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ReadyNAS 214 Tier Configuration
Dear All, I am new to forum, so I have had new ReadyNAS 214 four bay and did not setup yet. I am planning to configure it 3x2TB WD NAS Hard Drive using FlexRAID 0, but i need to know about tier setu...
Personally I think a better plan would be to use two larger mechanical disks in RAID-1 (at 2x6 TB), and then use a pair of SSDs.
It'd be risky to use a single SSD for metadata tiering. It's not a cache, so if the disk fails you could lose your volume. I'm not sure if you can only do data tiering, or if data tiering includes metadata tiering. But even data tiering is described as "mostly temporary". https://kb.netgear.com/000060806/ReadyNAS-OS-6-10-Data-Tiering
But if you are also using RAID-0 for the mechanical disk, I guess you are already giving up on RAID redundancy.
As far as size goes, I suggest setting up the NAS w/o the SSD first, and see if the performance is ok for you. That would also give some more info on the amount of metadata your volume uses.
Personally I am ok w/o it on my RN526x. The data tiering won't help with large file speeds (which is limited by the network). Metadata tiering would be helpful for browsing large folders.
Btw. Which tool can calculate the disk transfer speed for my NS214, is there any sofware to compare NAS disk performance,
eg. with or w/o SSD tier so i can decide to configure it.
thx.
For large file transfer tests, I use NasTester. http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance But that won't give you much information on ReadyTier performance, since those transfers are limited by your network.
I don't know of a good tool for measuring directory browsing and small file transfers. Intel did make a tool called NASPT, but it was end-of-lifed quite a while ago, and I don't have any experience with it. I suppose you could create some windows scripts that copied folders, etc and simply time them.
StephenB thanks for your quick & helpful answer,
Sorry but one more question if you do not mind :)
I setup the system volume RAID 0 and (if it's possible) when I add a SSD for metadata tier (128GB for now) can I expand or replace it with larger size one for future requirement (flushing metadata to spindle drive and getting/moving back to larger one SSD?
kohdee says,
"A tier is just a special RAID group. You can incrementally expand a tier as long as your Tier is not a RAID 0, and you can also remove a tier.
When you are looking at your System > Volumes screen, select the RAID group Tier (the one that says SSD) and click the circle X underneath the dropdown box. It will restore you to pre-tier configuration. Right now, if you select more SSDs to add "another tier," it will say "add group" but we will probably change it to say tier."
Leventh wrote:
I setup the system volume RAID 0 and (if it's possible) when I add a SSD for metadata tier (128GB for now) can I expand or replace it with larger size one for future requirement (flushing metadata to spindle drive and getting/moving back to larger one SSD?
You are supposed to be able to do that, but it's not something I've tried. The worst case is that you'd need to do a factory reset and restore the data from backup.
StephenB wrote:
Leventh wrote:I setup the system volume RAID 0 and (if it's possible) when I add a SSD for metadata tier (128GB for now) can I expand or replace it with larger size one for future requirement (flushing metadata to spindle drive and getting/moving back to larger one SSD?
You are supposed to be able to do that, but it's not something I've tried. The worst case is that you'd need to do a factory reset and restore the data from backup.
Yesss, I've tried that for one ssd, first adding as a 2nd raid group (128GB SSD), then set it up as metadata tier and used for few days but I don't think it gains performance noticable (maybe did not tested enough time and files), so I deleted the ssd raid group and readynas flush back the metadata to spindle drives it works!
Tomorrow I will test it 2nd option as data Tier with 1TB SSD, let's see any difference about performance gain (with some os image backup and small files).
After testing little while and not satisfied maybe I will use the SSD (without tier) as a other raid group for files that needed low latency, I/O access.
FYI.
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