Ingest to NAS is dropping to 1mb/s

[imagetic]

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017)
10GbE
QNAP DS1618+ (ext4/Raid6)
Photo Mechanic 6,  build 4538 (51e5663)

I did file a support ticket and send in my PM logs. But I wanted to see if anyone else is having similar issues or if my searches just failed to find a fix out there.

I ingest to a QNAP 6 bay NAS connected over 10gbe. I usually average about 500/mbs on the Mac with it.

But when I use PM, and Ingest a card or folder to the NAS, it starts fast (200+mb/s) and then drops to 1mb/s somewhere along the way.

Direct dump from finder to the internal storage on the iMac is 3 minutes. 
To the NAS is 4 minutes.
Ingest a card or folder in PM to the NAS is over an hour.

Doesn't matter if I'm pulling from a card or folder on the internal storage (iMac/solid state).

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[Kirk Baker]

What kind of speed do you get if you open the card as a contact sheet, select the items, and then use the Copy/Move Photos dialog to do the copying?

Also, I'd like to see your Ingest settings.  Please take a screen grab and save it as a JPEG.  Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your JPEG format screenshot.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[imagetic]

Hey Kirk, thanks for following up.

I've got a 128gb XQD card with 64GB of images on, from a Nikon D850.

Copy from the card to the NAS peaks at 100mb/s, takes about 12-15 minutes.

Card to the OS Drive/ SSD is about 140mb/s peak, 8 min'ish.

Ingest processes from card to SSD starts off at 144mb/s peak and seems to hold. 7.5 min.

Ingest from the card to the NAS, it spins up at 90mb/s peak, and just keeps degrading with time.  Attached a 10gbe bandwidth screenshot.

But, in testing that.  I found a connection.  If PM is opening the tab that the NAS is displaying, it starts to go slower and slower.  If I keep the tab closed, it maintains 85-90mb/s.

[imagetic]

Confirmed, if the folder tab is open from the NAS that I am ingesting to, it degrades in speed until it hits 1mb/s.

Closed, it will maintain 90ish.

[Kirk Baker]

OK, I figured that may be the case.  The thread that is doing the copying is being hampered by the contact sheet scanning the destination folder for the new changes (getting directory info) and the caching system (loading metadata and thumbnails from the destination folder).  NASes are not great at handling multiple requests for data.  They love to receive or send single large files.

It's not really a fair comparison to use a NAS against a local disk that can handle multiple access with aplomb.  Or to compare ingesting to a NAS while viewing the contact sheet to a Finder copy that only does the copy and accesses nothing else on the NAS.

If you want the speed, you'll have to turn off viewing the contact sheet during the ingest.  You can have Ingest open the contact sheet after the ingest completes.

-Kirk

[imagetic]

Fair enough.  Not ideal, but I can live with that as a workaround for now. 1mb/s seems incredibly slow though.  I'll do some testing off the NAS to triple check, but it looks like it's definitely linked to the window being open.

Out of curiosity, now do I disable opening the contact sheet on Ingest?

[Kirk Baker]

Fair enough.  Not ideal, but I can live with that as a workaround for now. 1mb/s seems incredibly slow though.  I'll do some testing off the NAS to triple check, but it looks like it's definitely linked to the window being open.

There's no such thing as a free lunch   If you want the fastest copying speed, you can't also tell the server to give you the directory information and the image data at the same time, right?

Out of curiosity, now do I disable opening the contact sheet on Ingest?

Change the popup menu in Ingest from "Open Contact Sheets during Ingest" to "Open Contact Sheets after Ingest".

Then your Ingest won't be interfered with and when it completes, the contact sheet will open showing you what was ingested.

HTH,

-Kirk

[imagetic]

Ah, the dropdown! I kept looking at the check box and being like "THIS DOESN'T WORK!"

Thanks. Will give that a whirl.

I just don't recall having the issue back in the day on PM5 while ingesting to a NAS unit.  If this cuts an hour off the ingest, I'll wait.  I just miss working at the same time.  Could also revert back to ingesting to a local / SSD and then migrate to the archive after the edit. I just haven't thought about how to best handle / automate that.