We configured three of the WD Red Pro drives in a RAID-5 volume in the QNAP TS-EC1279U-SAS-RP. A CIFS share in the volume was subject to some IOMeter tests with access from up to 25 VMs simultaneously. The following four graphs show the total available bandwidth and the average response time while being subject to different types of workloads through IOMeter. IOMeter also reports various other metrics of interest such as maximum response time, read and write IOPS, separate read and write bandwidth figures etc. Some of the interesting aspects from our IOMeter benchmarking run are available here.
We see that the sequential accesses are still limited by the network link, but, this time, on the NAS side. The 100% sequential reads show similar results for all the drives. However, the WD Red Pro shows the best stability under stress from multiple clients for the 50% sequential reads / 50% sequential writes test. On the other hand, the Random 8K 70% reads sequence for the WD Red Pro show better numbers compared to the WD Red, but can't compete with the numbers from the other 6 TB drives. The 60% Random / 65% Reads sequence shows the WD Red Pro in better light compared to the WD Red and the HGST Deskstar NAS, but the other drives show consistently better numbers.
At the current rate, it'll be only a few years before NAND hits parity with magnetic storage in capacity and price.
3D (verticle) NAND and Intel's 3D X-Point are going to revolutionize storage as we know it.
X-Point will slowly make NAND a cheap commodity for the consumer sector (abandoned by the enterprise sector for X-Point) and NAND will be so cheap to produce by that point (it's 30 year old technology) that it'll be the common medium. It has already killed virtually every other form of portable storage (floppy disks, tapes, CD/DVD/Bluray, etc) with the only worthy exception being large capacity (2-4TB) 2.5" portable hard disks. It's only a matter of time before 4TB SSD's cost nearly the same as 4TB hard disks, and hard disk platter density is already hit some physical barriers, hence the need for shingled recording and other reliability/performance sacrifices.
Reliability would not be a factor. Large financial institutions are using them for transaction processing, and few things require more write reliability than that.
The advantage of SSD is, according to legend at least, a more consistent life time: just retire them at x% of warranty, less infant mortality and random death (getting run over by a bus, in human terms).
Why is the article listing the WD red pro with the addition 'star NAS'? Since when is WD using the 'star' term? I can't imagine them doing so, and especially see a company market something with 'red star' these days :) A quick web search shows only anadtech adds 'star' the the name.
According to the benchmarks in this article – as a DAS drive the WD Red Pro seems nice – but it for some reason seems not as good when used as a NAS drive, agreed on that.
Colour me disappointed that there is no analysis of acoustic behaviour. My NAS is by far the loudest device in my room due to the 4 WD Red (non pro) drives in it, and they're supposed to be one of the quietest drives available.
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Samus - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link
At the current rate, it'll be only a few years before NAND hits parity with magnetic storage in capacity and price.3D (verticle) NAND and Intel's 3D X-Point are going to revolutionize storage as we know it.
X-Point will slowly make NAND a cheap commodity for the consumer sector (abandoned by the enterprise sector for X-Point) and NAND will be so cheap to produce by that point (it's 30 year old technology) that it'll be the common medium. It has already killed virtually every other form of portable storage (floppy disks, tapes, CD/DVD/Bluray, etc) with the only worthy exception being large capacity (2-4TB) 2.5" portable hard disks. It's only a matter of time before 4TB SSD's cost nearly the same as 4TB hard disks, and hard disk platter density is already hit some physical barriers, hence the need for shingled recording and other reliability/performance sacrifices.
But even then, soon,
Souka - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
SSDs aren't for NAS due to pricingIf you put a SSD in, many of the charts would be unreadable due to scaling issues.
Also, if the NAS is used for large number of writes, the SSD reliability would be a factor
melgross - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
Reliability would not be a factor. Large financial institutions are using them for transaction processing, and few things require more write reliability than that.FunBunny2 - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link
The advantage of SSD is, according to legend at least, a more consistent life time: just retire them at x% of warranty, less infant mortality and random death (getting run over by a bus, in human terms).MrSpadge - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
The strong DAS performance bodes well for the new 6 TB Black model, which is probably physically similar but with different firmware settings.Wwhat - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
Why is the article listing the WD red pro with the addition 'star NAS'? Since when is WD using the 'star' term? I can't imagine them doing so, and especially see a company market something with 'red star' these days :)A quick web search shows only anadtech adds 'star' the the name.
Morawka - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
disappointing performance. basically every other nas drive on the market is faster than these. HGST and Seagate dominating.star-affinity - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link
According to the benchmarks in this article – as a DAS drive the WD Red Pro seems nice – but it for some reason seems not as good when used as a NAS drive, agreed on that.Arbie - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
We want eight and we won't wait.Gigaplex - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
Colour me disappointed that there is no analysis of acoustic behaviour. My NAS is by far the loudest device in my room due to the 4 WD Red (non pro) drives in it, and they're supposed to be one of the quietest drives available.