Lower IOPS than expected / slow small file transfer through SMB

I've got the following setup:


Disks here are Seagate IronWolf 12 TB hard disks (ST12000VN0008)

I've got a test folder of representative production data, which I copy over SMB. This folder is 2.2GB, with mixed filesizes, some 12KB, some 2MB, with a ratio of roughly 50/50 (in size, not file count). During this, the smallest files seem to slow down the copy a lot. My boss is convinced that small or big files shouldn't matter, as small files would get aggregated using transactions...

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