Hi,
First post here..
I have purchased an HP N40L microserver, installed 8Gb RAM, and flashed the bios with the new version that unlocks the IDE limit for the 5th SATA port.
I'm running an assortment of HDD, one 2TB, one 1TB, and 2x 250Gb.
This install is basically a test platform to see what i can get out of it.
I currently have a QNAP 419P+ with 4x2TB HDD running raid 5, with all my data on it.
After exhaustive research on how to actually test these things i've opted to run NASPT from intel, using a corei5 2. something Ghz computer, 8Gb RAM, 1Gb ethernet. running of a 120Gb SSD and windows 7. all testing is done via CIFS/Samba.
I am interested in FREENAS, because of the ZFS, and the advanced caching possibilities.
Now interestingly the QNAP gives me about 30Mb/s write speed, and the CPU trace is Maxed out. it is single core, and not a lot of RAM.
The HP running FREENAS give me much much faster writes, around 80Mb/s using raidz and sometimes higher using stripe. not surprising given the more powerful CPU and RAM.
But im struggling to actually discern any difference between any set up. the file copy stats tend to be garbage because of caching by the local host (ram >2Gb).
If I use a single SSD in either ZFS or UTF file system is actually performs worse than the hard drives which doesn't seem right. If I add the SSD as a ZIL, which should be faster it slows things down. also strange things happen to the network transfer rate. it becomes severely saw toothed. If i copy to the QNAP I get a solid line transfer. if i copy to the HP with freenas running UTF I get a solid line, if I use ZFS I get a sustained transfer, but quite jagged but not dropping to 0. With an SSD ZIL the whole thing become very sawtoothed.
I can post pictures later, need to make them at home first. just wondering if anyone has any ideas.
I suspect the SSD might not be performing that well due to it being plugged in the 5th SATA port on the N40L, however, in the benchmarks it performs very well! but in real life its speeds are 1/2 that of the raidz array, when i just copy a 4.5Gb movie. I also don't understand how the QNAP does so well considering it also copies much slower in windows.
i'm confused!
any ideas.. ive attached the NASPT benchmarks. those with error bars are performed 5 times.
First post here..
I have purchased an HP N40L microserver, installed 8Gb RAM, and flashed the bios with the new version that unlocks the IDE limit for the 5th SATA port.
I'm running an assortment of HDD, one 2TB, one 1TB, and 2x 250Gb.
This install is basically a test platform to see what i can get out of it.
I currently have a QNAP 419P+ with 4x2TB HDD running raid 5, with all my data on it.
After exhaustive research on how to actually test these things i've opted to run NASPT from intel, using a corei5 2. something Ghz computer, 8Gb RAM, 1Gb ethernet. running of a 120Gb SSD and windows 7. all testing is done via CIFS/Samba.
I am interested in FREENAS, because of the ZFS, and the advanced caching possibilities.
Now interestingly the QNAP gives me about 30Mb/s write speed, and the CPU trace is Maxed out. it is single core, and not a lot of RAM.
The HP running FREENAS give me much much faster writes, around 80Mb/s using raidz and sometimes higher using stripe. not surprising given the more powerful CPU and RAM.
But im struggling to actually discern any difference between any set up. the file copy stats tend to be garbage because of caching by the local host (ram >2Gb).
If I use a single SSD in either ZFS or UTF file system is actually performs worse than the hard drives which doesn't seem right. If I add the SSD as a ZIL, which should be faster it slows things down. also strange things happen to the network transfer rate. it becomes severely saw toothed. If i copy to the QNAP I get a solid line transfer. if i copy to the HP with freenas running UTF I get a solid line, if I use ZFS I get a sustained transfer, but quite jagged but not dropping to 0. With an SSD ZIL the whole thing become very sawtoothed.
I can post pictures later, need to make them at home first. just wondering if anyone has any ideas.
I suspect the SSD might not be performing that well due to it being plugged in the 5th SATA port on the N40L, however, in the benchmarks it performs very well! but in real life its speeds are 1/2 that of the raidz array, when i just copy a 4.5Gb movie. I also don't understand how the QNAP does so well considering it also copies much slower in windows.
i'm confused!
any ideas.. ive attached the NASPT benchmarks. those with error bars are performed 5 times.
