterday. Took nearly 10 hours. I definitely need to find a resolution for this.

Macinnesm - are you getting the same data transfer speeds as me?

[max90034]

I am averaging between 60 MB/sec and 85MB/sec during large file transfer (40+ GB). Not sure why it is so different for one file vs another. However, in all cases the LAN performance record looks like epileptic EEG with drops down to 20MB/sec immediately followed by spikes up to 100 MB/sec every 1 min or so.

I have 1511+ next to it connected through the same router. It shows the same average performance 60-70 MB/sec but it is stable with little fluctuations +/-10 MB/sec max.

Another weird thing. I thought that may be 1GB of RAM is not enough (1511+ has 3GB), so I put extra 2GB. It did not change anything about network performance but CPU usage started to fluctuate between 10-20% at idle and 20-40% under load. Took memory away and CPU load back to low. Very weird behavior.

[dcmartinpc]

I am having much the same issue. At first I was transferring at over 100MB/s. Now I can only write at MAX 30MB/s. Indexing/creating thumbnails is taking FOREVER! I am talking 5 minutes plus per image on the normal setting, and I have 59000 images... I have stopped all indexing and thumbnail creation with the same results. This is unacceptable performance. I also experienced the CPU usage problems after adding memory thinking it would solve the issues.

Synology, please help!

Don

[max90034]

I am having much the same issue. At first I was transferring at over 100MB/s. Now I can only write at MAX 30MB/s. Indexing/creating thumbnails is taking FOREVER! I am talking 5 minutes plus per image on the normal setting, and I have 59000 images... I have stopped all indexing and thumbnail creation with the same results. This is unacceptable performance. I also experienced the CPU usage problems after adding memory thinking it would solve the issues.

Don, how does your LAN resource monitor look like? Is it steady at 30MB/sec or fluctuates/spikes between high and low every minute or so?

[Computer_Slave]

I am facing the same saga. My transfer speed from my PC through Cat 6 cable is even as low as 2~3MB/s. Wanna suicide

[mpnico]

Hi,

I'm experiencing the same problem as dcmartinpc with my new 1812+ with 3x3 Seagate 3TB in SHR-1.

I had an old 409+, transfering data from the old to the new DiskStation goes first at 72 MB/s (maybe DS409+ limit) with FXP, then I experienced 20 or 25 MB/s after doing both of this :
- adding 2 GB RAM module then reboot
- expanding from 2x3TB disk to 3x3TB (took 36h...)

Later this week I'll remove the memory module to do more test again but immediately after a reboot, the same file transfer (large files) from 409+ to 1812+ goes up to 60 MB/s. My LAN resource monitor shows spikes as max90034 described.

This (60 MB/s) can be acceptable for my primary usage but the most unacceptable problem concerns files operations inside the 1812+ (similar to thumbnail creation IMHO). I tried to unrar a 150 MB .rar file, with the command line unrar tools provided by DSM, it took more than 6 min !! The same unrar on my old DS409+ took 20sec...

I would'nt have bought a 1000$ device to have 10x worse performance as my old device...

I hope a solution exists.

[acebase]

So I've tried some small things like restarting the DS after disabling everything else except FTP and/or Windows File Service, disabling hibernation mode on the harddrives.

Screened a graph over the networkflow when watching a movie directly from the server using a windows computer, as you can see theres a 50second period were there's no activity and the movie will continue for a minute before the same thing happends again..

Streaming Avatar movie:


FTP is showing somewhat the same symptoms only difference is that it doesnt drop to 0KB/s:


My device has only compatible drives installed:
2x ST31500341AS (1,5TB)
1x WD20EARS-00S8B1 (2TB)
1x WD2001FASS-00W2B (2TB)
2x HDS723020BLA642 (2TB)
1x ST2000DL003-9VT1 (2TB)

WD2001FASS-00W2B has this note though: This model is advised to be used in environments with average temperature below 30 degrees Celsius..

[mpnico]

Small update, i did remove the 2GB memory and now the unrar of the same file took 14s instead of 6min+. The file transfert from 409+ to 1812+ is again @ 72 MB/s

Guess this memory module is not compatible whereas DSM shows 3GB...

The module I bought is Crucial 2GB CT25664BC1067 204-pin DDR3 256MX64 SODIMMPC3-8500 CL7 reported to work on a 1512 here : viewtopic.php?f=26&t=47995#p187287

Anyone knows a way to test the memory module inside DSM ?

EDIT : i will try memtester en report back while adding again the memory module : http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optwa ... 1_i686.ipk

[max90034]

Acebase, you traffic monitor during FTP transfer shows exactly what I see when I transfer files from my 1812+ to a client using windows network or mac/NFS: every 50 sec-1 min the rate drops to 10-20 MB/sec and right after it jumps to 80-110MB/sec.

[Computer_Slave]

Let me try to remove the 2GB Ram module tonight and report if there is any improvement thereafter!