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Chapter 13. Tuning the performance of a Samba server
Learn what settings can improve the performance of Samba in certain situations, and which settings can have a negative performance impact.
Parts of this section were adopted from the Performance Tuning documentation published in the Samba Wiki. License: CC BY 4.0. Authors and contributors: See the history tab on the Wiki page.
Prerequisites
Samba is set up as a file or print server
13.1. Setting the SMB protocol version
Each new SMB version adds features and improves the performance of the protocol. The recent Windows and Windows Server operating systems always supports the latest protocol version. If Samba also uses the latest protocol version, Windows clients connecting to Samba benefit from the performance improvements. In Samba, the default value of the server max protocol is set to the latest supported stable SMB protocol version.
To always have the latest stable SMB protocol version enabled, do not set the server max protocol
parameter. If you set the parameter manually, you will need to modify the setting with each new version of the SMB protocol, to have the latest protocol version enabled.
The following procedure explains how to use the default value in the server max protocol
parameter.
Procedure
-
Remove the
server max protocol
parameter from the[global]
section in the/etc/samba/smb.conf
file. Reload the Samba configuration
# smbcontrol all reload-config
13.2. Tuning shares with directories that contain a large number of files
Linux supports case-sensitive file names. For this reason, Samba needs to scan directories for uppercase and lowercase file names when searching or accessing a file. You can configure a share to create new files only in lowercase or uppercase, which improves the performance.
Prerequisites
- Samba is configured as a file server
Procedure
Rename all files on the share to lowercase.
NoteUsing the settings in this procedure, files with names other than in lowercase will no longer be displayed.
Set the following parameters in the share’s section:
case sensitive = true default case = lower preserve case = no short preserve case = no
For details about the parameters, see their descriptions in the
smb.conf(5)
man page.Verify the
/etc/samba/smb.conf
file:# testparm
Reload the Samba configuration:
# smbcontrol all reload-config
After you applied these settings, the names of all newly created files on this share use lowercase. Because of these settings, Samba no longer needs to scan the directory for uppercase and lowercase, which improves the performance.
13.3. Settings that can have a negative performance impact
By default, the kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is tuned for high network performance. For example, the kernel uses an auto-tuning mechanism for buffer sizes. Setting the socket options
parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf
file overrides these kernel settings. As a result, setting this parameter decreases the Samba network performance in most cases.
To use the optimized settings from the Kernel, remove the socket options
parameter from the [global]
section in the /etc/samba/smb.conf
.