I could see how with a single or dual core ARM might strugle with performance reporting as well as serving up data and apps, but with the 214's 4 cores, why make users go through the trouble of installing external apps or shell into the box just to htop or iotop/iostat?
I think it could be due to ARM chipset firmwares do not have the performance chart option as we use the same firmware file for RN102 / RN104 / RN202 / RN204 / RN212 / RN214 / RN2120 .
@anna_arun - I assumed as much - the question remains though: Why isn't this enabled on the 214? It's got more than enough CPU power and memory to handle any sort of increased demand that real-time performance charts would require (iotop when running, shows negligible CPU usage) .
The performance graphs are available on our business class ReadyNAS products. We have graphs for Volume Throughput, Network Throughput, Volume Utilisation and Temperature. CPU usage is not one of these.
Thanks mdgm - So this is a business decision by Netgear to not provide performance graphs on the prosumer model NAS devices? If you look at the comparison chart of the RN210 vs the RN300 provided by Netgear's pre-sales marketing, there is absolutely no mention of anything of the sort.
Comparison charts are important for showing the key differences between products. What those are may be somewhat subjective, so our list may not be the same as what you would come up with.
The 210 series is a home product with an ARM CPU and we have always had the graphs disabled on the ARM units for performance reasons. We would expect in general anyway that these features would be more important for business users who we would encourage to go with our business class products.
As I posted above, my investigation shows that with the 4 core ARM CPU on the ReadyNAS 214, there should be a negligible performance hit from running any real-time monitoring. Any justification on Netgear's part stating that the 4 core ARM Corex A15 CPU can't handle these web based real-time performance charts is simply dead-wrong. If it can do 1080p transcoding, it can certainly plot some system performance charts without much effort.
Likewise, stating that the 214 is a home product, and performance monitoring is more important for business users shows a complete lack of understanding of your customer base. Look at all the other "pro" features on the ReadyNAS OS 6 firmware that are clearly out of the league of the average consumer. Perhaps an example would better illustrate - can you honestly state that a home user is going to go through all the trouble to setup link aggregation, which is an option on the 214 that is marketed quite aggressively IMO, and not want to have some handy performance graphs? I think not.
Any justification on Netgear's part stating that the 4 core ARM Corex A15 CPU can't handle these web based real-time performance charts is simply dead-wrong. If it can do 1080p transcoding, it can certainly plot some system performance charts without much effort.
totally agreed
the anti virus function which slows those entry level readynas should be implemented as apps and not as integrated in os. similarly this performance thingy should be an app for those needed
the anti virus function which slows those entry level readynas should be implemented as apps and not as integrated in os. similarly this performance thingy should be an app for those needed
I think you have a case for anti-virus (not sure I agree, but it is arguable). But system status (including performance) should be built in. You shouldn't need to install a bunch of apps to manage your NAS. Unbundling the admin gui into a bunch of apps would make it harder to install and harder to use.
I think the graphs should just be there on RN200 series (and frankly I think they probably would run ok on the RN100 too).
