Windows Server 2016 Horrible Network File Sharing Performance

[Edrick Smith]

Some more information here: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=69077&sid=6625a62444b5f7ed098934bcd4cae729

 

I have a Windows Server 2016 system running the latest updates (however this problem has been going on for many months now so not update related). It's on an HP ProLiant Server which has a number of 4TB disks in RAID arrays. I've already verified performance on the machine its self as you can see from the attached graph. However ALL network transfers are horribly slow, in fact I was just testing it now on a Windows Client and I'm getting 1MB/s which keeps stalling out. I'm directly connected to the network interface to ensure it's not a switch issue. I've tried multiple clients and they all have this issue. Any ideas for why the performance is so horrible for network shares only both iSCSI and SMB. Also I tried the OS X fix that's suppose to fix samba shares but no change on OS X and this happens on Windows also. I've verified the server is able to reach gigabit speeds as we have gigabit FIOS also and I can run tests to multiple sites with no issue on that server hitting gigabit out to the world. 

[Edrick Smith]

1 hour ago, Edrick Smith said:

Some more information here: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=69077&sid=6625a62444b5f7ed098934bcd4cae729

 

I have a Windows Server 2016 system running the latest updates (however this problem has been going on for many months now so not update related). It's on an HP ProLiant Server which has a number of 4TB disks in RAID arrays. I've already verified performance on the machine its self as you can see from the attached graph. However ALL network transfers are horribly slow, in fact I was just testing it now on a Windows Client and I'm getting 1MB/s which keeps stalling out. I'm directly connected to the network interface to ensure it's not a switch issue. I've tried multiple clients and they all have this issue. Any ideas for why the performance is so horrible for network shares only both iSCSI and SMB. Also I tried the OS X fix that's suppose to fix samba shares but no change on OS X and this happens on Windows also. I've verified the server is able to reach gigabit speeds as we have gigabit FIOS also and I can run tests to multiple sites with no issue on that server hitting gigabit out to the world. 

I've also tried the suggestions here with disabling offloading but it had 0 change. https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/7bd0aa5b-eb95-40a8-a56d-c6013273665c/extremely-slow-smb-network-speed-server-2012-r2?forum=winserver8gen

 

I've also tried FTP internally from the Windows Server so I've tried iSCSI, FTP and SMB and all crap out on the transfer speeds. I tested downloading a 10gig file from a remote server and it'll pull 50MB/s over the WAN no problem. But for any of the network sharing protocols its crapping out around 39MB/s write as shown above via FTP, iSCSI, SMB. 

Edited February 4, 2018 by Edrick Smith

[Edrick Smith]

Anyone is this thing on? The latest, I'm using completely different network switches and I've got a Windows Client which has this horrible transfer speeds to the Windows 2016 server. I'm pretty sure my transfer speeds shouldn't be all over the place from 30MB/s to 5KB/s changing speed every few seconds. 

[Ve7878]

20 hours ago, Edrick Smith said:

Anyone is this thing on? The latest, I'm using completely different network switches and I've got a Windows Client which has this horrible transfer speeds to the Windows 2016 server. I'm pretty sure my transfer speeds shouldn't be all over the place from 30MB/s to 5KB/s changing speed every few seconds. 

i can't really contribute anything other than saying, out of the 10 Windows 2016 servers I've deployed on my network, I've simply not experienced these issues at all.

 

I'm sure you've already done but is all of the firmware on the server up to date, many years ago I had similar problems with a Broadcom network controller on an old Dell R710 doing this and updating the firmware resolved it. 

 

Are you running Windows Server 2016 1607 or Core 1709? 

[xendrome]

What client OS, maybe you have an SMBv problem or something with Jumbo packets if you are running those?

[Ve7878]

Also have you tried iperf to check performance? Just to make sure nothing else is awry with the setup. 

[Edrick Smith]

According to iperf by running the server on the Windows Server 2016 box and then running from my Windows 10 desktop client both of which are hardwired to the gigabit switch I got 39.8Mbits/sec. I'm running build 14393.rs1 release 180301-2139 this issue has been going on probably for about a year and it happened across both HP Proliant servers. Not using jumbo frame and the system has a Intel 82576 Gigabit Dual Port onboard then a Intel PRO/1000 PT quad card the results are the same on both NICs I tried switching from the onboard NIC to the card and got the same results. 

[xendrome]

Just now, Edrick Smith said:

According to iperf by running the server on the Windows Server 2016 box and then running from my Windows 10 desktop client both of which are hardwired to the gigabit switch I got 39.8Mbits/sec. I'm running build 14393.rs1 release 180301-2139 this issue has been going on probably for about a year and it happened across both HP Proliant servers. Not using jumbo frame and the system has a Intel 82576 Gigabit Dual Port onboard then a Intel PRO/1000 PT quad card the results are the same on both NICs I tried switching from the onboard NIC to the card and got the same results. 

Cabling or switch problem? Can you grab a soho switch and hook a server and client into them to do some speed tests with different cables?

[Edrick Smith]

1 minute ago, xendrome said:

Cabling or switch problem? Can you grab a soho switch and hook a server and client into them to do some speed tests with different cables?

I've tried different cabling and connecting the client machine direct to the server to eliminate any additional network hardware. I've also tried different gigabit switches. 

[xendrome]

4 minutes ago, Edrick Smith said:

I've tried different cabling and connecting the client machine direct to the server to eliminate any additional network hardware. I've also tried different gigabit switches. 

Got anything else weird installed on the server, firewall/AV software etc? Also, is Energy Efficient Ethernet or Green Ethernet enabled under the NIC adapter properties?

[Edrick Smith]

2 minutes ago, xendrome said:

Got anything else weird installed on the server, firewall/AV software etc? Also, is Energy Efficient Ethernet or Green Ethernet enabled under the NIC adapter properties?

No nothing third party this server is practically a brand new install of the OS only running file sharing. It's specifically an issue with the networking aspect because local transfers max out the RAID array. I just swapped over to the other NIC and ran the speed test from iperf, the first test I did was connected to the onboard gig port and this test i just ran was via the 4 port card and both gave the same exact speed results of 39

 

Nothing green Ethernet or energy efficient Ethernet in the NIC driver properties