We’ve hosted our network cache server on linux for a while now, but for various reasons are looking to move it to a Windows 10 Pro box. What kinds of things can we expect? What issues/messages should we look out for?
“The Cache Server runs optimally on a Linux or Mac OS X computer. The Windows file system is not particularly well-optimized for how the Cache Server stores data, and problems with file locking on Windows can cause issues that don’t occur on Linux or Mac OS X.”
The above sentence has been in the cache server documentation for many, many years.
Is this still the case, even today? But now local cache server exists for many, many users of the windows editor which means they’re all running it on windows.
How much of a realistic performance hit or issues are there if you run the network cache server on Windows 10 pro instead of linux?
What kind of performance do get from the cache server currently? I’m quite new to Unity and run a cache server on Windows Server 2016, and it’s been disappointing - Windows Task Manager (on the client side) typically reports less than 1MB/s of data coming from the server during a platform switch. Would be interesting to know what you get on Linux.
@dri_richard , ran a few tests on a test project and my network speeds from the cache server seem pretty on par with our network. You can see greater detail if you open up the Windows Resource Monitor, on the middle section of “Network Activity” when there’s activity you should see an entry with Unity as the image and the address of your cache server. That can help isolate if you are even hitting the cache server at all. Perhaps you are running in to issues where platform switching isn’t detecting cache server hits and therefore reimporting them. Someone seems to be having that issue in this thread: Unity Cache Server re-crunching textures on each machine connected to it - Unity Engine - Unity Discussions
I think I’m going to have to try out a windows version for myself and see what happens.
I haven’t been able to find much, actually nothing, online including these forums about the cache server and windows aside from the paragraph in the documentation. @SaraCecilia is there anyone who would be able to answer this? I’m not sure who directly “@” this to
My main questions are :
Does the linux vs windows issue still exist today in 2017 and windows 10 pro?
How much of a realistic performance hit or issues are there if you run the network cache server on Windows 10 pro instead of linux?
If we did try it on a windows 10 pro machine, what kinds of issues can we expect or should look out for that wouldn’t occur on the linux machine?
“Just try it and see” isn’t an easy option with our project without taking several man days, so I’m trying to find out this information up front from unity employees if possible
It’s definitely using the server. Unity UI says “Downloading from cache server”, and the incoming network traffic on the client PC perfectly matches the outbound traffic on the server.
Some more info, just tried the same test repo with cache server running on windows 10 pro machine and my speeds matched expected network speeds. My next steps are to test out the main project in the multiple gigs range to get some sustained traffic tests.
I’m running the cache server download from 5.6.1p1