Post your performance results

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

Zamboni, you should create a new topic. This thread should be reserved just for posting user results so folks can easily skim to see if what they're seeing is the result of similar setups.

yoh-dah wrote:
This thread should be reserved just for posting user results so folks can easily skim to see if what they're seeing is the result of similar setups.

True - it started as just results, as I did not expect errors. I have now created a new thread with the relevant info from here. please delete my edited-empty posts and the replies to clean it up!

Adding my bit...

Using the recommended settings outlined in the performance post on this forum.

Write MBps: 19.452
Read MBps: 30.759

Here's my setup:

Stock NV
1 x 500GB (NORAID)
All journaling disabled
Fast writes on

AMD64 4800+
A8N32-SLI using the Marvell onboard NIC
2 gigs ram
2 x WD Raptors (RAID0+1)
Windows Vista x86 RC2

Netgear GS608 Gigabit switch (no jumbo frames)
Cat 5e cabling

Original set-up:

ReadyNAS NV
256Mb memory
3 x Seagate ST3400832AS 400Gb drives
X-RAID
Jumbo frames off
Journaling disabled
Fast CIFS frames enabled

Dell 2.4Ghz P4 PC
Windows XP Home
512Mb Memory
Belkin Gigahertz NIC F5D5005 NIC
Jumbo frames off
Flow control enabled, not sure what the TCP offload option is (mentioned in Infrant's test set-up post - I don't see any option like that anywhere)

D-Link DGS-2205 switch (GigE, no jumbo frame support)

READ: 29.2
WRITE: 19.3


Made the following change to the system (ONLY change):

Replaced stock 256Mb memory with Patriot 1Gb memory card (PEP1G2700SLL) from NewEgg

READ: 32.2
WRITE: 19.8


Replaced D-Link DGS-2205 switch with SMCGS8 switch (from Infrant compat. list). NO change to jumbo frame settings (yet):

READ: 31.3
WRITE: 19.2


Ok - now with enabling jumbo frames on NIC (MTU=9014) and ReadyNAS NV (MTU=whatever is standard, 7936??):

READ: 28.4
WRITE: 23.9


So I gained in write performance but lost read performance.

NOTE: I had posted previously about some volume errors I was getting when re-booting the NV. It appears they were caused by or related to the USB drive I had attached to the NV, NOT the jumbo frames.

michelkenny wrote:
Here's my info: Stock NV 4 x Seagate ST3250823AS 250gb Hard Disk in X-RAID All journaling disabled Fast writes on IO Meter Write: 19.321793 MBps IO Meter Read: 26.803979 MBps

Do these performance numbers make sense? Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these numbers similar to regular IDE drives connected directly to an IDE interface? A SATA drive directly connected to the SATA interface should at least get twice this performance. A decent drive should get 3 times this performance.

Now take 4 of these drives and create a RAID5, it should be screaming above 100MB/s. I don't think gigabit ethernet is the bottle neck here, because I've done benchmarks with gigabit Ethernet and it's way higher than 30MB/s.

So, can someone explain why these numbers are so low? Where's the bottle neck?

--jc

jching wrote:

michelkenny wrote: Here's my info: Stock NV 4 x Seagate ST3250823AS 250gb Hard Disk in X-RAID All journaling disabled Fast writes on IO Meter Write: 19.321793 MBps IO Meter Read: 26.803979 MBps Do these performance numbers make sense? Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these numbers similar to regular IDE drives connected directly to an IDE interface? A SATA drive directly connected to the SATA interface should at least get twice this performance. A decent drive should get 3 times this performance. Now take 4 of these drives and create a RAID5, it should be screaming above 100MB/s. I don't think gigabit ethernet is the bottle neck here, because I've done benchmarks with gigabit Ethernet and it's way higher than 30MB/s. So, can someone explain why these numbers are so low? Where's the bottle neck? --jc

The NV is definitely the bottleneck here. But if you compare the NV to the competition, you will see that not many are faster(plus these support forums are worlds better than the competition which is why I bought an NV). In time, as NAS devices become more popular, speed will become a bigger factor, but for now it's not to most people.

Helevitia wrote:
The NV is definitely the bottleneck here. But if you compare the NV to the competition, you will see that not many are faster(plus these support forums are worlds better than the competition which is why I bought an NV). In time, as NAS devices become more popular, speed will become a bigger factor, but for now it's not to most people.

If you're refering to Buffalo or similar, than yes. I agree. But how about FC RAIDs, like Medea, Infortrend, Xyratec. Granted, these are fiber channel, so they get 280+MB/s with 6 disks. This is about 50MB/s per SATA drive. Which is what I would expect from a SATA RAID system.

But even if we're limited to gigabit Ethernet, I'd expect greater than 30MB/s. So why is the Buffalo/NV/Thecus/etc so slow in comparison? Why aren't they getting similar performance from the SATA drives? Exactly what in the NV is the bottle neck? Is the RAID operations done in software? Is the parity done by the CPU?

Aside from the fiber channel vs. gigabit ethernet, what is different between the Medea/Infortrend vs. Infrant/Buffalo?

--jc

Please list what protocol you are using when gathering these performance numbers. It is my understanding that there are some significant performance differences amongst the different supported protocols...

jching wrote:

Helevitia wrote: The NV is definitely the bottleneck here. But if you compare the NV to the competition, you will see that not many are faster(plus these support forums are worlds better than the competition which is why I bought an NV). In time, as NAS devices become more popular, speed will become a bigger factor, but for now it's not to most people. If you're refering to Buffalo or similar, than yes. I agree. But how about FC RAIDs, like Medea, Infortrend, Xyratec. Granted, these are fiber channel, so they get 280+MB/s with 6 disks. This is about 50MB/s per SATA drive. Which is what I would expect from a SATA RAID system. But even if we're limited to gigabit Ethernet, I'd expect greater than 30MB/s. So why is the Buffalo/NV/Thecus/etc so slow in comparison? Why aren't they getting similar performance from the SATA drives? Exactly what in the NV is the bottle neck? Is the RAID operations done in software? Is the parity done by the CPU? Aside from the fiber channel vs. gigabit ethernet, what is different between the Medea/Infortrend vs. Infrant/Buffalo? --jc

A more apples-to-apples comparison would be if you were to measure the performance of the PCI RAID cards when accessed over the network. Processing TCP packets is a huge part of the overhead as well as copying the packets in and out of network file protocol, local file system, and RAID layers. Also, make sure when you're comparing write performance to use RAID 5, as the parity generation will add another level of overhead. And make sure you measure real performance and not "cached" by using data multiple times larger than the cache.

Another big factor in this market space is power consumption. Leave your PC on with a RAID card and 4 drives and it'll eat up more than 200W of power. The ReadyNAS will use about 55W at the highest load and will settle down to 35W when disks are in sleep mode -- almost half that's used by your typical light bulb, or down to close to almost nothing when in scheduled power-down mode. Consider this a growing requirement as we all need to do our part in reducing environmental impact.