UNAS Pro+

[Enquiries]

I didn't know if you wanted to know this. I have a UNAS Pro and a Synology DS920+ both have IronWolf Drive rated at 7200 RPM. The UNAS Pro is hooked up to a 10 GB Network and the DS920+ over 1 GB Network with link aggregation.

Now I have a Folder with a bunch of small Random Files, this folder is 3.79 GB in size. The DS920 will transfer it in 2 minutes and 30 seconds with Cache on, & 3 minutes without cache. The UNAS Pro will take over 10 minutes to transfer these files.

I assumed something was wrong with my 10 GB network, Nope it will transfer 4.79 GB in under 10 seconds, and ds920 takes 42 seconds.

I guess UNAS Pro doesn't like a bunch of small files being transferred. All this testing was done over SMB. The Ds920 is faster with NFS like a 1 minute 30 seconds.

[ed]

It seems like the issue you're experiencing with the UNAS Pro+ could be related to its handling of small files over SMB. Here are a few things to consider:

File Handling Over SMB:
Small files over SMB can often cause performance issues because of the overhead associated with each file transfer. SMB is not always optimized for handling lots of small files efficiently, especially when compared to other protocols like NFS. It’s possible that the UNAS Pro’s SMB implementation is not as optimized for handling small file transfers as the DS920+.

NFS Performance:
The fact that the DS920+ performs better with NFS suggests that it is better optimized for transferring larger numbers of small files. NFS generally handles small files more efficiently than SMB due to lower overhead, which is why you're seeing much faster speeds.

Cache Settings:
The DS920+ benefits from its cache, which helps speed up the transfer process by caching frequently accessed data. However, it seems that the UNAS Pro+ is not benefiting as much from caching when transferring small files, which may contribute to its slower speeds.

10GB Network Considerations:
While your 10GbE network is performing well with large files, the performance drop on small files could still be bottlenecked by the storage system’s ability to handle random access efficiently, which varies between devices.

To troubleshoot further, you could:

Try transferring the small files over NFS instead of SMB to see if the performance improves.
Look into any specific settings or firmware updates for the UNAS Pro+ that might improve SMB file handling.
Ensure that the SMB settings on both devices are optimized (e.g., using SMB3 with appropriate options for performance).
It seems like the DS920+ is better suited for your use case with small files over SMB, but using NFS for the UNAS Pro+ might help close the performance gap.