SMB NAS Roundup
by Ross Whitehead Jason Clark Dave Muysson on December 5, 2006 3:30 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Group IOMeter RAID 0 Results
Why RAID 0 tests? We do not believe that the majority of users would run these devices without some form of redundancy, but we do recognize that some people might be tempted. Also, as we alluded to earlier, we wanted to try and validate our suspicions that the RAID 5 parity calculation were one of the main differentiators between the performance of these devices.
In this graph we see that when compared to the IOMeter RAID 5 Write test the devices obtained the following performance gain at the 64 KB Transfer Request Size and above: Intel and Thecus 118%, QNAP 95%, Infrant 20%, and Buffalo 12%. Some of these gains are very impressive, and do highlight the expense of the RAID 5 parity calculation. We can speculate that the devices with the highest gain are the devices which would benefit most from a CPU upgrade... and ironically the Intel device is one of those.
As expected, the Read results are similar between RAID 5 and RAID 0 and nowhere near as dramatic as the Write tests.
Why RAID 0 tests? We do not believe that the majority of users would run these devices without some form of redundancy, but we do recognize that some people might be tempted. Also, as we alluded to earlier, we wanted to try and validate our suspicions that the RAID 5 parity calculation were one of the main differentiators between the performance of these devices.
In this graph we see that when compared to the IOMeter RAID 5 Write test the devices obtained the following performance gain at the 64 KB Transfer Request Size and above: Intel and Thecus 118%, QNAP 95%, Infrant 20%, and Buffalo 12%. Some of these gains are very impressive, and do highlight the expense of the RAID 5 parity calculation. We can speculate that the devices with the highest gain are the devices which would benefit most from a CPU upgrade... and ironically the Intel device is one of those.
As expected, the Read results are similar between RAID 5 and RAID 0 and nowhere near as dramatic as the Write tests.
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yyrkoon - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
My problem is this: I want redundancy, but I also do not want to be limited to GbE transfer rates. I've been in communication with many people, via different channels (email, IRC, forums, etc), and the best results I've seen anyone get on GbE is around 90MB/s using specific NIC cards (Intel pro series, PCI-E).The options here are rather limited. I like Linux, however, I refuse to use Ethernet channel bonding (thus forcing the use of Linux on all my machines), or possibly a combination of Ethernet channel bonding, with a very expensive 802.11 a/d switch. 10GbE is is an option, but is way out of my price range, and 4GB FC doesn't seem to be much better. From my limited understanding of their product, Intel pro cards I think come with software to be used in aggregate load balancing, but I'm not 100% sure of this, and unless I used cross over cables from one machine, to another, I would be forced into paying $300usd or possibly more for a 802.11 a/d switch again. I've looked into all these options, plus 1394b firewire teaming, and SATA port multipliers. Port multiplier technology looks promising, but is Dependant on motherboard RAID (unless you shell out for a HBA), but from what I do know about it, you couldn't just plug it in to a Areca card, and have it work at full performance (someone correct me if I'm wrong please, Id love top learn otherwise).
My goal, is to have a reliable storage solution, with minimal wait times when transferring files. At some point, having too much would be overkill, and this also needs to be realized.
peternelson - Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - link
It sounds like your needs would be solved by using a fiber channel fabric.
You need a FC nic (or two) in each of your clients, then one or more FC switches eg from Brocade or oems of their switches. Finally you need drive arrays to connect FC or regular drives onto the FC fabric.
It isn't cheap but gives fantastic redundancy. FC speeds are 1/2/4 Gigabits per second.
yyrkoon - Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - link
I've been giving Areca a lot of thought lately. What I was considering, was to use a complete system for storage, loads of disk space, with an Areca RAID controller. The only problem I personally have with my idea here is: how do I get a fast link to the desktop PC ?I've been debating back and forth with a friend of mine about using firewire. From what he says, you can use multiple firewire links, teamed, along with some "hack" ? for raising to get 1394b to 1000MBit/s, to achieve what seems like outstanding performance. Assuming what my friend says is accurate, you could easily team 4x 1394b ports, and get 500MB/s.