Single Client Performance - CIFS & iSCSI on Windows

The single client CIFS and iSCSI performance of the QNAP TS-451+ was evaluated on the Windows platforms using Intel NASPT and our standard robocopy benchmark. This was run from one of the virtual machines in our NAS testbed. All data for the robocopy benchmark on the client side was put in a RAM disk (created using OSFMount) to ensure that the client's storage system shortcomings wouldn't affect the benchmark results. It must be noted that all the shares / iSCSI LUNs are created in a RAID-5 volume.

The QNAP TS-451+ manages to be amongst the top three in almost every benchmark trace. If at all one could nit-pick, it is the write performance. In real-life situations (with one or two clients), this minor performance aspect will hardly be noticed by users.

HD Video Playback - CIFS

2x HD Playback - CIFS

4x HD Playback - CIFS

HD Video Record - CIFS

HD Playback and Record - CIFS

Content Creation - CIFS

Office Productivity - CIFS

File Copy to NAS - CIFS

File Copy from NAS - CIFS

Dir Copy to NAS - CIFS

Dir Copy from NAS - CIFS

Photo Album - CIFS

robocopy (Write to NAS) - CIFS

robocopy (Read from NAS) - CIFS

We created a 250 GB iSCSI LUN / target and mapped it on to a Windows VM in our testbed. The same NASPT benchmarks were run and the results are presented below. The observations we had in the CIFS subsection above hold true here too.

HD Video Playback - iSCSI

2x HD Playback - iSCSI

4x HD Playback - iSCSI

HD Video Record - iSCSI

HD Playback and Record - iSCSI

Content Creation - iSCSI

Office Productivity - iSCSI

File Copy to NAS - iSCSI

File Copy from NAS - iSCSI

Dir Copy to NAS - iSCSI

Dir Copy from NAS - iSCSI

Photo Album - iSCSI

robocopy (Write to NAS) - iSCSI

robocopy (Read from NAS) - iSCSI

A few iSCSI benchmarks exhibited extensive caching behavior in some of the NASPT test passes. One of the issues we found was that setting the unit to report a volatile write cache would actually prevent Windows from turning off the write cache for the iSCSI volume. In any case, the iSCSI performance comes in the top three of the list, just like what we saw in the CIFS case.

Introduction and Testbed Setup Encryption Support Evaluation
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  • mwituni - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link

    As an existing QNAP user, I don't know how any QNAP NAS's can be seriously considered for any awards, nor why they do so well on reviews.

    They entice buyers with fancy options, but are not interested in developing applications users need.

    SVN (Subversion Source Control) is the most popular and source control software in use, yet QNAP have been promising a proper SVN-server application since 2009, and still not delivered! How can users take them seriously - they're obviously not interested in developing applications the community needs, only the minimum needed to trick buyers into purchasing and evaluators to award prizes. They claim you can install SVN by an outdated method - which is very risky and outdated by a few years, and in my experience does not work at all.

    They have a GIT client, so can claim they "have" source control applications. But no SVN support.
    Their marketing department needs to kick the development team into gear.
  • krazyderek - Sunday, January 10, 2016 - link

    maybe you should should join everyone else and switch to GIT ;) https://git-scm.com/book/en/v1/Git-and-Other-Syste...
  • gnalley - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link

    Don't try to use this device as a standalone windows domain controller. The SAMBA and DHCP implementations are missing two CRITICAL components for it to work.

    Samba is missing the ability to do DNS Forwarders...and DHCP does not allow you to input the OPTIONS command. Both of these functions are critical to having a working solution. If you want a standalone MS Domain Controller that works. Look elsewhere.
  • StaksOnStaks - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link

    I noticed the model tested was the 8GB. Any sense of how the performance would compare to the 2GB? For example, I noticed the Synology DS415+ was very close in the performance, but only has 2GB. Would the 2GB version of the QNAP TS-451+ perform as well compared to the Synology DS415+?

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