W2008 r2 server performance/network ?

[Lemmy Kilmister]

Hi everyone

2 outstanding, I am trying to resolve:

Issue #1 : Slow transfer speeds over a WAN connection: I have a distant site connected via a 10mpbs MPLS connection. Yes, we've already checked all the interfaces, everything is fine, no mismatches anywhere.

When I transfer a test file (250 mb) from a host on the distant site to my local server via drag and drop, I can achieve about 5-6 mbps of throughput.

When I do the same transfer using ftp : almost 9.2 of throughput.

Is this an inherent issue with SMB? What can be done to tweak it?

Issue #2: The nature of our work is CAD/Engineering. I've noticed very, very poor performance when opening CAD drawings from the distant site (distant site connects to my local site to get files). This is essentially opening a CAD project with hundreds of small linked files. Average performance over the same 10 mbps connection is about 1-2 mpbs of sustained traffic.

What are my options? We've checked everything on the network side. Switches, routers, everything is fine. We are looking at a Riverbed appliance, but what can be done to improve the performance of data transfers?

[Muruganantham M]

Dear Lemmy Kilmister,

i don`t think tweaking will increase server performance/network,but my request is can u go for "BranchCache and DirectAccess".

FYi:-
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee835709.aspx

Demo:-http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/7/3/F737395A-3F55-4F38-B330-88E0F93A8867/branchcache.wmv

[Andrew C Fieldsend]

You might find the Google write-up on SMB interesting, as it describes why you may be having this issue. (A number of other sites support Google's description.)

Basically, SMB assumes a low latency connection (being originally designed for a LAN environment), and therefore performs relatively poorly over high-latency WAN links. FTP was originally designed with the opposite assumptions, and so doesn't suffer this problem.

There is an improved version, SMB2, but only Windows versions since Vista support it - what are your client and server OSs?

[Lemmy Kilmister]

workstations are XP, backend server is 2008 r2.

We've solved our problem using Riverbed appliances with some pretty good results.

[Andrew C Fieldsend]

That would probably explain it then, since the Riverbed appliances would take some of the overhead out of the SMB protocol.