We have an 6513 Cisco router and we have some HP Proliant servers running
Windows 2003 with gigabit adapters. Ports are set to 1000 on the router
and the server are set to 1000/Full with flow control at auto. But when
we do a windows copy from server to server we are only getting 230 MBps at
the highest throughput rate. Should we be getting more throughput than
this?



Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Thanks in Advanced.
Eric Sabo

On Oct 5, 4:10 pm, "The Sabos" <the.sa...@verizon.net> wrote:
All depends on the server, backplane, protocol, etc. Are the source
and destination on different switches? Are they in the same network?
How much b/w do you have across your backbone if it is being routed or
pushed across switches? How much utilization do you have across those
links? If all of that checks out, how fast are your drives, what is
the utilization of the server itself during that transfer?
Additionally, windows copy is terrible from my experience, have you
tried ftp? How does that work for you?

The Sabos wrote:

What do you get with those two servers on a different gigabit switch?

It's a pretty difficult question to answer, given how many variables there
are. If you're just interested in the raw throughput of the switch from the
servers, disregarding disk speed etc, try testing it with iperf:

http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/

I suggest you avoid the Java version, as it tends to max out your CPU before
your network. Getting 93Mbps on a switched 100Mbit network here, btw.

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) (UnSoEsNpEaTm@ale.cx)
21:19:47 up 4 days, 23:07, 2 users, load average: 0.17, 0.19, 0.17
09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0

All servers are in the same VLAN.

How does one find how much utilization between the links?

Yes, thanks for all the information. I understand that Windows Copy is
very bad but we haven't tried FTP yet?



"Trendkill" <jpmason@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1191615507.994855.72340@r29g2000hsg.googlegro ups.com...

On Oct 5, 7:02 pm, "The Sabos" <the.sa...@verizon.net> wrote:
A SNMP monitoring tool will work. Not sure of any free ones right
offhand, but I'm sure some others can recommend some. However, 200+
mbps is not bad in my opinion for windows copy, so I would try ftp
first and see how you fare. I have seen etherchannel gig to servers
run at 2-3 gigs per second, but for most windows based single-gig
boxes, several hundred meg is probably par for the course. Not to say
a well tuned box can't get to 8-900 mbps, but does take a powerful,
well-tuned box. And to answer your question, a proper server should
push over 90% utilization of its link, but when you get to gig or
multi-gig, there are a lot more thresholds you start to hit, many of
which are hardware.

In short, try the ftp and let us know.

How does one do a simple test with IPerf?


"alexd" <troffasky@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1461484.WFbPo6BoKW@ale.cx...

"The Sabos" <the.sabos@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:6ozNi.61$C2.19@trnddc02...
Are you sure it's big "B"? Thats MegaBYTES per second. Switches are rated in
bits (little b) per second. If it truely is bytes per second, you've
exceeded gigabit speed (bytes X 8 = bits) 2.2mbps. Where are you getting
your numbers from?

I figure out how to use the program.

From my computer to the server I am getting 93.2 MB

From a server (gigabit connect) to server (gigabit connect) - 333 MB

With this numbers is this okay for the CISCO 6513 Router?

I would have thought it would have been about 400-500 MB at least.

Is there anything we can do to improve the speed? TCP windows size was 8
KBytes


"alexd" <troffasky@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1461484.WFbPo6BoKW@ale.cx...

On Oct 5, 8:14 pm, "The Sabos" <the.sa...@verizon.net> wrote:
Unless there is some architectural component I am not aware of, this
must be a source/destination server issue. I have 6500 series
switches that consistently push between 2 and 8 gigs per second
without batting an eye. As for single server bandwidth, I have seen
2-3 gigs per second for tivoli backup boxes (4 gig etherchannel to the
server itself), and for single-gig connections, I have seen 8-900 megs
fairly regularly. Granted these are almost all non-wintel boxes, and
are usually very large IBM nodes/system complexes or another flavor of
unix. As for a windows server that is tuned and has some good
hardware, i have seen 3-400 meg, but have never really watched them
too closely. All in all, I am guessing you have hit a threshold on
your server or with whatever copy program you are using, but your
performance seems within my expectations.

I think I have found what the problem is, I think I need to up the size of
the TCPWindowSize.

The problem is we are trying to back up over the network and the more speed
we get the fast it will go.

Thanks for all your help and input on this issue.


"Trendkill" <jpmason@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1191632564.045295.52860@y42g2000hsy.googlegro ups.com...

Brian,

You are correct, it is MBytes. My initial numbers were from the network
utility from HP but the later numbers are from the Iperf stats that I
collected.



"Brian V" <diespammer@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:v8OdnTmlRb8OU5vanZ2dnUVZ_uqvnZ2d@comcast.com. ..

On 6 Oct, 03:47, "The Sabos" <the.sa...@verizon.net> wrote:
For maximun backup throughput you may need to adjust
max tcp receive window
backup software - network block size
backup software - tape block size
backupo software - buffer, number of blocks

Depending on your exact server model and
backup hardware 1000Gbps may be approachable
or not.

The switch itself is not going to be
a limitation.

A KEY, let me repeat, KEY, issue is
the block/window sizes versus the round trip
time between the machines.
The throughput is limited to

RTT * block size.

At 1 ms with a windows copy (absolute
max block size of 64k). The throughput
will be constrained to

64,000,000 Bytes per sec.

This is called the Bandwidth Delay product.

If you change the block size in iperf
you will be able to drive the network pretty hard.

iperf -c -l 100000 x.x.x.x
iperf -s -l 100000

The default is 8k which I wold guess
would not usually
allow a 1G network to be saturated unless
maybe you had a super machine (two.

The easiest way to fond the limit of the network hardware
is to add iperf sessions

iperf -s -l ...
ipers -s -p 5002 -l ...
iperf -s -p 5003 -l ...

iperf -c -l ... x.x.x.x
iperf -c -p -5002 -l .... x.x.x.x
........

Until the aggregate throughput stops increasing.
You have then eliminated individual iperf settings
or behaviours as an issue. Something will
truely, let me repeat TRUELY, be full up.

Even ping can be used to generate high bandwidths
if you have enough of them.

c:\> for /l %i in (1, 1, 100) do start cmd /c
fping x.x.x.x -s 1400 -t 0

roughly

fping.exe from http://www.kwakkelflap.com/

The software is better than the name which
I can never remember.