Jump to content
  • 0

Pauses in file operations on shares caused by DrivePool?


JasonC

Question

I've always assumed this was DrivePool, but I'm double checking/asking if there are any mitigations.

I've noticed with a couple of fairly common operations, I'll run into pauses on the Drivepool disk that I don't see typically. Primarily I noticed this when I create a new folder, rename a folder, or a delete a lot of things.  When creating or deleting, there is a several second pause. Same with a rename. It's somewhat annoying because I'll often get an error because of the pause, because I'll create a new, rename it, and try and enter it. But the pause between the create and rename means my system tried to enter "New Folder" not the name I just renamed it to.  With deleting, it'll stick at 99%, sometimes for quite sometime.

I'm guessing it's something to do with DP updating it's indexes, before telling the OS the operations are complete, but if there's a way to improve performance of this, I'd be interested in knowing what it is. Or especially if it's not supposed to do that. :)

Thanks!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

Do this:
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q542215

 

As this sounds like EXACTLY what you're describing:

When you experiencing folder rename errors, or long wait times on rename when using Windows 10 Anniversary Update (version 1607) as the client and Windows Server Essentials (or Windows 8.1 and up, with Windows Search configured).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Well, I wouldn't say exactly, I'm not getting any errors. It just is slower than I expect, or has a pause. It does succeed though. Which is why I hadn't disabled the indexing service, because I actually use the remote search capability. So it'll be a little unfortunate to lose indexed searches, if that is it.

But, for science, I'll turn off the indexer, and see if it addresses those strange hangs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Well, another option is:
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q7420208

 

After that, it's Windows.  As in, you may want to run this on both ends: 
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=highlyrestricted
 

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=highlyrestricted

And reboot the systems.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Thanks, I'll give a look at the other options you've listed, I'll want to read up the potential impacts of changing the autotune on tcp before I put that in place.

I've been running without the indexing service enabled for some time now, and I still see the weird pause. In particular, I see it at the end of file operations, usually when I'm moving folders and files to other places. I get this long pause at 99% like there is some cleanup or ack that the client is waiting for before it marks the operation complete. Long being defined here as 5 seconds to say...30? I don't time it, but it's just a file move between folders on the same target typically, so I don't know what it could be doing. I'll try and cap a video of it sometime just to show what I see.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I definitely understand that. 

For the record, autotuning is set to "normal" or an even less restricted option. I've found that highlyrestricted significantly improves network performance and stability. 

And if it helps, I've been recommending this since WHSv1 and Windows Vista, as I was very active in the Windows Home Server community. 

 

If you're still having issues with this, let us know. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Well, so new wrench in the works, but maybe a new avenue to explore.

I haven't yet changed the tcp auto-tune, but partly because I've gotten sick of Windows 10 reboots, so I've been migrating a lot of my things over to Linux. I'm still seeing the pauses in file operations, and I've had the index turned off for a long time so I know it's not that, now.

On the Linux side, I think I've got my mount points correctly set to not do any caching, presumably similar to how I've got the Windows client set, but I'm still seeing some odd behavior when I've got the identical tasks happening, but via Linux/samba mounts, but otherwise the same software on the Linux side. I did just notice something though...I think whenever I am getting those weird pauses, I get this in the app log on the machine running DrivePool:

Quote

The beta feature EseDiskFlushConsistency is enabled in ESENT due to the beta site mode settings 0x800000.

I've just started investigating it, and haven't proven a correlation to myself beyond a couple data points, but the early things I've found make me feel like this could be related to the pause behaviors I'm seeing on the clients.

So two things:

- if you have run into that EseDiskFlushConsistency and can tell me if that's something I should look into addressing or it's not anything that impacts DrivePool things...

- If you have any suggestions with regard to configure a Linux/Samba mount of the a share backed by DrivePool (I have cache=none set, I'm not 100% sure if that's the correct/equivalent to Windows SMB caching settings, but it looks it from the docs) that would be great too.

Thanks!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...