PE 2950 Broadcom NetXtreme II performance issue

Question

Recently I've bought couple Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers, both have two Broadcom BCM5708C NetXtreme II GigE cards on board. After system installation and teaming adapters I checked network performance...   During copying some big file via smb connection from one server to another(connected directly into each other) I have only 300-400 Mbps instead of 2Gb.   I tried to perform this check without teaming adapters - the results are the same - 30%-40%.   When I was copying 2 files simultaneously I got doubled results - 60%-70%.   So my question/problem is why I have only 30%-40% of bandwidth for one connection when there is neither any hardware nor software limitations ?

pcmeiners · Answer

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.

Seatrout · Answer

Hi,   did you get a solution for this meanwhile. We have a couple of 2950 and are not satisfied with the LAN adapters. Performance is poor, especially over VPN.   Performance (IPERF) is bhaving strange:   PE2950 -> PE2950 : 300 KBit/s through VPN tunnel PE2950 -> noname-Server with intel Card PE2950:  970 KBit/s through same VPN tunnel   noname-Server with intel Card -> noname-Server with intel Card : 1,5 MBit/s through same VPN tunnel   Sommething is weird with these Cards...   Broadcom has quite recent drivers for these Chips, but the Dell Drivers are quite old.   Has anyone a diffrent Driversource @ Dell for more recent Drivers ?

eysupport · Answer

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.

Hopefully you will be more lucky in this quest.

Dev Mgr · Answer

There have been a few posts where removing the TOE key from the system (just disabling TOE in the bios wasn't enough) helped performance. You could consider this as an option.

pie8ter · Answer

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.

Message Edited by pie8ter on 07-28-2007 10:41 PM

Mondo1287 · Answer

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.

chadbandp · Answer

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!)

itconfig · Answer

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 · Answer

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 · Answer

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 · Answer

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 · Answer

I put an Intel card on all our Dell PE2950s.  Viola! No problem so far.

PowerEdge Hardware General

PE 2950 Broadcom NetXtreme II performance issue

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