Download performance on version 4.3.3

[jimmular]

My current version of SAB is 3.6.0. I recently decided to act on the "Update available" message and upgraded to 4.3.3. The hardware I'm using has 6 10K SAS drives in a RAID10 array, 16 Xeon 2,8Ghz cores, 16GB RAM and I have gig internet. With version 3.6.0 I see 70-80MB/sec from usenet when SAB is downloading. After upgrading to 4.3.3 I noticed this dropped to about 40-45MB/sec. I re-installed 3.6.0, which was still in my downloads folder, and now I'm back to 70-80MB/sec, so it's clearly something with the new SAB version.

I'm guessing there might be something in my SAB config that is an issue. About the only performance tweak I think I've done in SAB, which I did like 10 years ago, was set the article cache limit to 1024MB.

I'd love to stay current on my version, but a 40-50% drop in performance is a tough pill to swallow. Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks,
Jim

[safihre]

What operating system?
When you are on 4.3, and download a bit, what is shown in the Status and Interface settings window?
Try also pausing the downloading and and performing the tests in the Status window, post the results here.
We have a lot of optimizations in 4.3, so it basically only can be faster.

[jimmular]

Hi Safihre and thanks for the response.

I created a response including the screenshots you requested using imgur, but I get the message that "New users are not allowed to post links" when I submit it. I guess I will have to wait until I'm not a new user.

Thanks again,
Jim

[sander]

> , but I get the message that "New users are not allowed to post links" when I submit it.

See https://forums.sabnzbd.org/viewtopic.php?t=26810

[jimmular]

Hi Safihre.

I guess it's not in my nature to be cryptic like that. Thanks for the workaround.

My downloading machine is a Windows 2019 server. I have re-installed 4.3.3 and performed the tests.

Here is what the status window shows while a download is running. imgur com / XvvUTqq https://imgur.com/XvvUTqq


This is what the status window shows with the download paused. imgur com / SEmMZIz https://imgur.com/SEmMZIz

The download completed with a 43.8MB/sec average. imgur com / rTFxwGu https://imgur.com/rTFxwGu

Would you like me to do the same tests using 3.6.0?

Thanks again,
Jim

[jimmular]

I should have added.... that same nzb, running sab 3.6.0, completed with 66.8MB/sec. imgur com / SXv1nUU https://imgur.com/SXv1nUU

[sander]

(I've put working URLs into your posts)

"same nzb", but different names? Can you use the 1GB test NZB in SABnzbd for both versions of SABnzbd? Both with and without DIrectUnpack on?


Your system (Xeon from 2010 ... nice!): is that Windows straight onto your hardware? Or VMs? Or shared / VPS system?

[jimmular]

Hi Sander,

Thanks for the feedback. You're right, I may have grabbed the nzb from a different indexer- but it was the same release. it's all coming from newshosting.com so i don't see why it would matter. The unpack isn't a concern to me. On the RAID10 volume it's plenty quick.

With respect to the hardware, yes- it's old. HP DL380 G7. It's running Server 2019.

Version 3.6.0 works great. The hardware is hardly being touched even with a huge queue. While downloading and unpacking total processor usage is barely 50% and disk queue length remains below 1. I was hoping there may have been some settings that could be an issue, but if the focus is going to be on the hardware being the issue then I will just stick with 3.6.0. I can't purchase new servers for home at the moment. Once I do I will look at the newer versions of sab.

Something else that cropped up are SQL errors. I noticed 4.3.3 is randomly dropping NZB's from the queue with SQL errors showing on the console.

Cheers!
Jim