TS-419P and performance issue

QNAP NAS solution for server virtualization and clustering/HA/FT
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duca
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TS-419P and performance issue

Post by duca »

Hi!

We have a small lab setup, with 2 Esxi (vSphere 4 upd.1) connected to a TS-419P through nfs and a dedicated HP gigabit switch. The TS-419P got 4 WD 1TB disk in a raid5 array.
I have attached a drawing of our setup.

There is only running 1 VM (fault tolerance) and it is hosted at the Qnap nas. The VM basically consists of 2 vmdk at 1TB each. The OS of the VM is RHEL5, filesystem is ext3 (lvm).
The purpose of the VM is to provide some movie clips to two clients (through nfs share), some of the movie clips is replaced automatically every night (when the clients don’t play the clips). The movie clips is in dvd quality.
The problem is that the 2 clients can’t play the clips without lacking, if we move the VM to the internal storage of one of the esxi the clips are played all right.
I know that the 419 isn’t is a high performance NAS, but shouldn’t it be able to handle that small job?
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petur
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Re: TS-419P and performance issue

Post by petur »

The TS-419 should certainly be able to handle this. It is only used to store the clips, right? Nothing of the VM itself is on there?

Start with plain transfer tests to see what network throughput you get between TS-419 and the servers. I think there might be something wrong there. How is the network configured?
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duca
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Re: TS-419P and performance issue

Post by duca »

Hi!

Thanks for your reply!

The interface at the esx, switch and qnap is locked at 1000mbit FD, jumbo frames are not enabled (since the broadcom nic in the esx dosn't support it).
The VM is a "clean" installation, only service avaible is nfs.

Ill do a bechmark on the network throughput later when I'm back at the office and post it here.
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petur
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Re: TS-419P and performance issue

Post by petur »

duca wrote:1000mbit FD
Make sure that all connected parties use that setting, I've seen bad things happen when some were set forced to FD and some to automatic. I prefer keeping NICs set to automatic. They are smart enough these days ;)
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duca
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Re: TS-419P and performance issue

Post by duca »

Hi!

I have double check all settings and all are locked at 1000 FD
I have attached two screenshots, both are HDD benchmark (bonnie++), “das.jpg” is when the VM is running on the local storage on the vSphere server and “nas.jpg” is when the VM is running on the TS-419.

I have done a nerperf network benchmark, here are the result:
From the client to server:
TCP STREAM TEST to 192.168.26.5
Recv Send Send
Socket Socket Message Elapsed
Size Size Size Time Throughput
bytes bytes bytes secs. 10^6bits/sec

87380 8192 8192 10.00 236.01

From server to client:
TCP STREAM TEST to 192.168.26.113
Recv Send Send
Socket Socket Message Elapsed
Size Size Size Time Throughput
bytes bytes bytes secs. 10^6bits/sec

8192 16384 16384 10.01 872.19
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schumaku
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Re: TS-419P and performance issue

Post by schumaku »

duca wrote:The purpose of the VM is to provide some movie clips to two clients (through nfs share), some of the movie clips is replaced automatically every night (when the clients don’t play the clips).
What an impressive set-up - ever considered simply storing the clips direct on the TS-419P then?
duca wrote:The movie clips is in dvd quality. The problem is that the 2 clients can’t play the clips without lacking, if we move the VM to the internal storage of one of the esxi the clips are played all right.
I know that the 419 isn’t is a high performance NAS, but shouldn’t it be able to handle that small job?
Without proper buffering, video streaming is one of the most timing critical activity, as any issues are becoming visible immediately.
duca
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Re: TS-419P and performance issue

Post by duca »

Hi Schumaku!

Thanks for your reply!
ever considered simply storing the clips direct on the TS-419P then?
Yes - But the VM are performing some task on movie clips when they are uploaded, of cause we could do it another way, but again the performace loss shouldn't be that much in our setup (compared to let the 419 serve the files).

I have been monitoring the cpu/memeory usage, when the clients are playing their movie clips and there are no significant load on neither the nas, server og client - very strange!
duca
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Re: TS-419P and performance issue

Post by duca »

Hi again!

I have done some research my self, and it seems to be a problems with smaller NAS appliances and vmware.
If somebody from Qnap is reading this thread, I would like you to read the below thread and comment on it:
http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic ... 48&t=18133

Regards

Christoffer
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