Extremely Slow Write Speeds?

[Looby]

Hello All,

Not sure if this is the place for this or not. I am working on a trial of PrimoCache before buying but not seeing any benefit in my application and want to see if im doing anything wrong. Im sorry this is a SUPER long post but Im trying to include everything I can think of that ive tried and that im running into.

Usage:
Plex
File Storage
Remote and Onsite Backup

"Server" Build:
Windows 10 Pro (up to date as of today and brand new install on brand new drive)
Gigabyte GA-880G
Athlon II X4 610e
16GB Corsair 1333mhz
Samsung 860evo 250gb (OS)
Samsung 860evo 250gb (primocache)
Storage Pool: (using windows storage spaces)
* 7.24 TB running parity
- 4 x 2TB samsung hdd (sata2) <-yes I know but I got them free
- 2 x 2TB WD hdd black (sata3)
BUNCH of other HDD but they arent hooked up at the moment so they arent impacting this issue.
ALL pooled HDDs are and currently running on LSI SAS9223-8i cards but this is being changed to 2 x LSI SAS9217-8i cards
Norco RPC-4220 Case with SAS 6GB backplanes


Problem:
Transferring movies and shows from main computer to server (using windows explorer and yes I know thats not the fastest in itself) and am getting between 4 - 15MB/s. A couple of days ago I was running windows home server 2011 and was getting 100MB/s+ with exact same configuration but wanted to upgrade to a newer version of windows for more RAM and security support. I did have one brief moment last night were I was getting ~50-53MB/s on windows 10 which while not awesome was a HECK of a lot better than 4 but that stopped after a couple hours and back down to snail speed...

I have read windows storage spaces is garbage for write speeds in parity so I figured PrimoCache would be the perfect fix. When I run crystaldiskmark with cache enabled it gets 400-500MB/s and I see the cache acting as I expect but not when transferring over the network. When running crystaldiskmark with cache disabled I am still getting 80-100MB write on the server. No caching is going on for the main computer the files are coming from and im getting 150MB+ read. Yes I know that the network is limited to gigabit speed (~120MB/s) but I expect to see better than Im getting. Is PrimoCache not able to step in and do disk caching on network file transfers? Am I doing something thats just bonkers wrong??


I have setup the PrimoCache to use the full 250GB of the one samsung SSD. I originally was only going to use 100gb of a raid 1 array but mobo raid doesnt cooperate. 250gb of L2 cache on the 7.24TB pool in storage spaces. I then added 1GB of L1 RAM cache just for giggles. I increased that to 10GB just to see if it fixed my issues with write speed and no dice so I just dropped it back to 1GB.


Config:
L1 Cache
* Individual Read/write enabled 40% read(410MB) / 60% write(614MB)
L2 Cache
*Individual Read/write enabled 40% read(95GB) / 60% write(143GB)
Block Size - 512KB
Defer-Write Enabled
* 300 seconds
* Write Mode - Native
* Free Cache on Written checked


Again I know this is crazy long but I would really appreciate any help or direction. Ive been ripping my hair out for days trying to get this stupid server up and running and am beyond frustrated.

[Support]

Perhaps you may first check if the bottleneck occurs in the network or the server storage. You may disable PrimoCache and then check the server disk activities by Windows Performance Monitor in Windows Task Manager. If disk activities are heavy during the file transfer, then PrimoCache can help. If the problem is in the network or network related parts, I'm sorry that PrimoCache won't help.

[Looby]

Disabling PrimoCache appears to have no impact on the transfer speeds across the network. LOCAL transfers or copies it does exactly as expected and caches items enabling quick transfers but when transferring from one computer to another it does not appear to be doing the same caching.

Disk usage was very low but im not sure how storage spaces reports disk usage due to 6 drives being pooled together.

The network is currently gigabit and a couple days ago this same server had windows home server 2011 on it and was getting 100+MB/s transfer speeds. The only change I have made was upgrading to windows 10 and starting to utilize "Storage Spaces" in parity mode. I know this is a slower solution which is what prompted my trial of PrimoCache.

Again LOCAL transfers are spectacular and PrimoCache steps in just as I would expect. I just dont understand why it is not doing the same when network transfers are being done.

[Support]

PrimoCache only supports local drives and iSCSI drives. It seems that the problem is related to the network, for eg, the transfer protocol between two machines.

[Looby]

Ok well thanks for your help. I was really hoping PrimoCache would be the program to solve my problems. Looks like I've got more than just a simple problem though.