Western Digital My Cloud EX4 and LenovoEMC ix4-300d Home NAS Units Review
by Ganesh T S on February 26, 2014 2:30 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Western Digital
- LenovoEMC
Single Client Performance - CIFS and NFS on Linux
We have recently revamped our Linux-client testing for NAS units, shifting from IOMeter to IOZone. Unfortunately, the ix4-300d was evaluated using the old methodology, so we won't have numbers for that unit in here. This section will deal only with the performance of the WD EX4. 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. 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.
| WD My Cloud EX4 - Linux Client Performance (MBps) | ||
| IOZone Test | CIFS | NFS |
| Init Write | 40 | 18 |
| Re-Write | 40 | 19 |
| Read | 26 | 85 |
| Re-Read | 27 | 87 |
| Random Read | 12 | 33 |
| Random Write | 30 | 16 |
| Backward Read | 14 | 28 |
| Record Re-Write | 30 | 257 |
| Stride Read | 23 | 64 |
| File Write | 40 | 19 |
| File Re-Write | 40 | 18 |
| File Read | 17 | 59 |
| File Re-Read | 18 | 61 |
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OoKiE69 - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Having owned a LenovoEMC ix4-300d for two months before returning it, I am surprised to see that your review does not mention the intermittent slow downs experienced. Or flagging perfectly good disks as failed. Or the random dropping of all your data on a RAID 10 configuration. This really annoying considering it takes over a day to establish the raid 10 on 4 x 3TB drives. None of these faults even generate a single email alert. Yes the email alerting was configured and tested.Despite claiming Full Windows 8 compatibility, it's not. None of the shares can be added to a library without a bit of fudging under the hood. Even with the fudging done it doesn't work with any of the Modern UI applications.
Fortunately a HP Micro Server and a license for Home Server 2011 all for just a little bit more money seems function with the same hard drives in RAID 10 without a single issue and fast. In short I found LenovoEMC ix4-300d NAS to be just really bad.
ganeshts - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
What was the firmware version you used before sending back the unit ? I had lots of trouble with 3.x and even the first 4.x version (documented with links tot he support forums in the article under the ix4-300d: Springing Surprises sub-section). However, with the November firmware release, things have improved quite a bit. Still not trusting the NAS with any essential data, though.crazysurfanz - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Quote: Still not trusting the NAS with any essential data, though.Really isn't much more that needs to be said about it then is there.
Bob Todd - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
If you don't mind rolling your own and want a small footprint, those almost-always-on-sale at Newegg HP micro servers and something like WHS are indeed a very good option (with RAID or even something like DriveBender/SnapRAID).blaktron - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Hey, great article. I wonder, on either of these units can you configure the NICs independently? Do they have VLAN support?I have a storage VLAN and prod VLAN at home, and without the ability to attach one NIC to each VLAN for separate purposes then I'm still locked out of the home NAS market :(
ganeshts - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Not sure what extent of VLAN support you want, but if you want the NICs to be in separate subnets - yes, that is possible.muratai - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Can anybody explain me why 2ghz cpu WD nas performs far worse than Synology DS413J with same model but 1.6 ghz cpu?ganeshts - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
As I explained in the teardown and component analysis, there is a bottleneck in the way the drives are connected to the SoC. Out of two PCIe lanes, one is dedicated to the USB 3.0 to PCIe bridge (Etron EJ168A) leaving only one PCIe lane for the 4x SATA to PCIe bridge (the only link through which the four drives can talk to the SoC). Ideally, a 4x SATA should be connected through four PCIe 2.0 lanes for good performance.I can't comment / analyze the performance of the 413J unless I take a look at the components on the board.
Uwanna - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
So, I still do not understand why I would choose a NAS that has a proprietary SATA controller and software over an Intel ICHR 5- 24. If these units fail which you review there are no alternatives offered to replace these units with anything which can replace the reviewed units.If I at least "build my own" BYO, then I at least have the option to upgrade the entire BYO NAS with the equivalent Intel ICHR chipset or a more current offering.
ganeshts - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Neither of these units use hardware RAID.If the unit fails, take the drives out, image them and access the data using a Linux system or, if on Windows, something like UFS Explorer. [ Check the last paragraph / gallery here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4510/lg-n2a2-nas-rev... ]