NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hi all.

I have had the USB version of NASLite-2 for a few months now, and have it installed on a PC with 512mb RAM, Intel P4 CPU, Adaptec 2410-SA RAID card, and also a 10/100Mbit Intel LAN card.

What I am getting is about 9 mb/s transfer to the box across the network, and I am basically trying to achieve the fastest network transfer I can get. I am obviously thinking that changing to a gigabit NIC would be the first way of stepping up the transfer rate, and really could do with some recomendations.

I'd also like any suggestions / advice on how to increase my transfer rate!

Cheers guys!!

Hi Phil,

I have played around for speed some time and the result was to choose an Intel Pro Gigabit LAN. I have bought a PCI one but would have tried a PCI-X also. Unfortunately, I have a PCI express MoBo and NL doesn't support these chip sets yet.

I had also bought a dual channel MoBo with onboard LAN, USB 2, AMD64 CPU etc but the MoBo was too new and I couldn't use USB2 and the onboard LAN.

The fastest results I got was with Ubuntu server 64 but I came back to NL as I'm a newbe in Linux and didn't want to have a problem that I couldn't solve on the hour (the server is a server for my dental office).

Regards

Cheers Rob,

Yeah I thought of getting the Intel NIC, but saw there was 2 versions. There is a GT and an MT flavour?

Which model number do you have? And what is your typical network transfer rate?

Many thanks

Hi,

I have the "Gigabit Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (OEM)" card. I suppose the "server" versions are even faster.

Sorry, I don't have the speed numbers. Mainly, I get around 20-25Mb/sec with one big file from (or to) 1 computer to (or from) the server.

Ubuntu server64 7.06 got up to 40Mb/sec with the onboard LAN.

Didn't have time to test with several computers writing or reading at the same time to (from) NL or Ubuntu and still need time to test with the frame/sec program (I can't recall the name, do a search on this forum) which seems to the the best way to test speed.

For my job, I need more stability than speed, that is why I haven't tried testing more for more speed.

.../...

Found the testing tool info: DiskWriggler. A command line to start testing (found the info on the forum, haven't played with it yet): diskwriggler -NTSC -C -t -n 500 -o y:\ (replace the y:\ with the drive letter to your NAS)

You have also IOZone

The fastest and easiest (but not the most accurate of course) DiskSpeed (for local (physical) drives only)


Regards.

OK, some fast testing with Diskwriggler and here are some results.

All machines on XP PRO SP2. 1GB RAM. Some dual channel RAM, some RAID 0 on SATA, others PATA or SATA II.

First of all, on all 3 computers connected via Gigabit Lan to the NL server, 2 have write speeds FASTER to the NL then to their OWN internal C: drives!!! On the 3rd, the write speeds to NL and to C: are similar.

On the read side, the local C drives do sometimes better because of the read cache of Win XP so the results are not comparable (I get 600MB/s !!!)

Generally, writes to NL is between 20(min) and 58MB/s(max), mainly on the 40MB/s region, reads are around 43, 53 and 63 MB/s

Regards.

Not surprising, NASLite-2 will pretty much max any hardware it is run on, as I've said before and still stand by it, NASLite-2 is the fastest file server OS available.


Try using a crossover cable between the two test machines and really watch your thruput shoot thru the roof, demonstrates the amount of latency in hubs and switches.

So with a similar setup I can expect about 40 Mb/s transfer rate?

Is this about right? I have no idea on what a typical throughput would be??

Well, we do NOT have the same kind of hardware so difficult to say what your speeds will be. I had built the computer to be a fast server: Asus M2N-MX Socket AM2 MoBo, 3 SATA II 160 Go 7200 rpm hard drives, AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1Gb Dual Channel DDR2, NASLite 2 ...

If you can afford it, change the LAN card (but all the cards, cables and switches has to be Gigabit!) and add some memory.

Regards.

