FeeeNAS on Atom D425 Performance/Power

[mark1701]

Hi All

I have been testing a new FreeNAS system based on an Intel Atom motherboard and I thought I would share my results and few questions on optimizing my performance.

My goal was to build a low power Home NAS were throughput was not the main feature. Low Power and hard drive shutdown were the main goals.

System Setup:
Mother Board Foxconn D42S
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/motherboards/detail_overview.aspx?ID=en-us0000509

Ram 1Gig DDR2 - 800Mhz - Single DIMM
CPU Intel Atom D425 - Single core 1.8Ghz (10W)
Chipset Intel MN10 (2W)
Lan 1Gig - 1000BaseT
Drives Seagate Barracuda 7200 - 160Gig (Software RAID 1)
Boot Drive Intel Z-U130 – 2Gig USB SSD card on internal USB port.
Power Supply HP 365W (Max) from a HP xw8000 workstation
Power Measurement KILL-A-WATT AC power watt meter
FreeNas Version 0.7.2 Sabanda (revision 5462)
Performance 3.2GigB file transfer WinXp - NAS - using windows explorer.
Total Cost $150 – MB + Drives (2 x 1TB) + RAM

All power numbers excludes the 25 Watts of power supply quiescent power.
A high efficiency PS would eliminate most of this loss.

Summary:
Standby Power: 21 Watts (Drives Spun Down)
Motherboard alone 19 Watts
Idle Power 34 Watts
Read Power 35 Watts
Write Power 36 Watts
Drive Power 7.5-8.5 Watts Each
Read throughput 27 Megabytes/Seconds
Write throughput 20 Megabytes/Seconds

Performance Issues:
I’m not sure why I can’t get more throughput at this point. The CPU usage never averages greater than 50% and the network maxes out at 290Mbits. The driver I tested at 60-70Megabyte/Seconds.
I feel I have room for improvement.
I am assuming it is protocol inefficiency or the network settings that are limiting the throughput.
When a 100mbit link is used the throughput drops to 5-6Megabyte/seconds.
At GigE I am running 30% LAN efficiency on reads.
At 100Mbit I am running 50%-60% LAN efficiency on reads.

Does anyone have any suggestions for LAN tweaks and such, that might push these numbers up ?

I have ordered a new picoPSU-80 power supply that should provide accurate at the plug power measuments.
http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-80;jsessionid=c3JdML6QhqkHyBJFMKhK49rLzsPmxs5V3NGf2Lpv5sYyvpvGRp3vnQv6WZy1pT1cB1Q0Jx78QjC7nKBWRWJVXJP2rQTJLFn2qy3TnfwQhbhLnTnr1BqS2fjqPKmGjkSp!1209768203

Detailed Data on tests:


Mother Board Baseline Power tests
Raw 44 W Running - no Drives ( MB + Fan + 5W load + PW idle)
Adjusted 19 W

Idle Power tests
Raw 59 W Running - Two Drives ( MB + Fan + 5W load + PW idle)
Adjusted 34 W
CPU Usage 0 %
Adjusted 15 W Drive Power Total - IDLE 7.5 W Per Drive

Read Power Tests
Raw 60 W Running - Two Drives ( MB + Fan + 5W load + PW idle)
Adjusted 35 W
Performance 27 Megabytes Seconds
CPU Usage 34 %
Adjusted 16 W Drive Power Total - Read 8 W Per Drive

Write Power Tests
Raw 61 W Running - Two Drives ( MB + Fan + 5W load + PW idle)
Adjusted 36 W
Performance 19 Megabytes Seconds
CPU Usage 50 %
Adjusted 17 W Drive Power Total - Write 8.5 W Per Drive

Auto Drive spin down Power Tests
Raw 46 W Running - Two Drives ( MB + Fan + 5W load + PW idle)
Adjusted 21 W
CPU Usage 0 %
Adjusted 2 W Drive Power Total - Idle 1 W Per Drive


Thanks
Mark

 

[adampower]

This is an exciting build. So, are you looking to improve your power consumption numbers or your file transfers?

The PSU is such a huge power hog I'm glad to see you're looking for a smaller, more efficient one. However, I'm worried that the pico-psu will have difficulty with the power spike during spin up. If it's already on order I would certainly try it but... I'm just sayin'.

Next, file transfers: The largest single file transfer problem is usually protocol. CIFS/Samba protocols (ie windows file transfers) are notoriously inefficient. If you are running win7 ultimate there is an nfs client that will help your speeds.

Is freenas running graid 1?

 

[sub mesa]

Older 7200rpm disks require 30-35W to spin up; don't use those with PicoPSU. But the latest disks only use 15W or so; which is very acceptable and you can spinup a decent number of drives with PicoPSU, which is very efficient at low loads.

