[Samba] Samba performance

[Jeremy Allison]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 08:02:56PM -0700, Juan Pablo wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm trying to use samba in a small video post production house but we are not 
> getting the performance we expected.
> 
> Our setup:
> 
> - CenOS 5.6 x86-64
> - samba.x86_64 (3.0.33-3.29.el5_6.2 and 3.6.0rc1)
> - Intel based server (One 4 core Xeon E5620  @ 2.40GHz, 8 GB RAM)
> - 4 Intel Gigagit ethernet NIC ports with 802.3ad bonding connected to a switch 
> configured tu use 802.3ad
> - 8 2TB 7.2 krpm SATA disks with hardware RAID5 (RAID stripe size 1024 bytes, 
> controller and disk cache enabled, readahead enabled)
> - XFS filesystem (created with the following parameters: size=64k -d 
> su=1024k,sw=7)
> - Average file size in the share: 8 MByte
> - Gigabit network composed by Cat5E certified cabling and DLink DGS-3427 gigabit 
> switch.
> - Intel I7 based terminals with Intel gigabit NIC, running Windows 7
> 
> 
> Test results:
> 
> OS access: 
> 
> Sequential write (1 x 31 GByte file): 500 MByte/s
> Sequential read (1 x 31 GByte file): 780 MByte/s
> Write (1000 files 8 MByte each): 249 MByte/s average
> Read (1000 files 8 MByte each): 158 MByte/s average
> Simultaneous write (4 processes each writing 1000 files of 8 MByte each ): 188 
> MByte/s average
> Simultaneous read (4 processes each reading 1000 files of 8 MByte each): 118 
> MByte/s average
> 
> Samba local access (stock CentOS samba 3.0.33 connecting from the same server 
> with smbclient):
> 
> Sequential read (1 x 31 GByte file):  267 MByte/s
> Read (1000 files 8 MByte each): 71 MByte/s average
> Simultaneous read (4 processes each reading 1000 files of 8 MByte each): 102 
> MByte/s average
> 
> Samba local access (Samba 3.6.0rc1 compiled from GIT repo. Connecting from the 
> same server with smbclient):
> 
> Read (1000 files 8 MByte each): 95 MByte/s average
> Simultaneous read (4 processes each reading 1000 files of 8 MByte each): 103 
> MByte/s average
> 
> Samba server accessed from Windows 7 terminals (samba 3.6.0rc1):
> 
> Read (1 terminal copying from samba fileserver to local disk 1000 files 8 MByte 
> each): 60 MByte/s average
> Simultaneous read (4 terminals each copying from samba fileserver to local disk 
> 1000 files of 8 MByte each): 70 MByte/s average
> 
> Note: Simultaneos read speed is measured adding the size of all transfered files 
> and dividing it by the time taken to transfer these files.
> 
> I will appreciate any feedback about the results we are getting and advice on 
> how to improve this.

If you're using 3.6.0 and Windows 7 clients try turning on SMB2 support
by setting "max protocol = smb2" in the [global] section of your smb.conf.

Jeremy.