"Benno..." <0@0.invalid> wrote in message
news:40fb75f1$0$284$4d4ebb8e@news.nl.uu.net...
> Due to applications as the SAP client and AutoCAD 2002 our users roaming
> profiles contain thousands of very small files. I have noticed that the
> average transfer rate of those small files (~350Bytes in size) over the
> network is extremely slow compared to normal to large sized files (300KB
> up to a few MB). With the normal sized files I'm seeing transfer rates
> to the workstations of 4MB to 15MB per second, with the small files this
> drops to as low as 75KB per second with an average of ~200KB per second.
>
The small files are stored in the MFT, so a single read opens the file and
reads the data. Since 10K drives do about 100 IO/s, you won't ever copy over
100 files/s with a single threaded copy. Actually, it compares timestamps
before copying, but same argument.

The problem is roaming profiles. Create a home directory for each user
instead.

> The roaming profiles are stored on a RAID5 logical drive with a 64KB
> stripe size (I think this is the maximum for the Smart Array 5300
> controller) and the NTFS partition is formatted with the default 4KB
> cluster size. The Array Controller cache is configured 25% read / 75%
> write to compensate for the RAID5 slower writes.
>
> The server is a Windows 2000 SP4 machine, the workstations are NT4 SP6a.
> The network is 100Mb switched with a 1000Mb connection to the fileserver.
>

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]