FreeNAS is kind of old though; it uses old OS version and older packages. You may want to try other projects similar to FreeNAS to see if those do get decent performance. One of those alternative projects is the one i am working on; check link in my signature if you're interested.

As last remark i will add that an Atom CPU is not that great power efficiency; you can get roughly the same idle power consumption with a much more powerful Core i3/i5 CPU at 32nm. This link is interesting in that regard:
http://www.servethehome.com/intel-atom-d510-review-comparison-n330-ion/#more-954

 

[mark1701]

The picoPSU's do not actually supply 12V, so as long as your 12V supply (my case a 95Watt Laptop supply) can handle 2 amps per drive spin-up for 2-3 seconds you are OK.

My new drives will be something along the lines of the WD10EARS 2.8W Idle 5W Read/Write.

I went back and made some actual current measurements:
Main board
5 Volts - 2.1 Amps
12 Volts – 200ma
3.3Volts – 160ma.
Around 13 Watts

The D425 (Pine Trail-D) ATOM's do not have Speed Step power management. But for $59 (MB and CPU) and 13 watts – who cares. Also for another $15 and 3 watts you can get the Dual Core Version.

Hard Drives Seagate 160Gigs . - Running IDLE
5 Volts -- 160ma
12 Volts – 400ma

Also as for Spin up currents, it looks like FreeNas has staged power for RAID drives.
The two drives in my RAID 1 spin up about 1 second apart. This may be intentional (hope so) or it could be coincidental.
If any knows if this a configurable parameter please post ?

One cool other thing about the Foxconn Mother board is it has a good fan controller. Full PWM control and with start temperature and speed slope. Room Temp the system runs almost silent.

Mark

 

[FireWire2]

Mark

There are many SMB tune-up procedures, which will get you 80MB/sec transfer rate
Here is my TUNE UP (SamBa) on our NAS:

1- Change Swap configured as: Type=File / Mount Point=Hardware Raid Volume / Size=512M
2- System | Advanced| sysctl.conf
- net.inet.tcp.recvspace = 524288
- net.inet.tcp.sendspace = 524288

3 - Network | LAN Management
- MTU=9000
- Device polling=Checked

4 - Services|CIFS/SMB|Settings
- Large read/write = Checked
- Asynchronous I/O (AIO)=checked
- Auxiliary parameters:
deadtime = 1
getwd cache = yes
max xmit = 65535
read raw = yes
socket options = TCP_NODELAY
strict locking = no
write raw =yes

With these change I get over 80MB/sec

My set a bit diff from you - I have a hardware raid5, not using bulit-in software raid
I was thinking, with the software raid. It sends TOO MUCH interrupt requested (IRQ) to my Atom CPU. My CPU may run out of time instead of CPU power, I eliminated by go with HW raid

But with you set up, I think at least you should get about 50MB/s

 

[rand_79]

Thats some wierdness, I have an atom 330 based freenas and with the 10/100 built in nic I get 11-12.5MB/SEC Freenas>>>Windows 7 via cifs/smb

and about 10.5-11MB/SEC Win7>>>Freenas

I dont have a supported gigabitnic yet so i installed winxp 64bit and
I got 75MB/SEC+
this is with 1 seagate 7200.12 500GB drive.

I am still in proof of concept/testing before I deploy

My final build may end up being 2.7ghz single core athlon sargas(sp?)
about 15more watts of power but I could repurpose it for HTPC easily in the future.

 

[FireWire2]

Thats some wierdness, I have an atom 330 based freenas and with the 10/100 built in nic I get 11-12.5MB/SEC Freenas>>>Windows 7 via cifs/smb

and about 10.5-11MB/SEC Win7>>>Freenas

I dont have a supported gigabitnic yet so i installed winxp 64bit and
I got 75MB/SEC+
this is with 1 seagate 7200.12 500GB drive.

I am still in proof of concept/testing before I deploy

My final build may end up being 2.7ghz single core athlon sargas(sp?)
about 15more watts of power but I could repurpose it for HTPC easily in the future.

over 10MB/sec with 10/100mb connection is very easy to do - It's very hard to get transfer over 80MB/sec

On your case just get a Gb NIC then you're done

 

[rand_79]

over 10MB/sec with 10/100mb connection is very easy to do - It's very hard to get transfer over 80MB/sec

On your case just get a Gb NIC then you're done

I was responding the the original post, where he said he only has 50-60% eff on a 10/100 connection.

not sure why you responded to me with the captain obvious comment.

I was not asking for help. I was commenting on it was "wierd" that a d425 was setup was doing 50-60% eff on a 10/100.

there should be plenty of power to max that out. with that hardware.