Question Network / NAS speed ?

[Scotch Egg 71]

Hi all

At home I have a server and a games pc, when transferring files from one to the other the speed is around 110 megabytes a second ( fairly decent ).

When I am at work the network speed there is about 10 - 11 megabytes a second, I know there are 10 of us but should it not allocate resources to whoever is using it?

Also the NAS drive is the same speed (it is a 10 bay with two 8tb drives in a mirror raid ) I would have thought that 10 say 4tb drives in a raid 10 would be better?

I know the IT firm also fitted a 10 gigabit switch.

How do I speed this up? is there a bottleneck somewhere of say a 10/100 switch or cable?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Ralston18]

Just to be sure:

You are asking about how to speed up the work network - correct? (And/or RAID NAS?)

If so, have those questions been asked of the IT firm?

 

[cruisetung]

HDD is slow compared to SSD, it's a rotational mechanical disk, the drive heads must seek and change tracks to arrive at the sector where files are recorded to do the read/write, it takes time.

8TB drives in RAID 1 mirror will not gain any speed from the setup.

Fast HDD drives sustained read write speed probably is about 200MB/s for a single user and a single large file.

With 10 people using the NAS and your PC likely with only gigabit port, even with 10Gbe switch, your PC's top speed will be 1gbps ~ 125MB if no one else using the NAS and only you are copying or writing the NAS with single file. If you are reading/writing a lot files, the speed can drop dramatically to only 1/10 of the top speed is not uncommon.

 

[bill001g]

Although it can be many things those transfer rates are acting like you have some cable in the path running at 100mbps. If you were to see higher numbers like even 15mbytes you know that is above 100mbps so the port is likely running 1gbit. 12mbyte is about the maximum you will see on a 100mbps connection because of the overhead of things like mac addresses and headers.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi all

At home I have a server and a games pc, when transferring files from one to the other the speed is around 110 megabytes a second ( fairly decent ).

When I am at work the network speed there is about 10 - 11 megabytes a second, I know there are 10 of us but should it not allocate resources to whoever is using it?

Also the NAS drive is the same speed (it is a 10 bay with two 8tb drives in a mirror raid ) I would have thought that 10 say 4tb drives in a raid 10 would be better?

I know the IT firm also fitted a 10 gigabit switch.

How do I speed this up? is there a bottleneck somewhere of say a 10/100 switch or cable?

Any help would be appreciated.

First, is this your job. If there is an IT firm doing network work it probably isn't your job and management might not like you doing anything beyond submitting a trouble ticket.
BUT, it is most likely a 100Mbit network somewhere. I would troubleshoot by looking a the LEDs on the network switch. Are they all gigabit or higher ? If you see a port that is not at gigabit speed, then you can get the IT firm to investigate that.

 

[gggplaya]

If these are files that everyone is accessing in/out regularly, a NAS that size likely has the ability to add an SSD cache drive. That would speed it up immensely for files that everyone is touching regularly. Even for storage, if the files don't exceed the cache size, it should allow for copying to the NAS very quickly.

 

[Scotch Egg 71]

Hi all and thanks for your help, i found out that all the computers were plugged into the phones which slowed them all down.

 

[Ralston18]

Interesting.

Are you able to share more details about what you found and how you found out?

I believe that you are refering to "hotspots". Is that correct?

And where does said "IT firm" fit in?

 

[evermorex76]

I believe that you are refering to "hotspots". Is that correct?

I think they mean IP phones, with the PCs on the passthrough switch port. The cheaper (or older) models of those are usually only Fast Ethernet. What kind of crummy IT staff put in a 10Gb switch and then left all their PCs tied into 100Mb networking? The same kind that put in a 10-bay NAS for a 10-person office then only installed two drives, I guess. They need to fire that IT firm. It seems like they go for flashy and expensive "highly visible" tech they can market to management but neglect the fundamental stuff. One hopes that the NAS is actually connected to that switch with a 10Gb connection.

12mbyte is about the maximum you will see on a 100mbps connection because of the overhead of things like mac addresses and headers.

12.5MBps is the maximum speed period, ignoring overhead. 10 or 11 is the more realistic maximum that you'll see after overhead.

Also the NAS drive is the same speed (it is a 10 bay with two 8tb drives in a mirror raid ) I would have thought that 10 say 4tb drives in a raid 10 would be better?

Yes, the more drives the better until you reach the point that the network link is saturated, although the type of RAID matters as well. Even with good drives, a 2-drive mirror is usually only going to need a 1Gb Ethernet connection because the maximum write speed is only equal to a single drive (read speed can be double if the access patterns work out right). Normal activity with a NAS in a small office doesn't involve large sequential transfers, and non-sequential access means the throughput is MUCH lower.

If you needed 8TB of storage, then four 4TB drives in RAID10 would have doubled the speed for writes and reads could have been as much as 4 times as fast depending on the data patterns (it can read different data from all 4 drives at once). Eight 2TB drives in RAID10 would have quadrupled write speed. It still wouldn't have been maxing out a 10GbE link unless they were exceptionally good drives, and only in large sequential transfers from a single PC. (To save money and still get capacity, RAID5 can be used, and is often recommended by default, but you don't get increased write performance with that, sometimes it even goes down a tiny bit, though read speed is increased.)

Depending on the odds that you'll need to add capacity in the future, leaving some empty bays can be a good idea, but leaving 8 out of 10 empty was ridiculous. A 10-bay NAS is something a 100-person office might need if it's just for average file storage (not gigantic rendering files or anything). Your company could have saved thousands of dollars and just gotten a 2-bay 2.5GbE NAS and matching switch and gotten the same performance as what you're getting right now. I guarantee the IT firm marked up the retail price of that NAS and that switch by 20% or more, too.