Maximizing Performance

[canadianjeans]

Hi all,

I've been pretty frustrated with my NAS so far:
1. No "Time Machine" support (even after the firmware upgrade).
2. Poor performance.
3. Poor management interface (the GUI and the web interface).
4. A number of other small issues.

HOWEVER, I've been messing around with it for the past couple of days to see if I couldn't make things a little better...low and behold, it WORKED (so far)!
I have been casually benchmarking performance (4x500GB WD drives in RAID 5 array). I wanted to determine the best protocol to use with my Mac (AFP right?)...well, CIFS was consistently beating it out by quite a wide margin. Writes were 5 MBps vs 15 MBps (AFP vs CIFS) and reads were somewhere in the 30's vs the 40's.
I wanted to try NFS, but I couldn't get it working on Mac OS (BTW...the path on the NAS needs to be something like /VOLUMES1/PUBLIC). So I went to the NAS admin panel and played with a bunch of settings and ended up turning EVERYTHING off (all of the services like BT, DLNA, etc).

...when I did this, the results were STUNNING!
AFP write performance is now around 35-40 MBps (MegaBytes per second).
AFP read performance ...get this... over 100 MBps (it dips up and down, but it was sustaining at around 108 MBps).

Now, a little background...
I'm running a first-gen unibody MacBook (not the pro) with GigE (obviously). It's around 4 years old.
I have two switches between me and the NAS, and I'm running jumbo frames (not sure what the performance difference would be without them).

So, I've gone from "disappointed" to extremely happy...AND Time Machine backups are finally working!
I think the trick is to simply forget about all of the "services" that this box "can" support....just strip it down and use it as a file server.

Sorry for the caps and long-winded story...I'm just a happy camper :-)

-Matt

[VulgarHandle]

While I had some problems with the services before the latest firmware, I too disable all the services, except DLNA. Smart phones, consoles, and many other wireless devices use it.

As for protocols, I have them all enabled as well. Android uses unix/linux, and of course Windows and Mac, and I also have it setup as an FTP.

I don't use any other services, and since the latest firmware, my performance is great, no problems with 'memory leakage', and no need to restart it periodically.

[lovepirate]

Hi canadianjeans,

How did you get time machine to start working? I have the newest firmware and mine doesn't seem to want to connect. Did it come back after shutting off all the other services?

I have a mid 2011 iMac with mountain lion connecting through one switch.

Thanks