Synology DS414j: An Ideal Backup NAS
by Ganesh T S on July 10, 2014 9:00 AM ESTSingle Client Performance - CIFS & 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. We chose IOZone as the benchmark for this case. In order to standardize the testing across multiple NAS units, we mount the CIFS and NFS shares during startup with the following /etc/fstab entries.
//<NAS_IP>/PATH_TO_SMB_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER cifs rw,username=guest,password= 0 0
<NAS_IP>:/PATH_TO_NFS_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER nfs rw,relatime,vers=3,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2, sec=sys,mountaddr <NAS_IP>,mountvers=3,mountproto=udp,local_lock=none,addr=<NAS_IP> 0 0
The following IOZone command was used to benchmark the CIFS share:
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.
| Synology DS414j - Linux Client Performance (MBps) | ||
| IOZone Test | CIFS | NFS |
| Init Write | 57 | 34 |
| Re-Write | 56 | 36 |
| Read | 20 | 91 |
| Re-Read | 20 | 91 |
| Random Read | 11 | 34 |
| Random Write | 47 | 35 |
| Backward Read | 11 | 28 |
| Record Re-Write | 33 | 885* |
| Stride Read | 19 | 68 |
| File Write | 59 | 38 |
| File Re-Write | 56 | 37 |
| File Read | 14 | 64 |
| File Re-Read | 14 | 65 |
| *: Number skewed due to caching effect | ||
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Andrew911tt - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
I was dealing with the exact same thing and ended up building my own based on the Intel J1900total cost for me was $400
https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/107967-anyo...
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1825843
embeddedGPU - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
I just want to mention that Mindspeed's CPE processor business has been acquired by Freescale and the Comcerto C2200 is now the Freescale LS1024Acolinstu - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
Absolutely love my DS412+!basroil - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
That iSCSI performance is really lackluster considering the ratio to CIFS performance of other drives. But given that this one's an ARM system rather than Atom, perhaps the device is optimized for multiple users?peterfares - Friday, July 11, 2014 - link
So many NAS reviews lately! Thorough as always!Andy Chow - Friday, July 11, 2014 - link
Since you guys have 12 x OCZ Technology Vertex 4 64GB laying around, could you run a benchmark with SSD? In general all NAS should be benchmarked with SSD.A SSD would show the bottlenecks of the device itself.
I really wonder if cheap devices like these could really become fast enough and scalable to replace commercial systems.
gorbag - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link
"A SSD would show the bottlenecks of the device itself." -- Andy ChowSort of. One device might be better at using drives in parallel than another - a difference that would disappear with extremely fast drives. But if you intend to use the NAS with SSDs then of course SSD benchmarks would be more useful to you.
Conficio - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
"for example, DS414j and jx4-300d both don't support hot-swap" type "ix4-300d" ?brifin5 - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
You can use Long Path Tool as well.carage - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
I was inclined to buy a Synology NAS device recently, until I heard of thing called SynoLocker. I would think twice before there is an official solution to this problem.