What is the best way to increase IOPS/Throughput on Readynas

[kevinfor2014]

We are running into performance problems running multiple Hyper-V servers (vhd via SMB shares SQL etc) + multiple network backups on our readynas & would like to know the best way to increase performance.

NAS#1 R4312 (4x10TB,6x6TB 2x4TB) XRAID6 2X10Gb(LACP) into switch the main server is 40Gb fiber running Hyper-v off the NAS#1 NAS#2 R3312 (6x8TB,1x6TB 4x3TB 1x3TB 1x2TB) is strictly Rsync nightly backups of the 1st..then cloud backup for critical data

if we moved the 2x4TB HD on R4312 to R3312 Then add 2x4TB SSD if we created a seperate flexraid volume for the metadata with the SSD (raid0/1/5 which is best?) could we still run the 2nd volume on XRaid2 (4x10TB 6x6TB) so we don't have the 14.6Tib of unused space of traditional Raid6 or can you no longer use XRAID2 with metadata caching? I am concerned running the SSD Cache in Raid0 if one SSD Fails the metadata would be corrupted and we lose access to data on the NAS, but I'm not sure what the performance hit would be.

What is the purpose of RAM on the readynas? - is it running Apps AV scans etc or does upgrading from default 16 to 64GB max create a larger cache before data hits the SSD layer. (ZFS is Ram intensive not sure on Btrfs) lastly can we update the R3312 to 10GB by installing a PCI Card like Intel X550-T2 or does Netgear have a daugher card avail? 

[StephenB]

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@kevinfor2014 wrote:

Then add 2x4TB SSD if we created a seperate flexraid volume for the metadata with the SSD (raid0/1/5 which is best?) 

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If you're thinking about metadata tiering (ReadyTier), then I'd go with RAID-1.  2x4TB is more than you'll need for just the metadata - you'd end up with ability to do data caching as well.  I doubt that RAID-0 would run any faster.  You aren't doing sequential access, so there is no read-ahead gains, and SSDs have 0 seek time.  And RAID-0 would be more fragile.

One poster here recently tried ReadyTier, and ran into stability issues.  Another option is to simply create an SSD volume, and migrate some of your shares (or LUNs) to it.

@kevinfor2014 wrote:

could we still run the 2nd volume on XRaid2 (4x10TB 6x6TB) so we don't have the 14.6Tib of unused space of traditional Raid6

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The FlexRAID vs XRAID mode applies to the entire unit.  So you'd need to switch to FlexRAID to run either ReadyTier or to create a second SSD volume.

However, you can still concatenate RAID groups on the mechanical disks to use all the space.  https://www.netgear.com/images/support/WP_ReadyNAS%20FlexRAID%20Optimization%20Guide_18May17.pdf

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@kevinfor2014 wrote:

What is the purpose of RAM on the readynas? - is it running Apps AV scans etc or does upgrading from default 16 to 64GB max create a larger cache before data hits the SSD layer.

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Well, of course the RAM is used generally by the OS and the ReadyNAS application.  But a lot of the RAM is used for caching.  I don't know how much gain you'd get by upgrading the RAM, though it wouldn't hurt to try it.  You should confirm that there are no warranty implications (it would void the warranty on the desktop models).