How to boost synology performance by a lot

Flame Hardware Questions
1

Soo macOS finally supports SMB multichannel - awesome!

I can now connect my synology to my mac using 2x 10gbE dieectly and another 1gbE via my switch for dns etc -

and I get aggregated bandwith without any bonding/link aggregation shenanigans . I believe it even can go via wifi as a path if it looses a cable connection you do however have to explicitly enable smb multipath on the shnology using ssh.

on the nas: ( be careful its no joke
messing with internal
configs but we have a need for speed)

sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

insert server multi channel support=yes

synoservice --restart samba

i get 1.8GB/s from my 8 bay syno now its very fast

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2

So you are using the x2 onboard 10gb ports for the Synology and you added a 2nd network card for…um…networking?

3

Synology is a bit too dumb (without some terminal stuff) to route traffic so yea I just use a 1G ethernet for web traffic, the dual 10 is directly attached to the NAS to save switch costs .

The cool thing is with multichannel - I can still connect with the hostname of the nas and traffic goes via the 10G links that arent even in the same subnet… its all I ever wanted :smiley:

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4

Hey Finn, which Synology box are you using for this? Sounds like a nice setup! :slight_smile:

5

I am using the Brand new DS1821+. I added a NVME cache but that doesnt affect the speedtest performance (ive turned it off its only usefull for boosting random rw perofrmance) wiht 8x 8tb synology drives

6

thanks! :slight_smile:

7

Dumb question @finnjaeger. Are you using the Synology anywhere else in your network, or just attached to the Mac Pro? And if only attached to the Mac Pro, interesting that you chose NAS instead of DAS. What are some of the challenges you solved by going this route? I mean, besides the 1.8GB/s performance? Never mind. I think I figured it out. :slight_smile:

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8

Yes, It is syncing itself to another location for offsite replication ( the same nas across town ) so I can work anywhere.

I use a lot of synology functions like synology drive to quickly onboard external freelancers and have them work like with dropbox but without the limits and costs. Also that it can back itself up to external drives e.t.c …

I also use docker and yes I have multiple workstations and laptops that need access to all the files. I actually have ordered a switch but its not here yet hence the direct connection.

oh and I can access all my files without having the workstations turned on - big power savings if you just need to send some random
pdf to a client.

I dont like DAS systems as they cant do what a NAS can - but hey I am a born sysadmin so for me its the right way to go (I have 3 synologies in my house now , one for work one for backup and one for movies). I used to have to carry pegasus raids across edit suites every day - never again.

Oh yes and thunderbolt storage wastes thunderbolt ports the 10G ports are allready on the board :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
9

WOW @finnjaeger this is great,
Now you got me thinking. I have a similar synology but I have an iMacPro. If I use my 10gig port direct to the syn on the 10g port and a thunderbolt to 10g adaptor do you think this could work?

10

I dont see why not as long as they both link up with the same speed (and make sure you set the MTU to 9000

I can actually test this on friday once I get my thunderbolt cable as I do have a SanLink3 10GE thunderbolt card. (and a sanlink2 dual 10G on a trashcan)

11

Well to keep costs down could it work with the internal 10gig ethernet and 1 sanlink ?

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12

Yea thats what I mean I can test, instead of using my 2 internal ports to only use one and the sanlink and see how that compares

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13

This would be great for me as I could stop using my promise raids and take the noise out of my room too.

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14

I sadly lost my single tb3 cable so now I have to wait until friday for the new on to arrive to test :slight_smile:

15

@finnjaeger this was rad of you to share. Thanks. Been thinkin a lot about integrating a NAS to my system this week.

Is your 1.8GB/sec disk speeds or network throughput? And how do you recommend testing disk speeds and/or network throughput?

thanks!

16

NAS are awesome, I couldnt live without mine! I am running the new 8 bay with the AMD cpu, couldnt be happier.

1.8GB/s is network throughput from a disk speed test, I used using Amorphous disk mark. Usually I would use iPerf to measure pure network bandwith but I thats not really going to work because I dont have actuall “link aggregated” connections. I havent even installed flame yet to see what the speedtest in there does. I am sure the 1.8GB is the raid read cache in the synology though, the 8 drives will not be able to do that. but yea only had this for a few days now so we will see, not easy getting straight speed numbers as the whole concept is made to serve multiple people and not one.

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17

One more thing which is one of the best features. of a nas:

you can use it as a FTP/dropbox/S3 whatever storage so it can download/upload stuff at night without the workstation having to draw power! there are so mannyy things :slight_smile: You can even directly offload external usb drives to it…

But so I have tested the dual 10 vs single 10 a bit and the results are… odd

This is all with my NVME cache (dual 800GB synology brand in RAID0 )

  • Speedtests are … weird! Write speeds seem to suffer a bit but read speeds are off the charts, 100GB in under 1 minute?! thats 50% faster than using a single 10G connection, and thats exactly what I was looking for !

I am going to let the NAS rest for a bit maybe the later tests suffered a bit from something the NAS is doing in the background to scrub the raid after me deleting 200GB every few minutes… will update the link if anything changes. Will test external TB3 10G card next

1 Like
18

Nice. What’s the raid configure as? Raid 10?

19

The HDDs are in Raid5 and the NVMEs as Raid0 (my local storage is 8x 980PRO NVMEs in Raid0…)

20

I now have it up to 1930MB/s in BM diskbench,… crazy!
0 idea though whats going on with the write speeds…

image

[global]
	printcap name=cups
	winbind enum groups=yes
	include=/var/tmp/nginx/smb.netbios.aliases.conf
	min protocol=SMB2
	server multi channel support=yes
	aio read size = 0
	aio write size = 0
	security=user
	local master=no
	realm=*
	passdb backend=smbpasswd
	printing=cups
	max protocol=SMB3
	winbind enum users=yes
	load printers=yes
	workgroup=WORKGROUP

EDIT:

Figured out the write situation one interface wasnt set to a MTU of 9000 so thats where the issue came from now its more like 1800/1000 very good.