File Transfer Help

[eyeball]

Hi everyone,

I have a few vista desktops and a server 2008 machine. All are x64 and running at 1Gbps.

When i transfer a 20gb file from any of the Clients to the sever i notice that the Ram usage increases as the transfer goes on. AFAIK this is vista caching the file for performance, but it soon eats up all of the ram on the machine (all 8GB on one machine!) and then the client is unresponisve until the file transfer is complete.

However this does NOT happen when transferring the same 20GB file from Server to Client.

Has anyone experienced this? Can anyone offer a solution?

Thanks for your time

Edited March 3, 2009 by eyeball

[Tripredacus]

I may have had something related.

Firstly, because the network I am on is still mostly XP Pro clients, I use Group Policy to disable the Link-Layer Topology Mapping on the Vista Clients and also on the server.

In addition, I had disabled a GPO on the Local Policy for the server which can be viewed here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=122871

This may help you. For me, it represented an upload (to the server) cap that I had to overcome.

[eyeball]

Thanks Tripredacus!, Although you had a slightly different issue there it still gives me some avenues to explore. I am going to do some testing later on and il let you know how it goes

[eyeball]

I have just tested transferring the same file from a server 2008 machine to a server 2008 machine and its is fine. It appears that caching of the file does not occur on server 2008 but it does on vista.

My first thought was suprefetch so i have enabled that on one of the server 2008 boxes but it makes no difference to the memory usage. (however interestingly the transfer speeds increased with the service enabled, but thats not the point here).

So now what do i do? What is the difference between server 2008 and vista that is causing this problem?

Thanks

Edited March 4, 2009 by eyeball

[eyeball]

This just gets stranger and stranger....

After messing around for a few hours with services I have found the following:

Logged onto the desktop locally if i transfer from the vista desktop to the server - all ok

However if i log onto the server locally and UNC to the desktop and copy the file that way i get the problem i described in the first post!? Now what on earth is going on here?!

UPDATE:

I have just replaced the NICS in a client and the server and had them back to back but the same thing happens. So its 100% not the hardware.

UPDATE 2:

After realising that the problem lies with UNC'ing from the server back to the client and performing a transfer i have also tested UNC'ing from server1 back to server2.

When i do this and begin a file transfer the same thing happens. (if i run over to server2 and bring up taskmgr i can see the mem usage creeping up until it uses all physical memory).

I am not happy at all with this behaviour Has anyone ever seen it? Should i file a bug report with MS? or would anyone care to test it out to prove that its not just me?

Thanks

Edited March 4, 2009 by eyeball

[Tripredacus]

I am wondering if using the UNC path adds additional SMB traffic with the data.

You can also to a file copy from a command prompt using xcopy to see if you get a faster speed.