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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GullLars - Saturday, December 1, 2012 - link
This was a very interresting read, but why the revodrive hybrid? With the cost of the entire system, why not just go for a Revodrive 3 X2 960GB? That massively reduce VM boot times, and eliminate or push forward any IO bottlenecks the 13 VMs sharing the drive may encounter.This once again reminds me that the industry has been way to slow to make 10GbE avalible to the masses, or even powerusers and enthusiasts. I've been running SSD RAIDs for years now, and i'd like to move my HDD RAID to a fileserver, but the bottleneck from GbE has kept me from it. It would also be awesome for LANs, even if the switch only had 1-2 10GbE ports.
batguiide - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - link
Thanks for these tips! I love the tip about checking where the model is in the store. I just finished reading another article that has some more research based tips about making sure you get the best big ticket items for you, which I also found useful. website:[socanpower,ca]Hrel - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
Some reviews on those newer NAS units that are based on ARM would be GREAT! I'm extremely cautious of how good that could work. But then again my current NAS is running a Pentium 4 540 I think? 3GHZ hyperthreaded. Works, but not the fastest thing. The CPU is clearly the bottleneck.