1gbps between 2 Windows Servers

Hey guys

I have recently purchased a Lacie Ethernet Disk 2TB (1Gbps ethernet card), im using a Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition OS on A HP Proliant DL580 with SAS 15k RPM Drives.

I have put a CAT5e cable between the 2, the cable has printed accross is tested for Gigabit ethernet, i have IP communication between the two.

I have a scirpt that does an xcopy of some VMware images from the Windows Server to the Lacie Ethernet Disk.

for some reason i am only getting 15% bandwith usage, using some bandwidth monitoring software i can see im getting 120Mbps throughput, i understand the bottle necks and im not going to recieve a full 1000mpbs but i would of expected at least 400mbps??

Any ideas?

Ikon, I have a setup similar to yours. I increased the throughput by about a 100 mbps by switching out the cat5e cables for cat6e cables. Seemed to make the hole network run a little smoother also. The highest I have seen is around 38% bandwidth utilization.

I second that for using CAT6. Although Cat5e is designed (in theory) to work well in Gigabit Ethernet, multiple factors can affect the performance at such high speeds (such as none ideal RJ45 termination). Cat6 is better equipped for it.

Cat5E should be more then capable for 1000Mbps

As TCP has a 75% window there is a (theoretical) maximum of 750Mbps, still 7 times (almost) what you are experiencing right now.

Is this a direct crosslink connection or are there switches and others involved?

Also check the max cap. of your HDD. I don't know what a HDD can take (I'm a network engineer, not much home with system engineering).

Also check without script, could be the script is causing some delay (cause of some checks). There should be at least a 500Mbps throughput imho.

It will depend on various things like, Disk Speeds, which bus type you have (PCI data transfer rates), window sizes, etc...

Here is a good article www.enterpriseitplanet.com/networking/fe.../article.php/3497796

Being VMWare images I assume they're quite big. I did something similar copying the contents of backup DVDs in the past and noticed that the throughput rockets for the first ten seconds or so but then falls back to about half that value for the rest of the copy. This was due to the cache running out on the server and the limiting factor of the disk throughput coming into play. You might want to examine the real-time throughput using the graph in task manager as the copy runs, rather than the average for the whole copy