samba - Jun 2010 - Samba transfer rate slower than ftp

Hello,

I have a file server under Debian Lenny, with a 41TB file system (XFS, 
24 x 2TB hard drives on RAID 6 on an Areca card)

Reading files with ftp works like a charm and we easily reach the 125 
MB/s limit of the GB ethernet card.

But when reading files (on the same clients) from a samba share, we get 
around 60 MB/s.
Clients are Windows XP 64 and Seven 64 and show the same performances.

Sadly enough, this server has a 'twin brother' (same hardware) that runs
Windows Server 2008, and reading from a share on it gives a nice 100MB/s.


So why is the samba share so 'slow' compared to ftp or the windows
server ?

Here is the smb.conf (samba version is 3.2.5)

-------------------------------------------------------------
[global]

    workgroup = WIZZ
    server string = Prod1 File Server %v
    log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
    max log size = 50
    security = share
    encrypt passwords = yes
    socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 
SO_SNDBUF=8192
    dns proxy = no
    guest account = root
    load printers = no
    printing = bsd
    printcap name = /dev/null
    disable spoolss = yes
    getwd cache = yes
    dead time = 30

[partage]
    comment = Partage
    browseable = yes
    writable = yes
    path = /space/partage
    guest ok = yes

------------------------------------------------------------

I have also tried without any socket options, or with the following options
   socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY IPTOS_THROUGHPUT 
SO_RCVBUF=262142 SO_SNDBUF=262142 SO_SNDLOWAT SO_RCVLOWAT
   min receivefile size=16384
   use sendfile = true
   aio read size = 1
   aio write size = 1

but this did not give any improvement.


Any ideas ?


Thanks


Francois

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 12:26:04PM +0200, Francois Lepretre
wrote:
> I have a file server under Debian Lenny, with a 41TB file system (XFS,  
> 24 x 2TB hard drives on RAID 6 on an Areca card)
>
> Reading files with ftp works like a charm and we easily reach the 125  
> MB/s limit of the GB ethernet card.
>
> But when reading files (on the same clients) from a samba share, we get  
> around 60 MB/s.
> Clients are Windows XP 64 and Seven 64 and show the same performances.
>
> Sadly enough, this server has a 'twin brother' (same hardware) that
runs
> Windows Server 2008, and reading from a share on it gives a nice 100MB/s.
>
>
> So why is the samba share so 'slow' compared to ftp or the windows
server ?
>
> Here is the smb.conf (samba version is 3.2.5)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> [global]
>
>    workgroup = WIZZ
>    server string = Prod1 File Server %v
>    log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
>    max log size = 50
>    security = share
>    encrypt passwords = yes
>    socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192  
> SO_SNDBUF=8192
Please remove the "socket options" and retry :-)

If it's still slow, I'll ask for network traces...

Thanks,

Volker
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On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 12:26:04PM +0200, Francois Lepretre
wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a file server under Debian Lenny, with a 41TB file system (XFS,  
> 24 x 2TB hard drives on RAID 6 on an Areca card)
>
> Reading files with ftp works like a charm and we easily reach the 125  
> MB/s limit of the GB ethernet card.
>
> But when reading files (on the same clients) from a samba share, we get  
> around 60 MB/s.
> Clients are Windows XP 64 and Seven 64 and show the same performances.
An interesting question. Do you see different performance
between the XP and Win7 clients ? I know you say "the same
performance" above, but have you looked closely at this ?

Jeremy