alokw

Tried posting on Technet, but not many people had ideas to try. Figure I'd post here to see what you all could come up with!

We recently purchased a new server running Windows Storage Server 2008 SP2 with the intention of using it primarily as a NAS.

Currently, I am doing some beta testing on the server before deploying it for employees, and am noticing rather slow write speeds via SMB & CIFS from Windows XP and Mac OS clients. My Windows 7 testing system (using SMB 2.0 I'm assuming) writes rather quickly. Here are some specifics:

File Transfer Benchmarks:
Mac OS to Windows Server (CIFS Writing): ~ 25 Mbps
Mac OS to Windows Server (CIFS Reading): ~ 80 Mbps
Windows XP to Windows Server (SMB Writing): ~ 25 Mbps
Windows XP to Windows Server (SMB Reading): ~ 75 Mbps
Windows 7 to Windows Server (SMB2 Writing): ~ 90 Mbps
Windows 7 to Windows Server (SMB2 Reading): ~ 90 Mbps
Local Write: 200+ MB/s
Local Read: 400+ MB/s

Networking Information:
- (4) Adapters in a Team (Adaptive Load Balancing) = (2) Intel PRO/1000 EB + (2) Intel PRO/1000 MT
- All (4) Adapters are doing TCP & UDP Offloading & Flow Control is Disabled
- Adapters are connected to a 100 Mbps 48-Port switch via (4) Cat-6 Cables
- Mac OS, Windows XP, and Windows 7 clients are all attached to the same switch

System Information:
- Not in a domain, configured to use WORKGROUP
- Windows Storage Server Standard SP2 x64
- (2) Quad-core 2.0 Ghz E5405 Xeon Processors
- 16 GB DDR-2 RAM

HDD Information:
- OS Drives: (2) 250 GB SATA Drives in RAID 1 on X7DBE Motherboard = 232 GB (177 GB Free)
- NAS Drives: (10) 2 TB SATA Drives in RAID 6 w/ Hotspare on Areca 1680iX-16 = 12.7 TB (11.9 TB Free)

TCP Global Parameters:
Receive-Side Scaling State: disabled (tried enabled, still slow)
Chimney Offload State: disabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level: disabled (tried enabled, still slow)
Add-On Congestion Control Provider: ctcp
ECN Capability: disabled
RFC 1323 Timestamps: disabled

After doing more testing and mapping a share from a Mac OS X client onto the Windows 2008 Server, and copying a large file on the Windows 2008 side, from my Mac, I experienced write speeds of about 85 Mbps "pulling," but still only 25 Mbps "pushing."

I've continued testing by disabling SMB 2.0, disabling the "team of adapters," disabling IPv6, and a few other things... all with no avail. Setting up a NFS share yielded the same results... roughly 25 Mbps write speeds from clients to the server.

Perhaps also worth mentioning as my further belief that this is software related.... the old Xserve that this system is supposed to be replacing doesn't see any of these speed and performance issues from Windows XP, Vista, or Mac OS clients.

Are there any other suggestions you all might have to get this thing up to snuff?
Thanks!

2xgrump

Hi alokw...pls. check this out this helpful link:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u..._05sept19.mspx