Synology DS1815+ 8-bay Intel Rangeley SMB NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on November 18, 2014 6:30 AM ESTSingle Client Performance - CIFS & NFS on Linux
A CentOS 6.2 virtual machine was used to evaluate NFS and CIFS performance of the NAS when accessed from a Linux client. We chose IOZone as the benchmark for this case. In order to standardize the testing across multiple NAS units, we mount the CIFS and NFS shares during startup with the following /etc/fstab entries.
//<NAS_IP>/PATH_TO_SMB_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER cifs rw,username=guest,password= 0 0
<NAS_IP>:/PATH_TO_NFS_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER nfs rw,relatime,vers=3,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2, sec=sys,mountaddr <NAS_IP>,mountvers=3,mountproto=udp,local_lock=none,addr=<NAS_IP> 0 0
The following IOZone command was used to benchmark the CIFS share:
IOZone -aczR -g 2097152 -U /PATH_TO_LOCAL_CIFS_MOUNT -f /PATH_TO_LOCAL_CIFS_MOUNT/testfile -b <NAS_NAME>_CIFS_EXCEL_BIN.xls > <NAS_NAME>_CIFS_CSV.csv
IOZone provides benchmark numbers for a multitude of access scenarios with varying file sizes and record lengths. Some of these are very susceptible to caching effects on the client side. This is evident in some of the graphs in the gallery below.
Readers interested in the hard numbers can refer to the CSV program output here.
The NFS share was also benchmarked in a similar manner with the following command:
IOZone -aczR -g 2097152 -U /nfs_test_mount/ -f /nfs_test_mount/testfile -b <NAS_NAME>_NFS_EXCEL_BIN.xls > <NAS_NAME>_NFS_CSV.csv
The IOZone CSV output can be found here for those interested in the exact numbers.
A summary of the bandwidth numbers for various tests averaged across all file and record sizes is provided in the table below. As noted previously, some of these numbers are skewed by caching effects. A reference to the actual CSV outputs linked above make the entries affected by this effect obvious.
Synology DS1815+ - Linux Client Performance (MBps) | ||
IOZone Test | CIFS | NFS |
Init Write | 85 | 79 |
Re-Write | 83 | 79 |
Read | 49 | 115 |
Re-Read | 51 | 114 |
Random Read | 30 | 66 |
Random Write | 80 | 78 |
Backward Read | 30 | 53 |
Record Re-Write | 50 | 1681* |
Stride Read | 46 | 116 |
File Write | 83 | 79 |
File Re-Write | 83 | 80 |
File Read | 33 | 94 |
File Re-Read | 36 | 95 |
*: Benchmark number skewed due to caching effect |
65 Comments
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vLsL2VnDmWjoTByaVLxb - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
Sorry, that was meant as a response for JeffFlanagan's post above. :\JustaUsernameorWE - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
Anyone have any idea when/if they'll put Rangeley in a 2bay unit? Not thrilled with the current 2 bay market.ganeshts - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
Synology doesn't have one (yet), but the Seagate NAS Pro 2-bay should fit your needshttp://www.seagate.com/products/network-attached-s...
It is based on Rangeley too, albeit a 2C/2T model running at 1.7 GHz.
romrunning - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
Is there any specs on how these perform when compare to a simple, business-class server that has 8-bays? Something like a Dell PowerEdge T320 that has the capability for 8 x 3.5" drives and includes a quad-port GB NIC can be had for basically the same price as the Synology here.These larger-cost 8-bay NAS machines have a high price tag, so a natural competitor (in terms of price) seems to be servers from the standard server vendors. So I would love to see how it actually compares.
peterfares - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
Poorly. Their only advantages over a computer are smaller and more power efficient. People will talk about how it saves so much time but you have to save quite a lot of time to make up the difference in cost between a synology and a much cheaper and faster computer.romrunning - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I also would like to know if some of the poor network performance numbers shown by these selected NAS units are also present in a full server setup.I guess we'll never know because these review units likely come with caveats on what type of "competing" devices they can reviewed against.
dgingeri - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
An Atom processor, 8 bays, 2GB of memory, and 8 bays, for $1050. I could build better for less, and get more flexibility.peterfares - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
BUT YOU CAN SAVE SO MUCH TIME WITH A SYNOLOGY!!!!!Haha. Those peoples time must be worth a lot. And if it's worth that much, why are they going for a Synology and not something better?
rpg1966 - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
:rolleyes:DiHydro - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
My time, plus any employees or services I have on the NAS could cost me the initial price each *hour* if it goes down. So having one physical unit, with hot swap, and on the fly rebuild is worth the price in some cases.