[Samba] performance transfer (samba VS ftp)

[Stan Hoeppner]

Volker Lendecke put forth on 9/18/2010 12:44 AM:
> On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 12:22:53AM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> Pol Hallen put forth on 9/15/2010 9:36 AM:
>>
>>> debian stable (samba version 2:3.2.5-4lenny9)
>>>
>>> from clients by ftp the transfer of huge file is about 10/11Mb/s (with an 
>>> ethernet 10/100)
>>>
>>> by samba came 5/6Mb/s
>>>
>>> is it correct?
>>
>> Good luck.  It appears that tuning smbd and clients, both Windows and
>> smbclient, to get anywhere close to wire speed is somewhat of a black
>> art.  I asked the same question many months ago, and dropped the subject
>> after Jeremy said it had to be a problem with the W2K redirector.  Funny
>> thing is, that same W2K redirector can pull at almost wire speed from a
>> WinXP box.  The most I've ever been able to get out of smbd is ~8MB/s.
>> I'm running 3.2.5-4lenny12.  To get anything better than that I'll have
>> to go to GigE.  I probably won't get anywhere close to wire speed, but I
>> should get at least 30-40MB/s, which is 4-5 times what I get now, and
>> would thus be a huge improvement for relatively little cost--a few NICs
>> and a decent desktop GigE switch can be had for around $100 USD.  Even
>> without using jumbo frames this would be a huge improvement over 100FDX.
> 
> As always: What about get/put of large files with smbclient, >= 3.2?

Hi Volker.

I don't have a Linux client machine to test smbclient against my
Debian/Samba server.  However, running smbclient (3.2.5) on the server
and connecting to shares on a WinXP machine and W2K Pro machine hits 11
MB/s (near wire speed of 12.5) all day long with GETing moderate to
large files (30MB+).  PUTing the same files maxes out at ~6MB/s--very
lopsided.  I've tried various smbclient -O socket options with no effect
on PUT performance.

Copying from an smbd share to the Windows machines maxes at 9MB/s.
Copying from the Windows machines to an smbd share yields 8MB/s--much
more consistent than smbclient.

It sure would be nice to have smbclient's 11MB/s GET speed in both
directions with all OSes involved.

I've tried every option and optimization in smb.conf and the registries
of both Windows machines and can't get over 9MB/s.  It's sure better
than the 5MB/s come people report, so I'm not complaining.  It's kinda
academic anyway, because the bulk of our transfers to/from smbd are
large quantities of small files (< 1MB).  Such transfers can crawl at
less than 1MB/s.  Like I said, I think the best solution for me would be
to move to GigE.

-- 
Stan