Updating the 2012 AnandTech SMB / SOHO NAS Testbed
by Ganesh T S on November 29, 2012 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- NAS
Concluding Remarks
The updates to our testbed do come with a power penalty because of the addition of three Intel ESA I-340 NICs and the OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid.Using Visible Energy's UFO Power Center, we obtained some power consumption numbers:
| 2012 AnandTech NAS Testbed Power Consumption | |
| Idle | 146.25 W |
| Single VM + Intel NASPT Run | 157.55 W |
| 25 VMs + IOMeter 128K Sequential Reads | 179.61 W |
| 25 VMs + IOMeter 128K Sequential Reads and Writes | 164.76 W |
| 25 VMs + IOMeter Random 8K / 60% Random 4K | 161.42 W |
The workstation didn't consume more than 180 W at any point in our workload. This translates to less than 7.2 W per client, bettering the power density of 13 W that we achieved with our earlier configuration. The Netgear ProSafe GSM7352S consumed around 74 W in the testbed at all times. Adding 10 GbE clients is likely to drive this number higher.
We have also been working on creating IOMeter workloads corresponding to typical home usage scenarios (for evaluating 2 to 6-bay NAS units meant for home users serving media and acting as a backup target). More details will be forthcoming in our next home NAS review.
We conclude the piece with a table summarizing the updated build.
| 2012 AnandTech NAS Testbed Configuration | |
| Motherboard | Asus Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA2011 SSI-EEB |
| CPU | 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2630L |
| Coolers | 2 x Dynatron R17 |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsZ F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL (8x8GB) CAS 10-10-10-30 |
| OS Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Secondary Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Tertiary Drive | OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid (1TB HDD + 100GB NAND) |
| Other Drives | 12 x OCZ Technology Vertex 4 64GB (Offline in the Host OS) |
| Network Cards | 6 x Intel ESA I-340 Quad-GbE Port Network Adapter |
| Chassis | SilverStoneTek Raven RV03 |
| PSU | SilverStoneTek Strider Plus Gold Evoluion 850W |
| OS | Windows Server 2008 R2 |
| Network Switch | Netgear ProSafe GSM7352S-200 |
Thank You!
We thank the following companies for making our NAS testbed build a reality:
- Thanks to Intel for the Xeon E5-2630L CPUs and the ESA I-340 quad port network adapters
- Thanks to Asus for the Z9PE-D8 WS dual LGA 2011 workstation motherboard
- Thanks to Dynatron for the R17 coolers
- Thanks to G.Skill for the RipjawsZ 64GB DDR3 DRAM kit
- Thanks to OCZ Technology for the two 128GB Vertex 4 SSDs, twelve 64GB Vertex 4 SSDs and the RevoDrive Hybrid
- Thanks to SilverStone for the Raven RV03 chassis and the 850W Strider Gold Evolution PSU
- Thanks to Netgear for the ProSafe GSM7352S-200 L3 48-port Gigabit Switch with 10 GbE capabilities.
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Andrew911tt - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
From what I understand the OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid is being used just as a PCI-e to Sata converter is that correct?I understand the changes that you made on the external network setup, but my question is why did you make this change?
ganeshts - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
1. Yes, and we also got 100 GB of NAND as a new drive for the host OS to access2. Our previous external network setup (ZyXel switch) had only 24 ports. With 12 VMs, we had plenty of spare ports for the management port and for the NAS units. When moving to 25 VMs, we ran out of ports in the switch. The second reason is that we are planning to evaluate 10 GbE NAS units in the future and it is important to have a switch capable of 10 GbE for that purpose.
Andrew911tt - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
I understand what you did, but why did you create the separate sub-nets and isolate them from the internet like in first set up.ganeshts - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
We wanted to eliminate unnecessary / unintended traffic from the machines on the live network (192.168.1.x) to the NAS or even the VMs themselves.SunLord - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
Why are you using a stupid Revo. You should of gotten an SAS HBA and used 5.25" to 4 x 2.5" bay adapters then you could of put in upto 20 2.5" ssd and an optical drive.SunLord - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
Something like this is what i meant for the 4x2.5" adapterhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Flunk - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
Or simply add hang extra bays from the roof of the case.Plifzig - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
So, were all the SATA ports occupied? Or were they just all taken? Sounds like they were occupied.And also taken.
KranZ - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
Were you using the default 1500 byte MTU or did you bump the interfaces and VMs up to 9000 byte MTUs?kenyee - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
Could you guys please test these things for noise/heat w/ more drives when you test cases?E.g., the Nanoxia Deep Silence review recently. Looks like it'd be perfect for something like your SOHO NAS. It was tested w/ an SSD and no hard drives :-P
The case in this review had a hard drive card.
If you have so many slots, why would you not load it up?
And if you're using a camera like the D800 w/ 50MB RAW files and trying to do video w/ terabytes of raw footage, you're going to load it up w/ hard drives...