Western Digital My Cloud EX4 and LenovoEMC ix4-300d Home NAS Units Review
by Ganesh T S on February 26, 2014 2:30 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Western Digital
- LenovoEMC
Miscellaneous Factors and Final Words
The LenovoEMC ix4-300d and WD EX4 are both 4-bay NAS units, and there are multiple 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 (WD4000FYYZ) 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.
| RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||||
| Activity | LenovoEMC ix4-300d | Western Digital EX4 | ||
| Duration | Avg. Power | Duration | Avg. Power | |
| Idle (4D) | NA | 17.21 W | NA | 19.83 W |
| Single Disk Init (4TB in JBOD) | Immediate | 21.79 W | 14m | 24.36 W |
| 4 TB JBOD (1D) to 4 TB RAID-1 (2D) | 15h 44m | 32.31 W | 10h 45m | 32.65 W |
| 4 TB RAID-1 (2D) to 8 TB RAID-5 (3D) | 2d 9h 23m | 43.23 W | 1d 13h 42m | 42.62 W |
| 8 TB RAID-5 (3D) to 12 TB RAID-5 (4D) | 1d 7h 48m | 56.11 W | 28m* | 51.19 W* |
| 12 TB RAID-5 Rebuild (4D) | 1d 5h 34m | 53.06 W | 21h 33m | 52.83 W |
Note that the 3-disk RAID-5 to 4-disk RAID-5 expansion step is not applicable for the EX4. Instead, we have data from a fresh 4-disk RAID-5 initialization run in those cells.
Coming to the business end of the review, we find it hard to recommend either the ix4-300d or the EX4. While the ix4-300d turns out to be a better hardware platform (other than the absence of hot-swap capability), the WD EX4 turns out to be the one with a better set of features in the firmware. The performance of the ix4-300d is miles ahead of the WD EX4 for the same configuration, using the same disks. On top of that, the ix4-300d is cheaper too ($270 for the ix4-300d compared to $360 for the WD EX4 in a diskless configuration). However, LenovoEMC has stripped the ix4-300d of some essential features that many consumers take for granted in the NAS space.
Western Digital needs to go back to the drawing board from a hardware perspective. The hardware configuration heavily pulls down the performance. Putting in two USB 3.0 ports (when the SoC is apparently not configured to even take full advantage of the 4x SATA to PCIe x4 bridge) seems to be something done to tick a marketing checkbox item. Considering that WD is new to the 4-bay home-consumer NAS market, this can be excused. Hopefully, when the time comes for a refresh, more attention is paid to such aspects and we get a platform that can do justice to the firmware base that Western Digital has developed.
On the other hand, there is little to complain about the ix4-300d performance-wise. However, LenovoEMC needs to heavily reconsider the way they differentiate between their ix- and px- series units. Other vendors such as QNAP and Synology differentiate their ARM / x86 units only on platform performance (CPU and RAM). The firmware features (at least, those meant for the SOHO/home-consumer market) are uniform across both their ARM and x86 units. LenovoEMC risks losing market share to such vendors if they continue with their current differentiation plan.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
38 Comments
View All Comments
OoKiE69 - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Having owned a LenovoEMC ix4-300d for two months before returning it, I am surprised to see that your review does not mention the intermittent slow downs experienced. Or flagging perfectly good disks as failed. Or the random dropping of all your data on a RAID 10 configuration. This really annoying considering it takes over a day to establish the raid 10 on 4 x 3TB drives. None of these faults even generate a single email alert. Yes the email alerting was configured and tested.Despite claiming Full Windows 8 compatibility, it's not. None of the shares can be added to a library without a bit of fudging under the hood. Even with the fudging done it doesn't work with any of the Modern UI applications.
Fortunately a HP Micro Server and a license for Home Server 2011 all for just a little bit more money seems function with the same hard drives in RAID 10 without a single issue and fast. In short I found LenovoEMC ix4-300d NAS to be just really bad.
ganeshts - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
What was the firmware version you used before sending back the unit ? I had lots of trouble with 3.x and even the first 4.x version (documented with links tot he support forums in the article under the ix4-300d: Springing Surprises sub-section). However, with the November firmware release, things have improved quite a bit. Still not trusting the NAS with any essential data, though.crazysurfanz - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Quote: Still not trusting the NAS with any essential data, though.Really isn't much more that needs to be said about it then is there.
Bob Todd - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
If you don't mind rolling your own and want a small footprint, those almost-always-on-sale at Newegg HP micro servers and something like WHS are indeed a very good option (with RAID or even something like DriveBender/SnapRAID).blaktron - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Hey, great article. I wonder, on either of these units can you configure the NICs independently? Do they have VLAN support?I have a storage VLAN and prod VLAN at home, and without the ability to attach one NIC to each VLAN for separate purposes then I'm still locked out of the home NAS market :(
ganeshts - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Not sure what extent of VLAN support you want, but if you want the NICs to be in separate subnets - yes, that is possible.muratai - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Can anybody explain me why 2ghz cpu WD nas performs far worse than Synology DS413J with same model but 1.6 ghz cpu?ganeshts - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
As I explained in the teardown and component analysis, there is a bottleneck in the way the drives are connected to the SoC. Out of two PCIe lanes, one is dedicated to the USB 3.0 to PCIe bridge (Etron EJ168A) leaving only one PCIe lane for the 4x SATA to PCIe bridge (the only link through which the four drives can talk to the SoC). Ideally, a 4x SATA should be connected through four PCIe 2.0 lanes for good performance.I can't comment / analyze the performance of the 413J unless I take a look at the components on the board.
Uwanna - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
So, I still do not understand why I would choose a NAS that has a proprietary SATA controller and software over an Intel ICHR 5- 24. If these units fail which you review there are no alternatives offered to replace these units with anything which can replace the reviewed units.If I at least "build my own" BYO, then I at least have the option to upgrade the entire BYO NAS with the equivalent Intel ICHR chipset or a more current offering.
ganeshts - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Neither of these units use hardware RAID.If the unit fails, take the drives out, image them and access the data using a Linux system or, if on Windows, something like UFS Explorer. [ Check the last paragraph / gallery here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4510/lg-n2a2-nas-rev... ]