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
Single Client Performance - CIFS and 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. 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
mount -t cifs //NAS_IP/PATH_TO_SMB_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER
Note that these are slightly different from what we used to run in our previous NAS reviews. We have also shifted from IOMeter to IOZone for evaluating performance under Linux. The following IOZone command was used to benchmark the shares:
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. These numbers will gain relevance as we benchmark more NAS units with similar configuration.
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
Some scenarios exhibit client caching effects, and these are evident in the gallery below.
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.
Netgear ReadyNAS 716 - Linux Client Performance (MBps) | ||
IOZone Test | CIFS | NFS |
Init Write | 76 | 16 |
Re-Write | 76 | 16 |
Read | 32 | 120 |
Re-Read | 32 | 121 |
Random Read | 19 | 51 |
Random Write | 73 | 19 |
Backward Read | 19 | 42 |
Record Re-Write | 743 | 401 |
Stride Read | 28 | 82 |
File Write | 76 | 16 |
File Re-Write | 75 | 17 |
File Read | 23 | 84 |
File Re-Read | 22 | 87 |
24 Comments
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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.