Promise's NS4600: Intel's Tolapai Enables Better Network Performance

[MBinder]

Promise has revamped its NS4300N network storage device. Among the changes, its new NS4600 comes with a new engine--namely, Intel’s new x86-based EP80579 (code named Tolapai). Read on for a feature comparison and a thorough benchmark evaluation.

Promise's NS4600: Intel's Tolapai Enables Better Network Performance : Read more

 

[Guest]

The thing i REALY want to see on Tom's is NAS tests which can work as iSCSI targets. From some other tests\reviews i've seen sometimes tremendous perfomance increases, on NAS like QNap TS-439 Pro.

TH people, please do some tests in iSCSI mode =)

 

[rievax]

TH says nothing about the network configuration. Raw Vista network config? It is probably the worse case scenario then... Samba awfully works with the basic config of Vista. Jumbo packets are enabled? If yes, what size? Same size on the NAS? How did you formatted the RAID --> what strip size / did you have a choice? Shadow_GriZZly is talking about iSCSI that could be faster: in fact, it could be the case if Vista's network configuration is not tweaked for Samba.

Can you please be more specific in your configuration setup?

 

[rievax]

TH says nothing about the network configuration. Raw Vista network config? It is probably the worse case scenario then... Samba awfully works with the basic config of Vista. Jumbo packets are enabled? If yes, what size? Same size on the NAS? How did you formatted the RAID --> what strip size / did you have a choice? Shadow_GriZZly is talking about iSCSI that could be faster: in fact, it could be the case if Vista's network configuration is not tweaked for Samba.

Can you please be more specific in your configuration setup?

 

[Guest]

Ofcourse, the intel CPU is 600Mhz, VS the Geode which is 400Mhz...

what's the price of this file server?
Would it make more sense to buy an atom Dual core system as file server? Since 25MB/s transfer rates are nothing to boast about!
At least the Atom processor may not be as low in power requirement, but runs Linux AND Windows, can playback 720p video, and get data transfer speeds far higher than the ones mentioned in the benchmark, probably in the likes of 150MB/s(as a wild guess), or perhaps even higher...
For $300, one could basically get a singlecore Atom 270 + 2GB of RAM, and load the files into RAM for faster upload speeds, probably close to the maximum possible through a gigabit lan connection;
(or am I understanding incorrectly why this NS4600 was made?

 

[Guest]

I mean, it would make sense if this device is a sub $100 device (I'd probably wanna pay no more than $80 to have it, seeing the low specs and no sceen, or even mention of a harddrive)

 

[duzcizgi]

I'd also be very happy to see a review of iSCSI Targets.

Depending on the filesystem employed and the client accessing the files, NAS devices show varying results. An iSCSI setup would be much more level, compared to higher level FS/NFS performance tests.

 

[warezme]

From 3 to 45 Watts, a nicely configured laptop runs around 3 to 45 Watts with infinitely more power..., what is the box for again????

 

[daft]

From 3 to 45 Watts, a nicely configured laptop runs around 3 to 45 Watts with infinitely more power..., what is the box for again????

you do realize that most laptops cannot do 4 disk raid 5 right?

 

[Aragorn]

The 45Watts includes 4 3.5" hard drives flat out! You have those in that laptop?

Were the hard drives in the 4100 and the 4300 the same? Why no iSCSI? Can the eSATA port be used to automatically back up the whole array to another disk (say having a pair and keeping one off site in case of a fire or other catastrophic event, obviously swapping ofsite adn local disks periodically).

How does this system compare to some some of the home brew RAID boxes that THG has set up, both in price and preformance?

TOO MANY UNANSWERED YET OBVIOUS QUESTIONS!!! Tom's used to be soo much better than this! What is going on over there? Where have all your good writers/reviewers gone (or are you being told to dumb things down by BOM)?

 

[Aragorn]

Needed an alert to feedback, sorry 'bout the useless post.

