[Samba] Maximum samba file transfer speed on gigabit...

bjquinn at seidal.com bjquinn at seidal.com
Mon Jun 5 18:16:33 GMT 2006


> What Version of Samba is running?

Various versions of 3.0 on multiple servers.

> Is it a kind of Locking Problem?

Ooh, good question, I'm not sure, and I'll try your oplocks settings. 
What exactly am I turning off, however, if I do that?  Am I turning off
file locking altogether?

> What speed have a Filetransfer with ftp?
> What speed did you have with a Windows Server?

Ok well along those lines, here's another thing that I've noticed since I
first posted.  I had been getting ~940Mb/s in iperf, so I didn't think it
was a network or NIC specific issue.  I was using "mount -t cifs" and
"rsync -a --stats --progress" to gauge my speed, which is where I was
getting the <20 MB/s speed statistics.  However, copying large files
through Windows Explorer from the Samba share results in 55-60 MB/s.  So,
I don't know if there's a problem with rsync, smbfs, or cifs or whatever,
but it looks like actual file transfer speeds (whether on one large file
or an entire directory) are pretty good.  I wouldn't mind seeing closer to
100+ MB/s, but I guess at around 60 MB/s, that's a great start.  NOW the
problem is that whenever I actually OPEN a file from any of the Samba
servers, it opens MUCH slower than on a comparable Windows server.  A
large Excel file, for example, takes 15 seconds to load instead of 6
seconds when loaded from the Windows server.  A given FoxPro query takes
45-55 seconds to run over the Samba share as opposed to around 10-12
seconds over the network from the Windows server.  Could this be related
to the oplocks stuff you were talking about, or would this point to a
completely different problem?  What are the downsides to turning off these
oplocks settings?

>Have you testet your Diskthrouput with bonnie (or such Tools)?

Yes, and I'm getting at least 50-60 MB/s (probably now my bottleneck),
although I've set up an SAS raid array that ought to get much faster than
that, but doesn't - however that's a question for another mailing list!

Thanks for your help!

-BJ Quinn


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