NAS devices in an all OS X setup, real world experience in the home

[kurisu]

I've been thinking of switching to redundant storage for a while now, and I've read my share of reviews.

I'm looking at a 4 x 750GB Raid 50 array. Best I've seen so far is the Infrant ReadyNAS NV (with their "RAID X" that looks very interesting), but I'm of course open to other suggestions.

To be honest I'm looking for feedback on two points :

• noise (both when disks are idle and when being accessed)
• transfer speed

noise, as in "can you actually nap in the same room", and
transfer speed, as in "can you stream HD video from it on a full gigabit ethernet network"

if some of you guys have a recently purchased a NAS device, I'd like to hear from you !

cheerios

(and no, I do not want to build a linux RAID box even with an epia board, I want to buy an appliance)

[linathael]

I've been thinking of switching to redundant storage for a while now, and I've read my share of reviews.

I'm looking at a 4 x 750GB Raid 50 array. Best I've seen so far is the Infrant ReadyNAS NV (with their "RAID X" that looks very interesting), but I'm of course open to other suggestions.

To be honest I'm looking for feedback on two points :

• noise (both when disks are idle and when being accessed)
• transfer speed

noise, as in "can you actually nap in the same room", and
transfer speed, as in "can you stream HD video from it on a full gigabit ethernet network"

if some of you guys have a recently purchased a NAS device, I'd like to hear from you !

cheerios

(and no, I do not want to build a linux RAID box even with an epia board, I want to buy an appliance)

I will review this week-end the Thecus YES bos N2100
I will load it with 2x WD Caviar 320GB SATAII 16MB cache HDs.
Now thecus is also proposing the Thecus N4100 based on $ SATA HDs with full Gb ethernet too

[kurisu]

The N4100 looks quite nice, but I cannot seem to find which protocols it supports... only SMB ? Problem is SMB does not gracefully supports UTF8 in a way that Mac OS X can. Japanese filenames get mangled or garbled, and I have a mix of files with French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish names, and SMB does not handle that well at all.
NFS can be ok when properly configured, as well as AFP.

In any case, looking forward to reading your test

cheerios

[linathael]

The N4100 looks quite nice, but I cannot seem to find which protocols it supports... only SMB ? Problem is SMB does not gracefully supports UTF8 in a way that Mac OS X can. Japanese filenames get mangled or garbled, and I have a mix of files with French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish names, and SMB does not handle that well at all.
NFS can be ok when properly configured, as well as AFP.

In any case, looking forward to reading your test

cheerios

Indeed, protocols are not really indicated, could only find:

Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP
UNIX/Linux/BSD (by CIFS)
Apple OS X (AFP)

windows support is probably via SMB.

weird, because for hte N2100, supprted protocols are clearly indicated:

Network
Configuration: Fixed IP Address, Dynamic IP Address
Transport Protocols: TCP/IP
File Protocols: SMB/CIFS, HTTP/HTTPS, FTP
Device Discovery: UPnP

otherwise, you can get the N5100:

Network File Protocols:
Microsoft Networks (CIFS/SMB)
Apple Filing Protocol (AFP 3)
Network File System (NFS v3)
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
Secure Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTPs)

[linathael]

Oki

quick update concernign the Thecus N2100 YES box.
- RAID mirror = 9-10MB/s
- RAID stripping = 10-11 MB/s
- JBOD = to be tested

otherwise, admin via browser page is nice / rather noisy, the fan does not stop working maintaining the temperature in the enclosure around 30C, I will try to twist it this week-end. one of the possible reason for this noise: there is no air input, only one single opening corresponding to the rear back of the fan, so via this opening the air stream has to go in and out

[kurisu]

Oki

quick update concernign the Thecus N2100 YES box.
- RAID mirror = 9-10MB/s
- RAID stripping = 10-11 MB/s
- JBOD = to be tested

otherwise, admin via browser page is nice / rather noisy, the fan does not stop working maintaining the temperature in the enclosure around 30C, I will try to twist it this week-end. one of the possible reason for this noise: there is no air input, only one single opening corresponding to the rear back of the fan, so via this opening the air stream has to go in and out

Hooked up to a gigabit ethernet network, I am a bit surprised by the low speeds. I would have hoped for at least numbers in the 15s... are you using jumbo frames ?

too bad about the noise, that means it's not ready for the living room yet... would not want to have a fan making a rattling noise while watching a movie.

