Post your performance results

patja wrote:

yoh-dah wrote: patja wrote: As much as I'd like to want to believe the ReadyNAS is that fast, I think it might have to do more with caching on the PC side as you have 2GB of memory. If you use a larger test data size with IOMeter, you'll probably get a more consistent result. That makes sense. I increased the maximum disk size to 4096000 and am now getting reads of 47 MBps and writes of 42 MBps pretty consistently. I believe that's sector count, so you may even want to double that size. I doubled it to 8192000 and am seeing writes at 53 - 55 and reads consistently at 47. I am using the iometer.icf file posted on the Iometer thread, just changing the target to my mapped drive and increasing the max disk size sectors.

I guess we'll need to confiscate your PC for our benchmark lab 8) Actually other test you can do is to drag & drop a large file, i.e. 4GB or larger, and time that.

My results running RAIDiator™ v3.00c1-p2 [1.00a025] from a 3.2Ghz Athlon 64 PC with 1GB RAM via gigabit connection on a Netgear GS108 switch to my ReadyNAS NV.

4 x WDC WD2000JS 200GB drives in X-Raid.

Settings (all standard I believe):

Enable disk write cache: Enabled
Disable full data journaling: Enabled
Disable journaling: Disabled
Enable jumbo frames: Disabled
Optimise for OS X: Disabled
Enable fast CIFS writes: Enabled
Enable fast USB disk writes: Disabled

Network shows 0 errors.

Write MBps = 15.71
Read MBps = 25.03

I've previously run tests with direct connection with similar results, and jumbo frames enabled (at both ends) with a reduction in results.

Personally I think it does the job and looks great, but I would expect better throughput (how can read performance over four drives give worse performance than native read performance of a single drive? I understand there is a write penalty with Raid 5).

limp wrote:
Personally I think it does the job and looks great, but I would expect better throughput (how can read performance over four drives give worse performance than native read performance of a single drive? I understand there is a write penalty with Raid 5).

Network stack and file protocol overhead?

patja wrote:

yoh-dah wrote: patja wrote: As much as I'd like to want to believe the ReadyNAS is that fast, I think it might have to do more with caching on the PC side as you have 2GB of memory. If you use a larger test data size with IOMeter, you'll probably get a more consistent result. That makes sense. I increased the maximum disk size to 4096000 and am now getting reads of 47 MBps and writes of 42 MBps pretty consistently. I believe that's sector count, so you may even want to double that size. I doubled it to 8192000 and am seeing writes at 53 - 55 and reads consistently at 47. I am using the iometer.icf file posted on the Iometer thread, just changing the target to my mapped drive and increasing the max disk size sectors.

These speeds are extremely quick! Gb speed caps at 125MB/sec assuming everything is perfect. And we all know that it is never perfect.

When I get everything setup I'll have a Linksys SRW2008 switch which has a 16Gb non-blocking backplane so this won't be the bottleneck. I have an Asus A8V motherboard with a Marvell Gb nic. I have an AMD 3500+ and 2GB Memory. If I don't get good throughput, I may upgrade my NIC. I bought 2 Seagate 250GB ES drives to go with my NV.

I did some performance tests last night.

Specs:
ReadynasNV - 256MB w/ 2 Seagate ES 250GB drives
PC Asus A8V - AMD 3500+ with 2GB Memory
PC NIC - Yukon Marvell 10/100/1000 (supports jumbo frames)


With a Linksys WRT54G and everything connected at 100/full I get:

Read: 9.28MB/s
Write: 8.54MB/s


With my new Linksys SRW2008(8 port Gb switch w/ full 16Gb backplane non-blocking - supports jumbo frames) and everything connnected at 1000/full)

Read: 29.x MB/s
Write: 18.x MB/s

I tried to enable jumbo frames on my NIC, the NV and the switch bbut something went wrong so I have no results with jumbo frames enabled. I hope to have that issue resolved soon and I will post back here.

Added 10/12/2006:

I fnally got jumbo frames working and my write scores improved dramatically, but my read scores dropped a tad.

With Jumbo Frames enabled on my PC, switch and NV:

Read: 27.52
Write: 23.75

zamboni wrote:
ReasyNAS NV with single 750GB drive. UPS, journaling off, cache on, etc. Read: 8.3 MB/sec Write: 9.5 MB/sec

New SMC-GS5 gigabit (jumbo) switch. No jumbo frames.

Read: 15.32
Write: 16.02


NVIDIA motherboard based LAN to:
1) Optimize for throughput, not CPU utilization
2) Jumbo frames
3) Auto-negotiate to 1000-mbit full duplex.

Rebooted both NAS (enabled Jumbo) and PC. Ensured no apps or services running on the PC.

IO Meter Run #1
Read: 19.69 - CPU 27%
Write: 20.22 - CPU 10.32%

IO Meter Run #2 -- different CPU-switch cable (switch-NAS is Infrant cable)
Read: 18.88 - CPU 17.62%
Write: 22.01 - CPU 8.94%

zamboni wrote:

zamboni wrote: ReasyNAS NV with single 750GB drive. UPS, journaling off, cache on, etc. Read: 8.3 MB/sec Write: 9.5 MB/sec New SMC-GS5 gigabit (jumbo) switch. No jumbo frames. Dreadful. Read: 15.32 Write: 16.02 OK, so I increase my switch 10x, but my performance goes up a meagre 50%? I understand that jumbo frames will help write, but read is in the toilet... it is operating at a theoretical 122 MBit -- not 1000 MBit. Note, this is after rebooting and disabling Antivirus, and every program and service running. Before this "clean reboot:" Read: 14.68 (so, my NAV, with Outlook replicating every minute, my read was only 0.64 mbit worse) Yeah, I may try a direct connection cable, but at this point, I am vastly disappointed; I expect better than 0.12 GBit performance out of a gigabit device... I may try a separate GBit NIC, but my "as-is" PC can natively do better with other GBit personal computers on a gbit network...

Definitely you should eliminate the switch first with direct connect. Most likely it is something like auto negotation failed. I highly recommend to manually set your speed/duplex on each device. This is a very common and overlooked problem.

conversation moved to: http://www.infrant.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=38101

Did you set the speed/duplex on the PC, NAS, and Switch? You must set it manually on all 3. Also, please list your specs of your PC. Do you see any errors on the Network/Ethernet screen when you click "show errors"? If so, post them here.

Well crap, I just realized the NV doesn't have the option to manually set 1000Mb. I have 10 or 100/half & 10 or 100/full and then auto negotiation. So forget what I said about manually setting speed/duplex on the NV. I just found out my nic card is the same way, yet my switch can do it.