Asustor AS-304T: 4-Bay Intel Evansport NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on March 26, 2014 11:15 AM ESTSingle Client Performance - CIFS & NFS on Linux
We have recently revamped our Linux-client testing for NAS units, shifting from IOMeter to IOZone. 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
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.
| Asustor AS-304T - Linux Client Performance (MBps) | ||
| IOZone Test | CIFS | NFS |
| Init Write | 55 | 44 |
| Re-Write | 61 | 46 |
| Read | 23 | 95 |
| Re-Read | 23 | 96 |
| Random Read | 13 | 38 |
| Random Write | 45 | 42 |
| Backward Read | 13 | 31 |
| Record Re-Write | 35 | 710* |
| Stride Read | 21 | 68 |
| File Write | 61 | 45 |
| File Re-Write | 58 | 44 |
| File Read | 16 | 66 |
| File Re-Read | 16 | 66 |
| *: Performance number skewed by caching effect | ||
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bernstein - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link
Does this NAS finally have ECC?? (like for instance an ECC enabled ZFS linux fileserver)do people actually know how many digital photos get corrupted in 20years of not using ECC?
protomech - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link
No. How many digital photos are corrupted due to lack of ECC?I assume you're talking about ECC on the storage pools, not ECC in the computer main memory..
manmax - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link
He mentions ZFS so I guess he means the data integrity checking and self-healing of corrupted data features of ZFS and Btrfs. This is probably my main reason to go with ZFS or Btrfs for NAS devices especially when used for backup purposes.Overtime, bits can just randomly flip on a hard drive (the drive is still perfectly fine). For example, old photos, music and videos all of sudden don't open or are distorted. RAID (at least most implementations I've seen) doesn't save you from random bit flipping. It's mainly for keeping a server up if a drive completely fails, not from file corruption.
Gigaplex - Saturday, March 29, 2014 - link
I've had file system corruption because a stick of RAM went bad, affecting the file system cache. My next build will have ECC RAM.hoboville - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Without ECC, a scrub of a ZFS pool can corrupt your entire dataset. It happens, a lot. Regardless, ZFS provides better features like ARC, and full CoW. Ext4 RAID would be viable too, but for an average home user, ZFS is going to be too much because it has higher hardware requirements, requires a more advanced user, and will generally cost more money. Like Ganesh said, these cheapo units are good for simple HTPC stuff.Oyster - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link
Good work, Ganesh. Thanks for incorporating our feedback and including competitor benchmarks as standalone performance graphs.ganeshts - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link
Thanks! The suggestion made sense, but we were waiting till we got enough units reviewed with the new methodology in each category (splitting by number of bays)Flunk - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link
Is Asustor in any way related to ASUS?ganeshts - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link
Yes, they are a subsidiary of AsusDirector12 - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link
How does it stack against the Asustor 604T?