NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hi All,
I installed a 3ware 9500S-4LP today with four Seagate 1.5TB SATA drives in a RAID 5 configuration. With NASLite-M2 1.62 running on a 3GHZ P4 with 4GB mem and read cache is turned on I was able to achieve the following results. Both my Intel Pro/1000 NIC and the 3Ware card are PCI-X cards but in 32bit slots. I'm happy with the results although I thought I could achieve a better write throughput. I could get 50MB/s on a single drive so I guess that the entry level RAID card in a regular PCI slot coupled with the RAID 5 write penalty is keeping throughput capped.

Here's the tool I used with Win7 x64. Simple and free: http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance

Running a 200MB file write on drive K: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 58.34 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 58.39 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 54.76 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 52.38 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 61.03 MB/sec
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Average (W): 56.98 MB/sec
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Running a 200MB file read on drive K: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 86.16 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 86.2 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 86.2 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 86.99 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 86.99 MB/sec
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Average (R): 86.51 MB/sec
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Here's my question, how do I tell if a drive has failed? The 3Ware card has no dedicated LED for failures or an alarm speaker. NASLite does not report a drive failure or provide SMART info due to the drives being connected the the 3Ware card. My network clients will always see the same capacity since the array will operate in degraded mode until the failed drive has been replaced. The card has the option to hook an LED up to each drive or a single LED to show array activity. My only guess is that if I hook up all four drives to individual LED's that a failed drive would somehow keep the corresponding LED fully on, fully off or blink in a regular interval.

Does anyone have experience dealing with 3Ware cards or have another suggestion?

Thanks,
John

Hi John,

If you look at my post below Title "3ware 9500s-4lp No Raid Degredation Alarm"

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3264

You should find exactly what you are looking for.

Tony and Ralph are working on a fix and an update should be very soon.

Regards

Roy.

Thanks. I missed that post.

Well.... I have determined that my initial testing above was not valid in the real world. After installing the 3+1 R5 array in NASLite-M2 and kicking off backups I noticed the backup times were taking much longer. I found that I was getting about 20MB/s on writes which is less than half compared to a single drive. Before the RAID array I could sustain 55MB/s on a single SATA drive using the same test criteria. I re-ran the NAS throughput test using a 1024MB file vs 200MB and was able to duplicate the exact throughput I had during my backups. 20MB/s. I guess the RAID 5 write penalty is bringing down performance. Initially formatted the array with a 64MB stripe so I might try 128MB to see if that helps. I also might try RAID 10 but I'd lose half my capacity if I went that route. Stay tuned. BTW, reads are consistently 85-90MB/s from the R5 array or a single drive which confirmed the network is working properly.

-John

RAID5 writes bring with them a vicious penalty. RAIDZ is an intriguing option and appears to be fast as hell. I will have to play with it when I get settled in at the new home and get the stuff unpacked and set up.

Mike

I am very familiar with RAIDZ but how is it an option here? Do you know something about a future release of NASLite??????

I'm not a good UNIX admin so Open Solaris was out but I have tried Nexenta. NASLite was faster even with the ZIL disabled.

-John

Hi,

I had the same issues with raid 5 I was disappointed with performance. So I tried raid 10
and performance was much better but lost half my disk capacity. It's a trade off

Cheers

Roy.

When Tony and Ralph implement the soft RAID in NASLite I don't know if they will include the option of a RAIDZ, they have been very quiet of late. You, like I, will just have to wait and see what they do.

Mike

New test results with a 256K Raid5 stripe vs 64K. MUCH BETTER!

Running warmup...
Running a 200MB file write on drive K: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 61.08 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 61.71 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 63.21 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 61.21 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 65.1 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W): 62.46 MB/sec
------------------------------
Running a 200MB file read on drive K: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 92.29 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 91.03 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 91.74 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 91.61 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 90.99 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (R): 91.53 MB/sec
------------------------------


Running warmup...
Running a 1024MB file write on drive K: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 44.7 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 43.89 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 44.36 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 44.79 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 44.7 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W): 44.49 MB/sec
------------------------------
Running a 1024MB file read on drive K: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 91.85 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 93.07 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 93.13 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 92.07 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 92.36 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (R): 92.5 MB/sec
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