If you are copying to Win 2000 machines, turn off SMB signing, if all XP and Win2003 , this has no affect. Regretfully Dell uses Broadcom when they should have Intel interfaces. Guess all the nickels add up, at the expense of the customer.
Thanks for your reply on this.
However I didn't find any helpful way to resolve this .
Dell is keeping silence about this and I don't have enough time to kick them about their hardware, that's absolutely ridiculous.
So I think Broadcom is bad choice to use in this server(at least BCM5708C), dancing with tambourine around all kind of settings including internal firmware ones didn't help me a bit.
My colleagues have a workaround - they are using Intel adapters instead of Broadcom.
I have the same problem with my three PE2950 servers we bought. All three servers have Broadcom NetXtreme II 5708c and the performance is extremely poor. These servers can't work with 1Gbit switches, no matter what brand/model the 1gbit switches are. I always bought Dell servers for their quality and performance. Now I am really disappointed.
I had similar issues with two Dell servers, both the Broadcom cards. I tried disabling all the TOE functions in the driver, and updating the drivers but no luck. Then I found this: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/07/18/446400.aspx So I ran "Netsh int ip set chimney DISABLED" on each machine and it immediately resolved my issues. The problem seems to be those Broadcom cards and Server 2003 SP2.
We have been suffering similar problems to all of the above on and off for several weeks now. We have looked at veritas backup exec as there are known issues with the open file option causing the same symptoms as you guys have mentioned.
We have been running now with Intel Cards all ok now for days now but i know the question is going to be asked 'can we resolved the problem and go back to Broadcom' god knows why!
Has anyone tried the latest drivers from BroadComm themselves or they going to refuse to work as Dell or has mucked about with the drivers and you can only use there ( the to old!)
Broadcom has the latest drivers compared to what Dell has. As of the date of this post, Dell’s latest drivers v10.5 A03 (Windows Server 2003) did not contain a fix for the issue discussed below.
I have found the above drivers from Broadcom have corrected our performance problem on our Dell PowerEdge 2950.
The performance problem I experienced was slow file access/copy rate: A 18,575 Kb (.msi) file typically took anywhere from 45 to 60 seconds to copy from the server share to the workstation. Now it takes only about 4 seconds.
My problem had to do with TCP offloading, specifically TCPChimney functionality. Referencing the following article may help you establish the connection between your server's poor peformance symptoms and TCPChimney issue: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/07/18/446400.aspx
You can confirm if this is the cause for the issue that you are experiencing by following these few steps:
1. Issue a command (MS DOS window): Netsh int ip set chimney DISABLED This should return “Ok.”
2. Upon issuing the command, try what you have seen before as poor performance (e.g. copy a file from the server share to a workstation). You should see good performance (as long the CPU on your server is not already maxed out).
3. Enable TCPChimney offloading by issuing Netsh int ip set chimney ENABLED command. This should return “Ok.”
4. Install the Broadcom's drivers (currently v11.04.01 for Windows Server 2003) using the Setup.exe installer that comes as part of the download and then test performance.
Sounds similar to what we were having to except our servers were falling over to the point of rebooting was the only method to resolve the issue. We turned off the BoradComm Cards on the mother board and installed a nice set of Intel cards and everything is now fine and ahs been for a while now. It should also be noted that we found an issue while working on this with Symantec Antivirus for 64bit versions that caused similar issues. this was resolved with a pactch from there web site
I wasn't having a small throughput hit on single file transfers, it was a massive hit in throughput. A 300KB file would take several minutes to transfer.
If the following refers to the throughput with teaming.....
"When I was copying 2 files simultaneously I got doubled results - 60%-70%."
Teaming does not increase throughput with a SINGLE file, only with multiple connections to the server (multiple files are considered multiple connections)... as in, how could a file be divided, sent between to NIC ports and end up in one piece, (at least efficiently)
There is a document out on the Internet which explains the limitations of teaming, I looked for 25 minutes, could not find it. Closest I could get
"The 802.3ad mode does have some drawbacks: the ........, no single connection will be able to utilize more than a single interface's worth of bandwidth."
pcmeiners
4 Operator
•
1.8K Posts
0
January 28th, 2007 21:00
Seatrout
11 Posts
0
March 15th, 2007 11:00
eysupport
3 Posts
0
March 16th, 2007 07:00
However I didn't find any helpful way to resolve this .
