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PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2014 4:56 pm 
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Hey Everyone

I have a brand new WHS 2011 server that I just built a few days ago. From what I read WHS can do coupled with a few add-ins and media servers, I'm very excited. What I'm hoping it'll do when I get everything running good is have a centralized storage system, automatic backups for all the computers in our house, media server to transcode files and serve files on the fly to devices on the local network, and remote access everything WHS can do with maybe Mezzmo (Mezzmo's a whole different topic).

Here are the components of my server.

CPU: I5-4430
Motherboard: Asus H87i-Plus
PSU: I forgot which one but its a good brand
Separate OS drive: SSD 60GB Corsair
3 2TB drives operating in raid 5, 2 WD, 1 Seagate. 7200Rpms and 64Mb cache all
RAM: 8Gb Corsair 1600Mhz
I am using the onboard Raid controller and Lan adapter, all Intel, good for my needs.

As you can see this is a pretty decent system, one I'm hoping will last me several years with great service. So now onto my issue; Whether I connect to the server directly through 1Gb LAN or wirelessly through a nighthawk router through wireless N I will always get slow or extremely inconsistent speeds. Connecting to the server directly with a Gigabit NIC on both server and client plus a newish cat5e cable will give me great results for maybe a second then speeds drops down to almost nothing. Its interesting actually the connection will start off very fast in the high 80's or 90's upload then will drop down to zero, almost as if the connection has been lost for a duration of maybe 30-60 seconds then reconnect at a much slower slightly more consistent speed. I know my little "array" is capable of much more for transferring files internally from OS SSD to the Array gives me beautiful results, with read speeds in the high 200's and write in the mid 100's.

The things I believe I've eliminated to be the cause are the client computers. I've tested my connection between both laptop and desktop all with the a 1GB connection both with same speeds.
The router, connecting to the server through it or directly gives less than pleasant speeds.
Cables, I have one long oldish Cat cable connecting my desktop to the server directly, and one short newish cat cable connecting the server directly to my laptop. same poor performance.

So it seems to be an issue with my server, I've tried going into device manager->Network Adapters->Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I217-V and changing some advanced driver properties like Jumbo Packet and Offload settings, which actually seems to have helped a little. But no more than changing my Fallout.ini to give better performance.

Any ideas what the issue might be or what to do? I actually don't know for sure I'm connecting to my server from my laptop directly with a successful 1Gb connection, I just know both are capable and the cable is good. How can I check to make sure on that? But speeds sometimes start off in high 80's or 90's something a 100Mb connection couldn't do so it probably is.

Well any help will be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Side questions:

As far as media servers are concerned what do you guys use? Seems like Plex is popular and Mezmoo too. Transcoding on the fly is important to me and Mezmoo seems to be a good choice.
Power consumption. How does one set WHS 2011 to automatically sleep and wake during certain hours? Or set idle power consumption to as low as possible? I've been going into settings menus for what seems like forever and I've only seen bits and pieces for that answer. I might have another question but these are the biggies. thx again. Seems like I can upload attachments, these are pictures of my file transfers connected directly to the server with my laptop.


Attachments:
File comment: File transfer form Desktop to Server through Wifi-N.
Desktop, Wifi connection.PNG
Desktop, Wifi connection.PNG [ 12.46 KiB | Viewed 8878 times ]
File comment: File transfer from laptop to server. Connect with Ethernet.
capture2.PNG
capture2.PNG [ 12.55 KiB | Viewed 8878 times ]
File comment: File transfer from Desktop to Server. Connected Via long Ethernet.
Capture3.PNG
Capture3.PNG [ 12.69 KiB | Viewed 8878 times ]
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PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2014 9:30 pm 
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Based on what you have posted and the speeds of file transfers to your servers SSD I do not believe its a network connection issue rather more to do with the drive controller and the RAID 5 Setup not that I am indicating RAID 5 is bad. If you can connect another drive to your motherboard and add a shared folder to it then try a transfer you may see different results.

You should see speeds between 70-120 MB/s, on occasion you will experience slower speeds if the server is busy doing something. Point in doing the test with another drive is to see if the speeds are better outside your RAID Array and if so then the issue lies there and for that you would need to go to the ASUS Website to see if others experienced the same issue and what they did to correct the issue.

What I am uncertain of is if the INTEL H87 Chipset will allow you to see and use individual drives as the spec's indicate RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 but nothing about JBOD. I do see in the manual the different drive settings you can chose for the drives but I am not clear if you can set them individually or if its one setting for everything. Anyway if you can add one drive and see it I would do that test to see what difference it can make and if the PCI-x16 slot is open and will support a drive controller then you may want to try the test using a different controller. However some x16 slots are specifically for graphics cards which others can be used for anything x1, x4, x8 and x16.

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~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
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PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2014 9:49 pm 
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Thx a ton for the help :D

After hearing your suggestion I connected my laptop to the server directly, confirmed it was a 1Gb connection and transferred files from there to the SSD card, outside the array. and it worked! I was getting speeds of about 100 write, for an SSD that seems kinda low but still a big improvement, maybe because its an OS drive and it was already busy. Does seem to strongly suggest a controller issue. I went into the server remotely and copied files from the SSD to the Array and the same issue, extreme slow downs. It started off very strong low 100s but now its down to 1-5. To be honest, I'm confused. I coulda sworn I checked that by doing the same thing with no issues. But I'll bet when I find a fix that'll solve the whole thing.


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PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2014 10:26 pm 
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I would test the speed outside the Array if you can connect another drive like I recommend then you can better determine if I am correct and it has something to do with the RAID 5 Array, heck if you can connect an external drive and just add a storage folder you should still see better speeds then what your reporting.

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Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8


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PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2014 10:44 pm 
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A friend who owes me a favor is taking a drive to me, its a kinda old external drive. I have none to use myself. He lives just a few miles away so it won't take long. I'll post the results soon.


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PostPosted: Thu May 15, 2014 12:11 am 
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I got the drive hooked up. its actually a USB 3.0 external drive. I hooked it up to my computer first directly for comparison. On my desktop it got average of 20-22. Hooked up to the server with a serve folder on it got me around 16-18 consistently. These speeds aren't very helpful I'm guessing but its the only drive I have access to, atleast until tomorrow.


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PostPosted: Thu May 15, 2014 3:07 pm 
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Can you test the transfer speeds with another computer? I neglected to mention the speeds I was mentioning are with a physical network connection and not WiFi so I need to clear that part up because I am not a heavy user of WiFi to begin with.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8


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