[Samba] Performance: Samba 3 vs. Windows 2003

[Schlomo Schapiro]

Hi,

just as a reference, setup an FTP or HTTP server along the Linux and check 
the speed there to see wether it is an Linux OS or a Samba problem.

Schlomo

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004, Alexander Lazarevich wrote:

> Samba guru's:
> 
> Our Samba 3 network performance is half that of Windows 2003 Server. I 
> really want to stay with samba/unix, but half the performance? I'm hoping 
> someone can point me in the right direction so we can keep using 
> samba/unix. I'll try to give as much detail without giving pages and 
> pages of benchmark numbers. If someone wants to see numbers, I'll send 
> them:
> 
> Fileserver is Dell PE2600, Dual Xeon 18GHz, 2GB memory, Gig NIC. System 
> is dual boot RHEL3-AS with an ext3 filesystem and Windows 2003 Server 
> with NTFS. The fileserving disk is a SATA-SCSI RAID enclosure. Bonnie++ 
> and iozone both show that the RAID enclosure can do 80MB/sec writes and 
> 40MB/sec reads on the ext3 in linux. Benchmarks in windows 2003 are very 
> similar. Why it gets faster writes than read, I don't know, and I don't 
> care right now. What I'm worried about is our samba network performance.
> 
> Clients are Windows XP/2K/NT4 pro with all patches installed and Gig NICs. 
> All the clients can netperf to the server at 60+MB/sec, some even faster. 
> No collisions on the NICs, nothing wrong with the network. There is a 
> cisco Gig switch inbetween the client and the server as well.
> 
> Here is the bottom line:
> 
> When the server is running samba 3, the clients get 12-13MB/sec.
> 
> When the server is running windows 2003, the clients get 24-26MB/sec.
> 
> Keep in mind the server hardware is exactly the same, the only thing I 
> change is the software. Windows 2003 beets up Samba 3, hands down.
> 
> However, all this testing is done by just drag and drop, and looking at 
> the clock to time it. Not the best way to do it, but I don't know of 
> another way now, suggestions welcome. The difference is obvious and 
> consistent: 500MB file in samba 3 writes to disk in 42 seconds, but writes 
> to windows 2003 disk in 21 seconds. I can produce the same results on all 
> of our clients any time of the day.
> 
> I've tried changing the smb.conf socket options (TCP_NODELAY, SO_SNDBUF, 
> etc.) to 65523, 242xxx, whatever. /etc/init.d/smb restart, then try again. 
> No change in performance whatsoever. Still 12-13MB/sec. I've also set 
> other options in smb.conf, such as xmit, write size, read size, but 
> nothing seems to change the fact that samba 3 can't do more than 
> 12-13MB/sec.
> 
> I've also searched the list, and found some people had success in 
> performance issues by changing the SO_SNDBUF, but they didn't list any 
> benchmark numbers. Maybe they were happy with 12-13MB/sec, but I'm not, 
> especially if something else can get 25MB/sec.
> 
> Any input is welcome.
> 
> Alex
> ---                                                               ---
>    Alex Lazarevich | Systems Administrator | Imaging Technology Group
>     Beckman Institute | University of Illinois | www.itg.uiuc.edu
> ---                                                               ---
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Regards,
Schlomo