Dell is keeping silence about this and I don't have enough time to kick them about their hardware, that's absolutely ridiculous.
So I think Broadcom is bad choice to use in this server(at least BCM5708C), dancing with tambourine around all kind of settings including internal firmware ones didn't help me a bit.
My colleagues have a workaround - they are using Intel adapters instead of Broadcom.
Hopefully you will be more lucky in this quest.
Dev Mgr
4 Operator
•
9.3K Posts
0
March 16th, 2007 10:00
You could consider this as an option.
pie8ter
27 Posts
0
July 29th, 2007 02:00
Message Edited by pie8ter on 07-28-2007 10:41 PM
Mondo1287
4 Posts
0
September 29th, 2007 23:00
chadbandp
2 Posts
0
January 15th, 2008 13:00
itconfig
1 Message
0
March 13th, 2008 06:00
The solution may be is to download latest drivers directly from the Broadcom’s website and then install them:
http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/netxtremeii.php
Broadcom has the latest drivers compared to what Dell has. As of the date of this post, Dell’s latest drivers v10.5 A03 (Windows Server 2003) did not contain a fix for the issue discussed below.
I have found the above drivers from Broadcom have corrected our performance problem on our Dell PowerEdge 2950.
The performance problem I experienced was slow file access/copy rate: A 18,575 Kb (.msi) file typically took anywhere from 45 to 60 seconds to copy from the server share to the workstation. Now it takes only about 4 seconds.
My problem had to do with TCP offloading, specifically TCPChimney functionality. Referencing the following article may help you establish the connection between your server's poor peformance symptoms and TCPChimney issue: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/07/18/446400.aspx
You can confirm if this is the cause for the issue that you are experiencing by following these few steps:
1. Issue a command (MS DOS window): Netsh int ip set chimney DISABLED This should return “Ok.”
2. Upon issuing the command, try what you have seen before as poor performance (e.g. copy a file from the server share to a workstation). You should see good performance (as long the CPU on your server is not already maxed out).
3. Enable TCPChimney offloading by issuing Netsh int ip set chimney ENABLED command. This should return “Ok.”
4. Install the Broadcom's drivers (currently v11.04.01 for Windows Server 2003) using the Setup.exe installer that comes as part of the download and then test performance.
Michael L.
chadbandp
2 Posts
0
March 13th, 2008 10:00
Sounds similar to what we were having to except our servers were falling over to the point of rebooting was the only method to resolve the issue. We turned off the BoradComm Cards on the mother board and installed a nice set of Intel cards and everything is now fine and ahs been for a while now. It should also be noted that we found an issue while working on this with Symantec Antivirus for 64bit versions that caused similar issues. this was resolved with a pactch from there web site
Mondo1287
4 Posts
0
March 13th, 2008 14:00
I wasn't having a small throughput hit on single file transfers, it was a massive hit in throughput. A 300KB file would take several minutes to transfer.
pcmeiners
4 Operator
•
1.8K Posts
0
March 13th, 2008 14:00
If the following refers to the throughput with teaming.....
"When I was copying 2 files simultaneously I got doubled results - 60%-70%."
Teaming does not increase throughput with a SINGLE file, only with multiple connections to the server (multiple files are considered multiple connections)... as in, how could a file be divided, sent between to NIC ports and end up in one piece, (at least efficiently)
There is a document out on the Internet which explains the limitations of teaming, I looked for 25 minutes, could not find it. Closest I could get
"The 802.3ad mode does have some drawbacks: the
........, no single connection will
be able to utilize more than a single interface's worth of
bandwidth."
http://www.cyberciti.biz/howto/question/static/linux-ethernet-bonding-driver-howto.php
pie8ter
27 Posts
0
April 10th, 2008 13:00