Improve Performance

[pttphong 1]

Look like wrong here: /dev/mdo => must be /dev/md0

[iJoMun 11]

On 8/10/2022 at 12:20 AM, pttphong said:

Look like wrong here: /dev/mdo => must be /dev/md0

Yes, I suspected that might be a typo so  I did run "mount /mnt/md0 /dev/md0". But received the error message: "mnt/md0 is not a block device."

[iJoMun 11]

@cayarsThank you for your kind words my friend, and I'm truly sorry for your loss! The inescapable cycle of life...! I will try to find some time soon, perhaps next week and PM you. I do need to get it done, cause I'm really struggling with streaming from the NAS. If I pause and then restart a video, it gets choppy. If I then attempt to stop the playback and go back to the movie/show main page, the Shield freezes. Sometimes, after waiting a couple of minutes  it'll respond to the click of the remote, sometimes not. I have to do a hard restart of the Shield by disconnecting it from power. Yeah, basically an untenable situation.

[bjjones 22]

4 hours ago, iJoMun said:

Yes, I suspected that might be a typo so  I did run "mount /mnt/md0 /dev/md0". But received the error message: "mnt/md0 is not a block device."

I got the exact same thing as well so it's not just you. Mines at 77% so I thought I night try and tidy it up a bit. I'll wait on Carlo to tell us what we messed up.

[Carlo 4552]

9 hours ago, iJoMun said:

@cayarsThank you for your kind words my friend, and I'm truly sorry for your loss! The inescapable cycle of life...! I will try to find some time soon, perhaps next week and PM you. I do need to get it done, cause I'm really struggling with streaming from the NAS. If I pause and then restart a video, it gets choppy. If I then attempt to stop the playback and go back to the movie/show main page, the Shield freezes. Sometimes, after waiting a couple of minutes  it'll respond to the click of the remote, sometimes not. I have to do a hard restart of the Shield by disconnecting it from power. Yeah, basically an untenable situation.

It looks like you typed the letter Oo instead of number 0 zero in md0. To be clear it's (m d zero).

instead of:

mount /mnt/md0 /dev/mdo <-- that one

you want

mount /mnt/md0 /dev/md0

Of course this was just a little trick I do to look at content of /dev/md0 vs trying to look at the root itself which can have other mount points attached to it.

du -csh / or du -csh /mnt/md0

-c produces the grand total
-s skips listing all the files and just shows the summary
-h switches to the human readable format for the values

du -ch -d 1 | sort -hr

A slightly different format using  -d 1 option to limit the listing to only the first level of directories

You could:

du -ch -t 100m

This will list all of the files in on the current path that are bigger than 100 MB in a human readable form, along with a grand total (-c). If you want to sort it like the previous command just do the piping the same way: du -ch -t 100m | sort -hr

Another way to limit the results by size is to display only files the size of which is in a specified range. For example to list files which are anywhere between 1 GB and 5 GB you can do this:

du -ch /home | grep '[0-5]G'

The above should work on all Synology systems.  However there is an easier way if you can install ncdu or NCurses Disk Usage. You can find it here: https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu

The easy way to install ncdu on Synology is from package manger. Install either of these:

While not needed for this the other 3 "SynoCli" tools are great. I have all 5 installed

Once you have it installed, run it from the command line by typing ncdu which will give you something like this:

This was from Linux, not Synology but you get the idea.

So depending if you have the community plugins installed or not you have a few methods to track down the space hogs.  If using ncdu you can delete/remove files right inside the UI.  

Do type the "?" to bring up the command help to make life easier.

 

[iJoMun 11]

@cayarsI wanted to extend my gratitude for your extraordinary patience and help! I finally successfully installed the Hynix P31 Gold (1TB) and copied over the Emby folders to it. The improvement to performance has been nothing short of startling! Whereas, previously we had to contend with jittery playback and frequent freezes (when pausing play or fast forwarding), now it's as smooth as Tennessee whiskey, or an 18-yr old Macallan, whichever you prefer.  Honestly, I had forgotten what a pleasure it was to play something through without some hiccups. Thanks you so very much!

[Carlo 4552]

It made for some interesting PMs which I loved following and watching you progress. 

You made a great choice with the Hynix P31 Gold NVMe as well, as it's among if not the best Gen 3 card available.

PS 18 to 25 year Macallan, but after a nice meal once a week or so I'll treat myself to a nice dram of one of my Islay Single Malts I always have in my private stash: 16 year Lagavulin, Ardbeg Uigeadail, Laphroaig Lore or 18 year Caol Ila.