On the plus side, 30ºC is quite nice.

What about an idle mode for the drives ? do they stop spinning after some time of inactivity ? thus reducing the noise at least part of the time ?

[linathael]

Oki

quick update concernign the Thecus N2100 YES box.
- RAID mirror = 9-10MB/s
- RAID stripping = 10-11 MB/s
- JBOD = to be tested

otherwise, admin via browser page is nice / rather noisy, the fan does not stop working maintaining the temperature in the enclosure around 30C, I will try to twist it this week-end. one of the possible reason for this noise: there is no air input, only one single opening corresponding to the rear back of the fan, so via this opening the air stream has to go in and out

Hooked up to a gigabit ethernet network, I am a bit surprised by the low speeds. I would have hoped for at least numbers in the 15s... are you using jumbo frames ?

too bad about the noise, that means it's not ready for the living room yet... would not want to have a fan making a rattling noise while watching a movie.

On the plus side, 30ºC is quite nice.

What about an idle mode for the drives ? do they stop spinning after some time of inactivity ? thus reducing the noise at least part of the time ?

hello Kurisu,

you wait to know everything in advance

I have been running speedtools to evaluate performance regarding data transfer speed.
in quick summary, JOBD=RAID0 = RAID1 = 10MB/s in read and write.
I have been using large file for benchmarking du to the 16MB of cache on both Caviar HD.
I was also expecting rather 12 to 15 MB/s, but unfortunately not.
Actually the most surprising point for me is that it is RAID -independent!!, RAID0 or RAID1 will not change anything, so there is a hardware limit that makes it imporssible to get the most out the HDs (they are SATAII so suppose to be able to deliver 3GB/s...)
if you want me to test couple of things, let me know before the end of the week, as I will send it back.
In the admin panel, you can choose the protocole for FTP and itunes server, and UFT-8 is available

[kurisu]

so there is a hardware limit that makes it imporssible to get the most out the HDs (they are SATAII so suppose to be able to deliver 3GB/s...)

Thanks for all your testing.

You have to check whether the controller in the NAS device handles SATAII. I know most of the devices are SATAII compatible but what it means is they have a SATA capable (1.5GB/s) controller than can use SATAII drives in SATA mode.
Cabling makes also quite a difference. Cat5e is ok, but best results ought to be attained with Cat6 cable.

I guess the info I am most interested in is noise and supported protocols. If you have say some file with a UTF8 filename, does it look truncated (the file name) or can you have a long path, say for example :

CODE

/Volumes/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/上原 ひろみ/Brain/01 Kung-Fu World Champion.m4a

without it being cut short ?

[moose]

Well, true Kurisu, you don't want a server that would shorten your filenames... that would surely prompt an avalanche of spam like "ENLARGE YOUR FILENAMES NOW!" or "STORE LIKE A NETWORK STAR"...
Joke aside, that's a really interesting issue, and I'm also considering moving to a network storage system using gigabit ethernet. Although I'm not that much interested in a RAID system, rather in a basic SATA networked HD...
Any test and/or advice will be welcome, and I know our friend Linathael is working on something, but shhhh.....

[linathael]

hello Kurisu and Moose

Amazing but true, I have boosted the NAS Thecus N2100 performance by almost a factor 3 via a firmware update...
JBOD= RAID stripping= around 30MB/s
RAID mirror is slightly lower
yes iti is comaptible with SATAII drive as I have installed 2 Caviar WD3200YS SATAII 320GB HD 16MB cache.
the noise is currently the only issue I see, one can not sleep in the same room, oki I have a very light sleeping mode, but it sounds like a standard beige PC box, something we are not used to as Mac users.