Windows Server 2012 file server tip: make sure you are using SMB 3.0 Multichannel to speed up file access

Does your application use a lot of network bandwidth to access files on a remote Windows server? Or, does your application need to access a lot of files though UNC paths or mapped network drives?

If yes, you would benefit from a new feature available with Windows Server 2012 called SMB Multichannel. SMB Multichannel is a feature that is part of the SMB protocol version 3, which in turn is implemented in Windows Server 2012.

Now, what is the SMB Multichannel feature? As the name suggests, it uses multiple channels (TCP/IP connections) to a single server, if the computer/server has multiple network interface cards (NICs) available. Using multiple channels brings many benefits: increase throughput, better usage of processor cores (a single TCP/IP link utilizes a single CPU core only) and some fault tolerance.

Another network technology that greatly aids the SMB Multichannel feature is something called Receive Side Scaling, or RSS. Modern network adapters (on servers, at least) are RSS capable, and if you are looking to purchase a new server or are about to recommend one to your customer, be sure to check that all the NICs are RSS capable. A small detail, but definitely gives you a boost in network file access.

There's a great post about this feature on the Technet blogs, be sure to check it out.