But you're spot on, how smooth the setup is with a NVMe setup in this fashion.  It's really a shame you can't do this setup in the GUI or use it like this out of the Box!

Carlo

 

[Bert 49]

Today I threw in this 16 to bring my memory up to 20. 

Samsung 16GB DDR4 PC4-19200, 2400MHz, 260 PIN SODIMM, CL 17, 1.2V, ram Memory Module, M471A2K43CB1-CRC at Amazon.com

I'm sure it's overkill but the speed improvement from the additional memory is better IMO than the SSD caches.  It is possible because I am very novice that I screwed something up while setup up the NVME using the PDF Guide provided but I don't really think so.  I saw the memory on a reddit thread and you must edit the config file to actually use the 20 but it is a pretty nice, pretty cheap upgrade. 

[heffeque 53]

25 minutes ago, Bert said:

Today I threw in this 16 to bring my memory up to 20. 

Samsung 16GB DDR4 PC4-19200, 2400MHz, 260 PIN SODIMM, CL 17, 1.2V, ram Memory Module, M471A2K43CB1-CRC at Amazon.com

I'm sure it's overkill but the speed improvement from the additional memory is better IMO than the SSD caches.  It is possible because I am very novice that I screwed something up while setup up the NVME using the PDF Guide provided but I don't really think so.  I saw the memory on a reddit thread and you must edit the config file to actually use the 20 but it is a pretty nice, pretty cheap upgrade. 

You can let DSM 7 automatically read/write cache on an SSD for you just by adding a couple NVME SSD. Just remember to pin all Btrfs metadata for best results and you're done!

RAM upgrade + SSD cache did wonders on my end.

[Bert 49]

19 hours ago, heffeque said:

You can let DSM 7 automatically read/write cache on an SSD for you just by adding a couple NVME SSD. Just remember to pin all Btrfs metadata for best results and you're done!

RAM upgrade + SSD cache did wonders on my end.

What do you mean?  The process outlined in the guide is no longer needed?

[heffeque 53]

3 hours ago, Bert said:

What do you mean?  The process outlined in the guide is no longer needed?

It's system-wide SSD cache, so it's a "next -> next -> next" configuration, and unless you get tiny SSD drives, it should cache every small/medium sized file that is accessed frequently (such as Emby's relevant server files).

DSM 6 didn't do a great job at caching, but DSM 7, and especially DSM 7.1 and above do a great job (very happy with latest 7.1.1 Update 2 on my DS918+).

Any modern NVME SSD is quick enough to have a positive impact on performance, and literally have more than enough writes to last for decades.

Quick comment about the SSD cache, I did have to redo the SSD cache after every major/medium upgrade (from DSM 6 to 7, and again from 7 to 7.1) to take full advantage of newest SSD caching algorithms. But it's fairly quick and easy to do: remove (careful to do it properly from Storage Manager, never physically) and create again.

Here's a screenshot of my current setup.

 

Edited November 5, 2022 by heffeque

[FrostByte 5257]

Looks like Synology will finally officially support putting volumes on nvme drives in newer models which now have faster PCIe Gen 3 slots.  

Which Synology NAS models support using M.2 SSDs to create storage pools? - Synology Knowledge Center

[DonMacaroni 41]

Interestingly enough, I am seeing pretty minor performance gains, while I moved my cache and metadata over to nvme drives.
Maybe because my DB is still on spinners? I do have modified database cache size to 1024, while my DB itself is mere 256MB.

Seems weird, considering all those success stories I can read from here. Yet again I have huge music library, with 90k+ "albums" and it is painfully slow to load initially, it can take up to a half a minute to load Album view sometimes.

My NAS is fairly old as well, DS1520+ with 8GB of RAM. But I see a very little point of buying never system, with same CPU and similar hardware spec. (thank you Synology).

Or it is just so, that for Music library, bottleneck is actually elsewhere. 

Edited April 5 by DonMacaroni

[heffeque 53]

3 hours ago, DonMacaroni said:

But I see a very little point of buying never system, with same CPU and similar hardware spec. (thank you Synology).

Yeah... It's ridiculous. I see this: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Aoostar-WTR-Max-launches-as-new-11-bay-NAS-with-capable-AMD-Ryzen-APU-and-OCuLink-port.991136.0.html 

And I can't but feel robbed.

I know with Synology you are paying for the SW, but... Sheesh! 

[DonMacaroni 41]

For Music Library, bottleneck seems to be elsewhere.
NVME Volume makes absolutely 0 difference, compared to SSD (Read) Cache. (difference +/- 1s max, which I consider to be in error margin of my measurements)
There is significant difference, without cache though, then it is really slow.