Netgear ReadyNAS 716 Review: 10GBase-T in a Desktop NAS
by Ganesh T S on January 1, 2014 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Enterprise
- NAS
- NetGear
- 10G Ethernet
Miscellaneous Factors and Final Words
The Netgear ReadyNAS 716 is a 6-bay NAS, and there are many applicable disk configurations (JBOD / RAID-0 / RAID-1 / RAID-5 / RAID-6 / RAID-10). Most users looking for a balance between performance and redundancy are going to choose RAID-5. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild duration testing as well as power consumption recording with the unit configured in RAID-5 mode. The disks used for benchmarking (OCZ Vector 4 120 GB) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the unit as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities.
| Netgear ReadyNAS 716 RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration | Avg. Power Consumption |
| Idle | 24.23 W | |
| 120 GB Single Disk X-RAID2 Initialization | 28.12 W | |
| 120 GB RAID-0 to 120 GB RAID-1 (1 to 2 Disks) | 17m 09s | 32.46 W |
| 120 GB RAID-1 to 240 GB RAID-5 (2 to 3 Disks) | 33m 03s | 34.70 W |
| 240 GB RAID-5 to 360 GB RAID-5 (3 to 4 Disks) | 31m 46s | 37.35 W |
| 360 GB RAID-5 to 480 GB RAID-5 (4 to 5 Disks) | 34m 04s | 39.45 W |
| 480 GB RAID-5 to 600 GB RAID-5 (5 to 6 Disks) | 35m 09s | 41.08 W |
| 600 GB RAID-5 Rebuild (Replace 1 of 6 Disks) | 31m 02s | 40.56 W |
Coming to the business end of the review, the ReadyNAS 716 is a bold product from Netgear. While ReadyNAS OS 6 needs further work to achieve feature parity with the competition (more apps, SMB features such as SSD caching etc.), Netgear must be appreciated for making an attempt to bring 10-GbE capabilities to the desktop NAS form factor. Additionally, the choice of 10GBase-T makes the product even more ground-breaking.
For SMBs making their first foray into 10-GbE, the use of backward compatible 10GBase-T equipment is a big plus. Netgear has affordable 10GBase-T switches in the XS series (the 12-port XS712T and the 8-port XS708E). Introducing a 10GBase-T NAS at south of $3000 also serves Netgear well in terms of expanding the addressable market for those switches. All in all, the Netgear ReadyNAS 716 is an impressive and revolutionary product. The market for 10G equipment outside of a server rack is currently limited. However, we believe that the ReadyNAS 716 is just the start of many more good things to come in terms of affordable 10-GbE equipment outside the datacenter space.
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Runiteshark - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
Some tests being multi-client CIFS. Look at the throughput he's getting on a single client. I'm pushing 180MBps cifs and 200MBps through NFS LAGGing dual 1gs to a single client. Host pushing this data is a 72 bay Supermicro chassis w/ Dual e5-2697v2's, 256GB of RAM, 72 Seagate 5900rpm NAS drives x4 Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSDs, 3 LSI 2308 controllers, and a single Intel X520-T2 double 10G nic hooked up to an Extreme X670V over twinax with a frame size of 9216. Typical file type are medium size files at roughly 150mb each, copying with 48 threads of rsync.One thing that I didn't see in the test bed was the configuration of jumbo frames which definitely changes the characteristics of single client throughput. I'm not sure if you can run large jumbo frames on the Netgear switch.
If I need 10g which I don't because the disks/proc in the microserver couldn't push much more, I could toss in a double 10G intel adapter for roughly $450.
imsabbel - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Thats because his single client tests only use a single 1 GBit connection on the client side.. I know, its stupid, but the fact that ALL transfor tests are literally limited to something like 995Mbits/s should have given you a clue that Anandtech does strange things with their testing.Runiteshark - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
I didn't even see that! What the hell was the point of the test then?Gigaplex - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
Am I reading this correctly? You used 1GbE, not 10GbE adapters on the test bed? I'd like to see single client speeds using 10GbE.ZeDestructor - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
6 quad-port NICs + 1 on-board NIC, so 25 gigabit ports split over 25VMs.As for single-client speeds, it should be possible to get that using LAGs and is a worthy point to mention, easily possible even with the current setup, although I would like to see some Intel X540 cards in use myself...
BMNify - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
hmm am i missing something here ?you only use a 6 x Intel ESA I-340 Quad-GbE Port Network Adapter
as in only using 4 "1GbE" ports and NO actual "10GbE" card to max out the end to end connection ?
dont get me wrong, its nice to finally get a commercial SOHO type unit that's actually got 10GbE as standard after decades of nothing but antiquated 1GbE cards at reasonable prices but you also NEED that new extra 10GbE card to put in your PC alongside those 10GbE router/switch so this 3K NAS is way to expensive for SOHO masses today alas.
ganeshts - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
6x quad ports = 24 1-GbE ports + one onboard 1GbE = 25 GbE in total.BMNify - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
oh right so its 25 "1GbE" ports and NO actual "10GbE" card to max out the end to end connectionBMNify - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
it still seems very odd to have a collection of 24 threads over a dual socket 6 core 12 thread test bench with 10GbE router/switch and this 3K NAS with dual "10GbE" card that could be bonded together at both end's and yet AT just test the kit to the 1GbE port bottle neck, and dont even install another dual "10GbE" card in the pc end then try for instance starting several concurrent ffmpeg upscaling and encoding high profile/bitrate 1080P content to UHD over iSCSI etc to the "10GbE" NAS to max out the all the 12 cores/24 threads SIMD or other options to try and push that exclusive "10GbE" connection rather than any old combination of antiquated "1GbE" cardshoboville - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
I hate sounding like a naysayer, but these boxes are so expensive. You can build a system with similar specs for much less under FreeNAS and ZFS (as other commentators have noted). Supermicro makes some great boards, and with the number of case options you get when DIY, expandability is very much an option if you need it further down the road. Then again, alot of the cost comes from 10 gbit NICs which cost a lot.