File Copy Speed; Is it normal?

[stevenriz]

I imagine we are in the norm here but I thought I'd run this by you. People are constantly complaining about their file copy speeds from server to server, server to workstation etc... We have a network that uses Cisco 4700 series core switches with a 10GB backbone and 1GB to each node. I attribute the copy speed to disk subsystems and that we can't expect to get 1gb speed in copying files etc. currently we are getting about 40 MB/sec using all Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers with internal Serial ATA drives, one server has an EqualLogic iSCSI device hanging off it with 16 drives in it and we get about the same speed there.

According to the switch, all nodes are talking at 1GB and we don't see any error packets or retransmissions anywhere.

Are we normal?

 

[North323]

just because the switch is set at 1gb does not mean you will get 1gb. there is always other traffic on the network and your server/workstation NIC are probably 100mb. there is always some sort of bottle neck. i'd say if you dont see any errors or retrans...you are normal.

 

[PeterHurst]

I've had a similar conversation - basically there will be a weak link - generally at the moment the general wisdom is the sustained data transfer rate of the hard disk.

Tom's hardware has a good article.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gigabit-ethernet-bandwidth,2321.html