So I have just started using TrueNAS and I want to move all my media from my Synology to my newly setup TrueNAS but the transfers are slow and I don’t know why, If I transfer from:
Synology → Truenas = 60MB/s
Synology → PC = 111MB/s
TrueNAS → PC = 113MB/s
TrueNAS → Synology = 104MB/s
So based on the results It can’t be a problem with the HDD, or both ethernet connections, but between the synology - TrueNAS its slow but only the one way and that’s the way I need to transfer 8TB Data
I have just replaced all ethernet cables with CAT 7 to see if that fixes the issue and no, it didn’t
Are those always the same files? I ask since a large image transfer will likely max out the Ethernet connection while a bunch of small files will make ZFS HDD systems suffer as they hack out all the metadata, parity, and small writes.
I’d also adjust the record size of datasets to reflect the use case. Images, movies and like files do much better re writes if your record size for a dataset is 1M vs. 128k by default.
I’d also check whether you may have an issue with MTU sizes being mismatched, causing trouble.
Can you tell us the spec of your TrueNAS server, is it physical or virtual? What spec/model is the Syno, and how is your network hooked up to the three machines mentioned?
It’s worth remembering that you’re testing a combination of your network and storage speed when transferring files like this. You can establish if it’s the network or the storage that’s at fault by running iperf from the command line on the TrueNAS and syno boxes
Synology ships with iperf 2, but you’ll want to run an iperf 3 server docker container for compatibility with the newer version that ships with TrueNAS:
That page also shows you how to run an iperf3 client on the command line for a debian box, which you can use to do the same on your TrueNAS.
As you appear to be on a GbE network I’d expect you to see close to wire speed (~900mb/s or ~110MB/s) between Syno and TrueNAS.
In simple networks it’s very rare to see asymmetrical network speeds, so I’m guessing this is going to be a problem with slow writes to the disks in your TrueNAS. Again, more detail on your configuration (including drive models) is essential.
I have access to both drives from my PC so I am dragging and dropping from one folder to another, do you think doing it this way is slower because my PC is the middle man?
Absolutely. You’re buffering everything in your PC and the PC NIC is going to have about 50% of the bandwidth available talking to two devices vs. the Synology dropping stuff directly (or you using the TrueNAS to pull stuff).
If there is a way to send stuff directly (rsync or whatever) then I’d try that instead.
Your TrueNAS can only share folders on it’s own HDDs, it can’t connect to shares on other machines (it’s more complicated than that, but for the sake of this post let’s assume that’s true).
Fortunately your Syno can connect to/mount the shares on your TrueNAS, so that’s what you need to do.
Let’s assume you have a shared folder on your Syno called “Media”, and a new shared folder on your TrueNAS called “New Media”. Go to the web interface for your Syno, open File Station, click Tools->Mount Remote Folder->CIFS Shared Folder, then enter the details of your TrueNAS (name or IP), the share “New Media”, and a username and password.
The Syno should then connect to the TrueNAS, mount the share, and it’ll appear as a Remote Folder in File Station. You can then copy your files across from Media to New Media without hair-pinning them through your PC
edit that’s not the /best/ way, but it’s a good combination of simple and reasonably fast (compared to copying everything to a bug USB disk and sneaker-net’ing it). IMHO, a better solution would be to rsync the data across, but that’s a fair bit more complex, so let’s stick with SMB/CIFS and dragging and dropping files in a webUI
