topic Re: SMB Throughput variation between W2003 SP2 Standard/Enter in Windows Server 2003

SMB Throughput variation between W2003 SP2 Standard/Enter

Adie — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:29:49 GMT

DL380-G5 windows 2003 R2 Standard Edt SP2 copy via network shares & copy & paste generates around 500mb/s of traffic over a single gigabit network. If one of the servers is replaced with a ML370 G5 and Enterprise Edition (12GB RAM) the performance (copying to the ML370) drops considerably and generates a sort of square wave in the Network monitor (within Task mgr). We think it is the lazy writes but why such a huge difference between the two systems?

Re: SMB Throughput variation between W2003 SP2 Standard/Enter

James ~ Happy Dude — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 07:26:09 GMT

Adie,
This could be due to the Various network Scaling issues.

Are the NIC cards teamed ??

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912222
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936594 (Important hotfix which in NOT included in SP2)

& Very interestingly :
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0606.mspx

Regards.

Re: SMB Throughput variation between W2003 SP2 Standard/Enter

Adie — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 11:22:39 GMT

Nope, not teamed

I've tried all the RSS & ToE fixes etc and they don't appear to be relevant to this case.

Two copies at the same time from the same source to the same destination get more thoughput but I'm looking for single copy performance.

Re: SMB Throughput variation between W2003 SP2 Standard/Enter

Roger Faucher — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:48:49 GMT

Adie:

You don't mention it so I must ask: do both systems have 2 processors? are they comparable?

Make a great day!

Roger

Re: SMB Throughput variation between W2003 SP2 Standard/Enter

Ivan Ferreira — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:30:38 GMT

Check your network switch statistics, try to identify if there is a negotiation problem.

Check your disks performance, try to identify if the problem is related to disk I/O instead of network. Try with local performance testings (suddenly, windows does not provide /dev/null).

Re: SMB Throughput variation between W2003 SP2 Standard/Enter

Adie — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 03:54:21 GMT

Yep two dual core processors each.
Same external RAID array on both types of server. Local performance is fine.

There is no switch this is point to point. Both ends on Auto.