Understanding NAS and I/O interfaces

[KarlJay]

I'm looking at single user seperate storage. My main concern is the net though put. Is RJ45 1G the hands down winner?
I'm seeing PCIe, eSata, USB3 etc...
I have eSata and USB3 on my computer, but my guess the old 1000BASE‑T would be the fastest.

Also, do I need a network OS to run on the NAS or is it built in? I'd be running a multi-boot XP/Win7/OSX setup.

If it matters, the distance would be about 20 feet from computer to NAS.

Thanks, KarlJay.

 

[KarlJay]

Just saw a review of the seagate setup and it claimed 15g/s write and 40 read. thats seems pretty slow, is this the standard?

Will a home-built raid NAS setup be faster or are you at the limit of the 1000Base-T NIC?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

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I'd start w/ the 4 bay unit and 2 HD's.... add more HD as you need space.

 

[FireWire2]

If you need over 80MB/sec transfer rate than look at the eBOX-N

I use this box for my media server, tt support:
SMB, AFP, NSF, FTP, RSYNC, Bit Torrents...
Hardware raid, upgradeable to 10x HDD, 3.0TB HDD supported

http://www.datoptic.com/review/product/list/id/386/

 

[KarlJay]

Ok, now I'm a bit lost on all this. The eBox-N seems to use 1000Base-T NIC, so why would it be that fast compared to the other NAS boxes?
@FireWire2, that's a great looking box, I'm guessing by the specs that the $700 price tag is with NO DRIVES?

-Edit- I just looked at the other products and it looks as if the speed is directly related to the number of drives and has nothing to do with the 1000Base-T interface at all. They show other boxes that go up to 150. So is the number of drives and type of RAID the limiting factor?

 

[adampower]

The gigabit NIC allows data transfer up to a theoretical 125 MBytes/s. Practical max is a little over 100.

However, not many spinning discs can read OR write at that rate. If you make a monster array they are more likely to be able to work together to reach gigabit speeds.

Now there is an issue with the hardware in the box. An atom based box might be cheap and lightweight but will probably not have the power to deliver more than about 20MB/s unless you give it some monster tweaks.

That's where you get what you pay for (usually).

If you really want to get into it then build a computer specially designed to serve files and use freenas or zfsguru or something similar.

 

[KarlJay]

Thanks! that's was going to be my next question. I have my current PC that should work well with a raid controller. I'm really surprised that the disk can't keep up with the gigabit NIC. I guess that's good news as the performance of a NAS could be close to as good as the local disk.

 

[sminlal]

The gigabit NIC allows data transfer up to a theoretical 125 MBytes/s. Practical max is a little over 100.

However, not many spinning discs can read OR write at that rate. If you make a monster array they are more likely to be able to work together to reach gigabit speeds.

Actually those rates are easily met by today's high-density 7200RPM disks, and they can be far exceeded if you put them into a RAID array. What's worse, disk I/O would have to contend with other network traffic unless you use a dedicated network port, and using the network stack adds a fair bit of latency to the I/O requests which can be an important issue on single-user systems that issue consecutive random I/O operations.

eSATA and even USB 3.0 have a LOT higher throughput than gigabit Ethernet, and if their cable length limitations aren't an issue then they'd be a better choice for attaching external storage.

 

[adampower]

True enough, iops over network would certainly suffer in comparison. Also, a couple of manufacturers have managed to break the 100MB/s in the last year or so but my 1tb cav blacks couldn't

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/16043-western-digital-caviar-black-1tb-hard-drive-review-7.html

Anyway, Gigabit is good enough for me and it provides a way to serve to any computers in my house. Including my mother in law and laptops, htpc, etc. So that's me.

If you are only using this device to provide storage for your desktop than don't buy a NAS. Buy a drobo or something like that.

 

[FireWire2]

Ok, now I'm a bit lost on all this. The eBox-N seems to use 1000Base-T NIC, so why would it be that fast compared to the other NAS boxes?
@FireWire2, that's a great looking box, I'm guessing by the specs that the $700 price tag is with NO DRIVES?

-Edit- I just looked at the other products and it looks as if the speed is directly related to the number of drives and has nothing to do with the 1000Base-T interface at all. They show other boxes that go up to 150. So is the number of drives and type of RAID the limiting factor?

eBOX-N uses hardware raid, so the storage raid does not send IRQ or tax host CPU to calculate raid function like other NAS, which most relies on mdadm <-- Linux software raid

This approach works, but a bit slower than HW raid.

I bet other box go up to 150MB/sec it's not cheap 🙂

Do you have the link to 150MB/sec NAS, I'm interest this NAS

 

[rand_79]

eBOX-N uses hardware raid, so the storage raid does not send IRQ or tax host CPU to calculate raid function like other NAS, which most relies on mdadm <-- Linux software raid

This approach works, but a bit slower than HW raid.

I bet other box go up to 150MB/sec it's not cheap 🙂

Do you have the link to 150MB/sec NAS, I'm interest this NAS

There is no 150MB/sec nas thats beyond the limit of gigabit ethernet.
(at least not without port ganging and other advanced technologies.)

also my atom freenas box (total parts -hdd was 105$) does about 47-80MB/sec

since I do streaming media with it .. that is plenty.

back on topic.
the easiest solution would be a USB3 or esata external hard drive.
and cheaper too.

 

[adampower]

I'm looking at single user seperate storage. My main concern is the net though put. Is RJ45 1G the hands down winner?
I'm seeing PCIe, eSata, USB3 etc...
I have eSata and USB3 on my computer, but my guess the old 1000BASE‑T would be the fastest.

Also, do I need a network OS to run on the NAS or is it built in? I'd be running a multi-boot XP/Win7/OSX setup.

If it matters, the distance would be about 20 feet from computer to NAS.

Thanks, KarlJay.

OMG sorry KarlJay.

I got caught up and never bothered answering the original question.

To answer your last statement first... YES, IT MATTERS! eSata is limited to about 2m (6ish feet), whereas USB3 can travel up to about 5m (16.4 theoretical feet minus looping around your computer, etc.) Also, USB 3.0 is not guaranteed to carry it's full 4.8Gbps more than about 3m. The USB 3.0 standard does not limit cable length so it may be possible to stretch this, however, the consequences in terms of speed may bring us back to gigabit ethernet speeds. So, if you want to move information 20 feet or more? Perhaps we're back to a NAS.

SINGLE USER seperate storage. or DAS is much faster over USB3 or eSata. Cable length can be an issue (as above) but speed wise USB3 and eSata should be very similar with slightly longer latency going to USB3.

If you build a NAS computer than you need to load some kind of network OS on that machine but, of course, any 'market' NAS will have it's own interface. Some are great and others not so much. All of them sport way more features than I will ever require. FreeNas is a very popular OS for your server. WHS or Windows Home Server is similarly popular and more idiot proof but I think it runs around $100. Check out ZFSguru if you really want to get into zRaid and the zfs file system.

 

[rand_79]

windows home server is about 99$ for 3 licenses. i'm not sure where you can find a similarly good deal on single licenses.