Slow Second Link on WD MyCloud PR4100

[RickoT]

Greetings! I have a WD MyCloud PR4100 that I am using FreeNAS off a USB Drive (Current Build: 11.3-U3.2)
I have one primary interface that connects to my main network, and a second interface that connects to my backed network

I noticed the issue when I tried to clone a VM in proxmox (currently using Freenas as backend storage for my VM Cluster) Works great in every regard except this.
Basically what happens is, it will start the process, then slow to a crawl, then the NIC dies on the NAS. This requires a complete restart of the device to bring everything back up and running again. In my initial troubleshooting I noticed one big thing that stood out to me.

Once this happens, the ping rates to any device on the network go through the roof from the backend (second) NAS interface until I reboot it. Once I reboot it and bring all my VMs back up, it is <1ms, but once it gets into that state my pings range between 20 and 200 ms with timeouts and destination not found errors. I also note that in the log on the dashboard, it shows the interface going up and down every 5ish seconds or so (sometimes it stops for a few minutes, then picks back up)

Any ideas as to what could cause something like this?

Note, I only tend to see this when I clone in proxmox (either at the server terminal or in the UI) if I don't get any suggestions here, my next stop is on the Proxmox forums, but I figured since the issue appears to be on the NAS and not the proxmox server, I would start here.

Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks!
~Rick

 

[RickoT]

correction.... in my original post I sad ping rates were between 20 and 200 ms, but they range from 20 to 2000 ms

 

[Samuel Tai]

It was very difficult to find information about the NIC chip used in the PR4100, but I found it's a Realtek R8169. Unfortunately, Realtek NICs have notoriously bad driver support in FreeNAS. They work at very light loads, but fail in interesting ways under heavy load. As this is a closed system with no expandability, the standard advice of using a PCI-E Intel Gigabit NIC won't work for you.

 

[Samuel Tai]

You could try restoring the MyCloud original firmware, which appears to be based on Ubuntu, for which Realtek support is better. Unfortunately, you picked a hardware platform that's not really suitable for FreeNAS. If you want to continue using FreeNAS, your only option is to use your USB3 port, and attach a USB3 hub with 2 USB3 Gigabit adapters. Unfortunately, the selection of Gigabit USB3 adapters that work with FreeNAS is very small:

• ASIX Electronics AX88179 USB3.0 Gigabit Ethernet chipset (uses the if_axge loader module)
• Microchip LAN7800 USB3.1 Gigabit Ethernet driver (uses if_muge loader module)

This won't work well in practice, as practical speeds for if_axge are under 100 Mbps (I couldn't find similar performance data for if_muge, but it will likely be similar).

 

[morganL]

RickoT, If you are adventurous and have time, I'd be keen to know if TrueNAS SCALE based on Debian Linux works better?

 

[RickoT]

@morganL -- While I am adventurous, I don't have a place to store my data while testing in the event something breaks (which I always expect lol)
@Samuel Tai -- USB3 Hub idea sounds good on paper, but I can't afford to lose the bandwidth, and I don't really trust that concept. I also don't want to go back to mycloud because that software is horrible. I wish I could just install freenas directly on my device :(