McFiver PCIe Card
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IDArticle TitlePost Date
814 I'm getting low throughput on macOS. How can I fix this?May-26-22
You may need to set a few parameters to enable higher performance at 10Gb/s.

1) Set the mode to full-duplex, which allows the adapter to send and receive at the same time.

To set full-duplex on macOS, go into the System Preferences->Network and select the Twin10G interfaces. Click the "Advanced..." button in the lower right. In the Advanced window select the "Hardware" tab and set "Configure:" to "Manually". Set duplex to "full-duplex".

2) If your entire network will support it, set packet size to jumbo frames which pack six times as many bytes per packet.

For a large frame to be transmitted intact from end to end, every component on the path must support that frame size. The switches, routers, and NICs from one end to the other must all support the same size of jumbo frame transmission for a successful jumbo frame communication session. Switches that don't support jumbo frames will drop jumbo frames. In the event that both ends agree to jumbo frame transmission, there still needs to be end-to-end support for jumbo frames, meaning all the switches and routers must be jumbo frame enabled. At Layer 2, not all gigabit switches support jumbo frames. Those that do will forward the jumbo frames. Those that don't will drop the frames. For a jumbo packet to pass through a router, both the ingress and egress interfaces must support the larger packet size. Otherwise, the packets will be dropped or fragmented. If the size of the data payload can't be negotiated (this is known as PMTUD, packet MTU discovery) due to firewalls, the data will be dropped with no warning, or "blackholed". And if the MTU isn't supported, the data will have to be fragmented to a supported size and retransmitted, reducing throughput.

To set Jumbo frames on macOS, go into the System Preferences->Network and select the Twin10G interfaces. Click the "Advanced..." button in the lower right. In the Advanced window select the "Hardware" tab and set "Configure:" to "Manually". Set MTU to "Custom" and enter "9000".

3) Not all devices support flow control, or the absence of flow control. If Flow Control is off, turn it on; if it is on, turn it off.

4) Update your macOS to at least 10.13.6. Earlier versions enable SMB signing by default, which can cripple 10Gb networks. Update your macOS, or disable SMB signing. (You can Google how to do this.)

5) If you're in a macOS server environment:
If your Server is running 10.13.6+ enable SMB protocol, and disable AFP protocol.
If your Server is running 10.12.6- enable AFP protocol, and disable SMB protocol.
If your Server is running 10.13.6+, update your clients to 10.13.6+ for a significant performance boost.
 
976 In a Mac Pro, the SSDs are seen as external drives, how do I prevent accidental ejects?Feb-14-23
1069 How do I configure RAID under Windows 10?Feb-14-23
1. In the Windows search box, type "Storage Spaces".

2. Select Create a new pool and storage space. Windows will check all eligible volumes and list them in the next window.

3. Select the SSDs you want to include in the RAID and click Create Pool.
Warning: All data on the drives you select will be erased, so back up any important data before continuing!

4. After creating a pool, you'll be prompted to configure your new storage space. Type a name for the storage space and select a drive letter. The storage space will appear with this name and drive letter in Windows. You can select either the standard Windows NTFS file system or ReFS, the new resilient file system. If you'll be using mirroring or parity to protect against data loss, we recommend choosing ReFS for its file integrity protection features.

5. Choose a resiliency type. Select Simple (no resiliency) for a large RAID 0 pool of storage that combines the speed of the included SSDs, but offers no protection from a single SSD failure. Select Two-way mirror (RAID 1) to store two copies of your data across two SSDs, or select Three-way mirror (RAID 1) to store three copies of your data across three SSDs. Select Parity (RAID 5) to be protected from a single SSD failure across 4 SSDs. Parity will offer protection with increased size (3/4 of the combined SSD size), but a parity space is noticeably slower than the other options.

6. Choose the size of your storage space. The default will be the maximum available amount of storage you have, which will vary depending on the type of space you create. SImple maximum should be a sum of the sizes of the included SSDs. Mirror should should show the size of a single SSD. Parity should show the combined size of three (of four) SSDs.

7. Select Create storage space when you are done configuring your storage space.

8. The storage space you created will appear as a standard drive under This PC, with the name and drive letter you configured. It appears no different from a normal, physical drive to Windows and the desktop programs you use.
 
1073 How do I configure RAID under macOS?Feb-14-23
1077 Programming SSDs to 4k Block Size for Compatibility With macOS 10.13.6Feb-08-23
1122 Thunderbolt 3 NVMe volumes may experience a stop error under Windows 10 version 20H2Feb-14-23
1136 How can I use my new SSD volume to hold my user folder on macOS?Feb-14-23
1183 The Write performance of my SSD is very slow under Windows.Feb-14-23
The Windows default for any external storage media is for Write Caching policies to be disabled. If you have enabled it, then the write performance to an SSD will be very slow. To get significantly increase write performance, disable Write Caching. For instructions, see this Microsoft Document.
 
1189 The x8 PCIe lanes can deliver up to 7.8 GB/s. How do you fit the RAID, the 10gig lan and the 2x USB 3.2 in this bandwidth?Jun-08-22