 

[mindless728]

meh, i will stick to my old S939 computer as the file server, i get about 80MB/s over the network

 

[mtbman1980]

akk these test were using intel benchmarking software. if this if right could is that the normal standard by which these devices are normaly tested

 

[igot1forya]

[citation][nom]alagadnidonald[/nom]BTW, will this run crysis? couldn't help it![/citation]
Yep, you can run the game from the drive!

 

[jasperjones]

I realize this site's name is Tom's *Hardware* but I would have liked to see in the test if the installed software works well. It's not that rare to find impractical GUIs, non-working UPNP functionality, etc. in NAS boxes.

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

Hasn't AMD decided to discontinue the Geode line? That's why the OLPC is moving to a VIA C7 in the 1.5 version, right?

 

[drums101]

makes me want one for a home network

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

[citation][nom]ProDigit80[/nom]Ofcourse, the intel CPU is 600Mhz, VS the Geode which is 400Mhz...what's the price of this file server?Would it make more sense to buy an atom Dual core system as file server?[/citation]

Yeah, I wanted a dedicated NAS type file server, because at the time my gaming computer served that purpose and ran all the time. So I went to craigslist and went out and got a $10 Pentium 3 computer, slapped a PCI SATA card in it and added a 1 TB drive and was good to go.

 

[MBinder]

Hello everybody.

First thank you for your valuable feedback. Please let me answer a few questions.

Test setup: To lower the impact on transfer rates we are always using the same computer and harddrives for our NAS device tests. You can have a look at the hardware details on page three of this review. There is only one exception: If the NAS device comes preconfigured with harddrives we are using these instead of our Samsung HD321KJ drives.

Slow network performance between Samba and Vista: There has been an issue on both sides, Samba and Vista that led to extremely slow transferrates (around 5MBit/s) when copying files from the NAS device to the Vista machine. According to my present knowledge these issues have been addressed with Service Pack 1 for Vista and the release of Samba 3.0.28a.
So the network configuration used is the standard Vista network configuration as you can find it after a fresh install of the OS. The reason why we do this is that we believe that the average user shouldn't have to fiddle with the network configuration to get satisfying transferrates. A customer expects that the device is running hassle-free out of the box. If it isn't working we think that the manufacturer has to come up with a solution and not the customer.

Jumbo packtes: Some NAS devices support jumbo packets, some don't. As we want to have comparable results we have to go without jumbo packets. Moreover there is no official standard for jumbo packets so it can have a negative impact on data transferrates in certain network setups. But you are right, we shoud have mentioned this in the review.

Stripe size: Almost all NAS devices intended to be used in a SOHO or home network don't allow a selection of the stripe size when setting up the RAID configuration for reasons of simplification. This is also true for the NS4600 and could have been mentioned in the review.

iSCSI tests: The reason why we haven't tested the NS4600 as an iSCSI target is plain simple: It doesn't support this feature. But you are right - more and more NAS devices, even for the consumer segment can be used as an iSCSI target. As soon as the majority of these devices support iSCSI we will not only stick with the SMB transferrates but we will also have a look at the iSCSI performance.

Greetings from Germany,
Marcel

 

[promisenasdude]

iSCSI, Web 2.0 Interface, Logitech Squeezecenter, MySQL and tons more are coming SR1 in late October.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

The enclosure looks like a prime candidate for a sff case, maybe a case mod too. I don't think the guys over in IT would go for it though.

 

[Guest]

The comparison should have been against one of the newer Via-CPU based servers. The AMD Geode has definitely been discontinued; so this comparison is basically meaningless.

 

[Guest]

just to warn anyone wanting to use this with a mac. despite claims to be mac friendly I have had real problems with intermittent transfer rates + it doesn't currently support Snow Leopard (although I think this is a red herring for the performance issues as my XP machine and Sonos experiences same transfer issues). Oh and time machine can't see it and the setup instructions refer to a configuration option which doesn't exist on either smartnavi or webpasm software. support has been little help.