Ralph, I haven't compared NL to Ubuntu Server 64 using Diskwriggler but comparing file transfer rates using other software (NetMeter and SuperCopier) Ubuntu was faster than NL (as it uses the CPUs 64 bit characteristics) But, OTOH, Ubuntu is more difficult to use and maintain.

Still, NL is really VERY FAST AND STABLE and most probably is faster than Ubuntu on lower end hardware.

Regards

I think we all would have been shocked if a 32 bit OS (NASLite) performed better than a 64 bit OS.

At some point NASLite will have to compiled for a 64 bit processors, I hardly doubt you'll see Ubuntu faster than.

I am not talking about the NAS in my signature, I am upgrading and using the system I described above.



What my major concerns were is that this will be used by quite a few users at the same time, as it will be connected to a network, and used for things like Network User's Profiles / Documents / Exchange 2003 DB's etc.

Just didn't want to invest time and cash as well as convincing colleagues if It will not do the job. What is the fastest transfer speed in theory? Am I right in thinking on a gigabit network with about 100% network usage it would be in the region of 125 Mb/s?

Phill,

Sorry for the mix-up of the 2 systems.

The only information I can give you is the system I have. I have 3 recent and fast computers plus the NL server. All 3 computers on XP PRO SP2. 2 have write speeds FASTER to the NL then to their OWN internal C: drives!!! On the 3rd, the write speeds to NL and to C: are similar. I can't say more. Read speeds vary with the cached memory usage.

I have not stress tested the server with all 3 computers reading and writing at the same time; we often access the server from 2 computers at the same time but it is mainly database access and not heavy load. The access times (time between you click to have the info and the answer on the screen) is as fast (if not faster) than the local drive. There are no delays if 1 or 2 computers use the server at the same time.

I have no information how NL will react if you have 50 people accessing the server at the same time . Try posting exactly how many users will connect and what kind and volume of data will be read/written from/to the NL server and some other people may help you.

I know that some on the forum install NL servers on a prof basis, they should have more precise data.

Regards.

Due to the nature of it's design, NASLite will produce better results on random seeks than any other NAS solution. Random seeks are representative of multiple users accessing multiple files simultaneously, so in other words, with multiple clients, under load, NASLite is likely to outperform other solutions with similar hardware specs.

Ralph posted some test results a while ago. Those still hold true.

Hi all,

My setup is also with the Adaptec 2410SA card, but seems like I have tried both FreeNAS and UnRAID and either my sata drives (2 x 1Tb WD green) are not recognised (in UnRAID) or he transfer speed over Gigabit is slow (20MB/sec max, via FreeBSD).

When using the internal standard ATA drives using motherboard ATA cables, I can get 50MB/sec over gigabit. I don't understand why running via the Adaptec drives are very slow. I should at least be able to get 40-50MB/sec don't you think? BTW, using RAID0 in the Adaptec BIOS (HW raid) I get slightly better rates at 22MB/sec, while using Software RAID0 in FreeNAS gave rates that are extremely slow, at 11MB/sec. Using single drives in FreeNAS will be at 18-20MB/sec.

My setup:

P4 1.8Ghz, 400Mhz RAM 512MB
2 x 1TB WD Green
Adaptec 2410SA Sata RAID
Sony DVD-CDRW

The question is, does NFSLite 2 provide a better transfer rate for the setup above for me using the Adaptec card? I am looking specifically for decent speeds of 50-60MB/sec, and would prefer to have RAID0 or JBOD (single volume) implementation, so no mirroring or parity is needed.

Appreciate your advise and experiences.. thanks!

Just set up a server for a friend and he was getting about 57MB/sec. with four run of the mill 250GB SATA drives in a RAID5 array.

http://serverelements.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2782&p=14575&hilit=rackable+systems#p14575

Try moving the card around to a different slot and turning of everything that is not needed in the BIOS for starters. I would expect that sequential transfers should be in the area of 50-70MB/sec for a RAID0 setup like you have and dependent on the firmware settings in the drives them selves.

Mike