LaCie's 2big NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on May 28, 2012 7:55 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Storage
- NAS
- LaCie
A CentOS 6.2 virtual machine was used to evaluate NFS and CIFS performance of the 2big NAS when accessed from a Linux client. In order to standardize the testing across multiple NAS units, the following parameters were used to mount the NFS and Samba shares:
mount -t nfs NAS_IP:/PATH_TO_NFS_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER -o async,hard,proto=tcp,noac
mount -t cifs //NAS_IP/PATH_TO_SMB_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER -o directio
Note that we have not tried to optimize NFS performance for the NAS. In order to keep things as uniform as possible, we will just look at comparative performance on the basis of the default mounting options
combined with the above (which are set to avoid caching effects on the client side).
In the previous section, the tests conducted on the LaCie 2big NAS were repeated on the Synology DS211+ (using the same hard drives). In this section, we benchmarked both the NAS units using IOMeter using the scripts available here. The tables below presents the various results.
NFS Performance
| NFS Throughput (Av. MBps) | ||||
| Test Name | LaCie 2big NAS | Synology DS211+ | ||
| Read | Write | Read | Write | |
| Max Throughput 100% Reads | 44.48 | - | 38.89 | - |
| Real Life - 60% Random - 65% Reads | 0.78 | 0.41 | 0.8 | 0.43 |
| Max Throughput - 50% Reads | 11.3 | 11.27 | 16.31 | 16.30 |
| Random 8KB - 70% Reads | 0.72 | 0.31 | 0.79 | 0.34 |
| NFS Access IOPS | ||||
| Test Name | LaCie 2big NAS | Synology DS211+ | ||
| Read | Write | Read | Write | |
| Max Throughput 100% Reads | 1423 | - | 1245 | - |
| Real Life - 60% Random - 65% Reads | 100 | 53 | 102 | 55 |
| Max Throughput - 50% Reads | 362 | 361 | 522 | 522 |
| Random 8KB - 70% Reads | 92 | 40 | 101 | 43 |
| Average Response Time (ms) | ||||
| Test Name | LaCie 2big NAS | Synology DS211+ | ||
| Read | Write | Read | Write | |
| Max Throughput 100% Reads | 41.16 | - | 47.3 | - |
| Real Life - 60% Random - 65% Reads | 395.48 | 388.92 | 383.6 | 375.02 |
| Max Throughput - 50% Reads | 81.64 | 82.64 | 56.48 | 56.90 |
| Random 8KB - 70% Reads | 454.64 | 450.96 | 416.95 | 406.1 |
CIFS Performance
| CIFS Throughput (Av. MBps) | ||||
| Test Name | LaCie 2big NAS | Synology DS211+ | ||
| Read | Write | Read | Write | |
| Max Throughput 100% Reads | 30.11 | - | 28.75 | - |
| Real Life - 60% Random - 65% Reads | 0.71 | 0.38 | 0.94 | 0.51 |
| Max Throughput - 50% Reads | 14.43 | 14.38 | 13.93 | 13.78 |
| Random 8KB - 70% Reads | 0.58 | 0.25 | 0.80 | 0.34 |
| CIFS Access IOPS | ||||
| Test Name | LaCie 2big NAS | Synology DS211+ | ||
| Read | Write | Read | Write | |
| Max Throughput 100% Reads | 964 | - | 920 | - |
| Real Life - 60% Random - 65% Reads | 90 | 49 | 121 | 66 |
| Max Throughput - 50% Reads | 462 | 460 | 446 | 441 |
| Random 8KB - 70% Reads | 74 | 32 | 103 | 43 |
| Average Response Time (ms) | ||||
| Test Name | LaCie 2big NAS | Synology DS211+ | ||
| Read | Write | Read | Write | |
| Max Throughput 100% Reads | 61.64 | - | 64.5 | - |
| Real Life - 60% Random - 65% Reads | 428.19 | 433.97 | 323.14 | 318.6 |
| Max Throughput - 50% Reads | 64.22 | 64.31 | 66.82 | 67.02 |
| Random 8KB - 70% Reads | 563.62 | 570.60 | 415.35 | 408.04 |
A look at the tables above indicate that the 2big NAS wins on some benchmarks, while the Synology DS211+ wins on others. It appears that they are pretty evenly matched when it comes to performance in a Linux environment, though the NFS implementation in NAS OS 2 could do with some improvements.
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DukeRobillard22 - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
The question I always have about a NAS, and which is hard to find out, is "what filesystem does it use?" Like, when its power supply dies, can I pull one of the mirrored disks out, plug it into a SATA port on my Linux box, and get at the data? While it's true the the disks themselves are probably the mostly likely thing to fail, they're not the only thing.Currently, I use an old PC running Fedora with software RAID, just so I can do that when some piece of hardware lets out the magic smoke.
KLC - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Every time I read an NAS review I'm struck by how expensive they are. More than 2 years ago I bought an Acer Windows Home Server box. It has 4 hot swappable drive bays, an atom processor with 1 gb of memory and Windows Home Server V1. With one 1tb drive it cost me $350 on sale, regular price was $399. Two years later and I see systems with less capability than that one yet they are much more expensive. Why do NAS systems defy Moore's law of more computing capability for less money over time?EddieBoy - Wednesday, May 30, 2012 - link
I keep thinking that I need something to replace my aging Windows Home Server setup. This looks like it might do the trick.But now I am concerned about the Seagate acquisition and whether that might affect their quality and customer support.
Any thoughts on how the acquisition might affect this company?
Thanks.
Zak - Sunday, June 3, 2012 - link
Do these overheat and fry their electronics like most of LaCie enclosures?klassobanieras - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
As the owner of a 4-disk ReadyNAS NV I always felt quite smug about my data until the box itself went bad. This taught me to ask certain awkward questions:- What if the box fails? Do I need to buy another identical box to get my data off my disks or will (e.g.) a Linux machine understand them ok?
- Is it susceptible to the RAID write-hole? Do I need a UPS?
- What kind of data-integrity does it provide, relative to the state-of-the-art (ZFS, btrfs et al)?
Respectfully, I'd suggest that if you're going to seriously test NASes you need to (a) repeatedly yank the power-cord in the middle of metadata-heavy writes, (b) try getting your data off the disks without the use of the NAS itself, (c) see how it deals with a flaky drive and (d) test for data integrity, not just filesystem integrity.
Finally, NASes should be judged in the context of what you can get from an el-cheapo PC running FreeNAS with ZFS, which IMHO puts most consumer NAS boxes to shame.