Netgear ReadyNAS 716 Review: 10GBase-T in a Desktop NAS
by Ganesh T S on January 1, 2014 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Enterprise
- NAS
- NetGear
- 10G Ethernet
Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology
Evaluation of NAS performance under both single and multiple client scenarios is done using the SMB / SOHO NAS testbed we described earlier. Tower / desktop form factor NAS units are usually tested with Western Digital RE drives (WD4000FYYZ). However, the presence of 10-GbE on the ReadyNAS 716 meant that SSDs had to be used to bring out the maximum possible performance. Therefore, evaluation of the Netgear RN716X was done by setting up a RAID-5 volume with six OCZ Vector 4 120 GB SSDs.
| 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 helping us out with our NAS testbed:
- 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.
Netgear XS712T
Our primary testbed switch, the GSM 7352S, doesn't support 10GBase-T. Its 10GbE ports are SFP+ needing copper direct attached cables. We could have gone in for SFP+ to 10GBase-T converters, but, keeping in mind the growing popularity of 10GBase-T, a dedicated 10GBase-T switch made more sense. Netgear came forward with the XS712T, a 12-port 10GBase-T switch. The unit also has two SFP+ copper ports to allow stacking / uplinking.
In our testbed, the SFP+ ports on both the GSM 7352S as well as the XS712T are link aggregated and connected to each other. The GSM 7352S acts as a DHCP server and provides an IP to the XS712T. The 10GBase-T ports of the NAS were also connected to the XS712T (which acts as a DHCP forwarder) and they obtained an IP address in the same subnet as the virtual machines connected to the ports of the GSM 7352S. For teaming purposes, link trap and STP mode were enabled. The mode was set to 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation and the hash mode was set to 'Src/Dest MAC, VLAN, EType,Incoming Port'.
Thank You!
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lazn_ - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
One thing I would like to see in all your NAS reviews is any "Branch Office" replication features and how well they work as compared to DFS on a Windows box. (over VPN etc)xbrit - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Synology DS3612xs isn't even mentioned as a comparable product here??12 bays for $3000, plus the extra $350 or so to install an Intel X540-T1 10GbE NIC.
I have a DS3612xs, fully populated with 3TB drives in RAID-6. Direct-connected to a desktop PC because 10GbE switches are not ready for the home office market yet.
Has been utterly reliable for >1 year. For large file transfers (typically a few 10's of GB of media files), I routinely get 700-900 MB/s writing to the NAS and 400MB/s reading from it.
(The SSD's on the desktop PC are 2x SATA-3 in RAID-0. They are the limiting factor when reading from the NAS because each disk can only support about 200MB/s sustained sequential write... typical for current high-end SSD's.)
centosfan - Saturday, January 18, 2014 - link
I am thinking about buying one of these Ds3612xs for a mission critical production environment to host a number of VMware virtual machines. What kind of IOPs are you getting? Are you running the SSD read cache and does it help? Thanks!klassobanieras - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
Any chance of actually testing the error detection / correction and redundancy features? What happens if you yank the power cord during a metadata write? What if you flip a bunch of bits on a drive?These are primary selling points of these devices, and have the potential to massively impact buyers, so it'd be really useful to know this kind of thing.