Need NAS -- opinions welcome

[QueOnda]

Hello all,

I currently have a ReadyNAS X6.

I want a 6-bay or more, hot swap device. Able to be upgradable, like the way readynas has the XRaid techology (don't know what it's really called in another brand.

I don't really want to a DIY option. I know of some programs which allows you to accomplish the same thing with your current hardware.

I've seen a company called QNAP (never heard of them) which are comperable to the readyNAS but a little cheaper. I've seen readynas Netgear RNDP600E, which seems nice. I'm either going to use my current ReadyNas as backup to the new NAS storage.

[stanger89]

Why not a ReadyNAS Pro?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Why not a ReadyNAS Pro?

The OP seemed fine with the ReadyNAS Pro, but the QNAP TS-639 that he was referring to sounds pretty interesting too. It looks like it has more external ports (though, I question how likely they are be used) for $100 less than the ReadyNAS Pro.

Though, I'm curious, what are the compelling advantages of the ReadyNAS Pro over the ReadyNAS NV+ (e.g., RNDP600E vs. RND4000). Obviously the Pro has 6 SATA ports, compared to 4, but it's also twice as expensive. The Pro has dual gigabit ethernet ports, but it doesn't seem like that is terribly useful unless you have fairly expensive network equipment to support load balancing. The Pro apparently has a newer version of their X-RAID system. Is it quite a bit better? Is the build quality just quite a bit better, resulting in better reliability?

Basically, I'm curious what you think ends up being a better deal after taking everything into account: one RNDP600E or two RND4000? And, I'm actually pretty interested in WHS, mainly because it seems to have some nice hooks in it to support backing up Windows boxes. At the same time, though I know WHS is based on Win2k3, my experience with Vista networking performance has been unpleasant enough to be skeptical of Microsoft.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

The OP seemed fine with the ReadyNAS Pro, but the QNAP TS-639 that he was referring to sounds pretty interesting too. It looks like it has more external ports (though, I question how likely they are be used) for $100 less than the ReadyNAS Pro.

Though, I'm curious, what are the compelling advantages of the ReadyNAS Pro over the ReadyNAS NV+ (e.g., RNDP600E vs. RND4000). Obviously the Pro has 6 SATA ports, compared to 4, but it's also twice as expensive. The Pro has dual gigabit ethernet ports, but it doesn't seem like that is terribly useful unless you have fairly expensive network equipment to support load balancing. The Pro apparently has a newer version of their X-RAID system. Is it quite a bit better? Is the build quality just quite a bit better, resulting in better reliability?

It's about 3x faster than the NV+/X6 line. You can get 100MB/sec out of the Pro while the NV+/X6 you're lucky to get around 30. It's got an Intel processor that's got far more power (Core2 Duo if I'm finding the right info), and there seem to be a lot more options for customizeability.

If you run any apps on the ReadyNAS, like Squeezecenter, I know my X6 routinely shows it's lack of horsepower.

Now as for Pro vs Pro Pioneer, that's tougher, it's got the same hardware obviously, but some extra software features enabled. For the $50-100 difference though I'd like to have SNMP and a few of the other features on the Pro.

Basically, I'm curious what you think ends up being a better deal after taking everything into account: one RNDP600E or two RND4000?

I really like my X6, functionally, but the performance limitations are frustrating at times. Buying today I'd get either a Pro or an NVX. The NVX is basically a 4-bay version of the Pro, and a single core processor, but should still be far more powerful than the X6/NV/NV+ are.

And, I'm actually pretty interested in WHS, mainly because it seems to have some nice hooks in it to support backing up Windows boxes. At the same time, though I know WHS is based on Win2k3, my experience with Vista networking performance has been unpleasant enough to be skeptical of Microsoft.

I guess I'd look at it this way. If you're needing a "computer" to be running, for stuff like Sage and other "PC" apps, go WHS (though I'd go RAID rather than the Pool due to the high cost of redunancy via folder duplication). If you've already got the "PC" (thus don't needs something that can run Windows apps), and are just looking for a standalone storage device, I'd much rather have a ReadyNAS than a WHS box.

As far as backup goes, I've got my ReadyNAS set to automatically copy my SageTV install directory to itself, and also my digital pictures, essentially doing a nightly "backup" of each. And for full backups, I use Acronis True Image.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I really like my X6, functionally, but the performance limitations are frustrating at times. Buying today I'd get either a Pro or an NVX. The NVX is basically a 4-bay version of the Pro, and a single core processor, but should still be far more powerful than the X6/NV/NV+ are.

Apparently the NVX line uses a 1Ghz Intel Tolopai processor (basically, a 1 Ghz Pentium M). That seems like an awful lot of power, but I think I keep underestimating how processor intensive these things are. Like you said, the ReadyNAS Pro uses a Core2 Duo, which just seems insane. I wonder how much of that is suppose to be for driving the RAID system, and how much of that is intended for third-party applications.

As far as backup goes, I've got my ReadyNAS set to automatically copy my SageTV install directory to itself, and also my digital pictures, essentially doing a nightly "backup" of each. And for full backups, I use Acronis True Image.

I have a Macbook Pro at work, and though I'm not a huge fan of the computer in general, I really do like the Time Machine software. I thought I read that WHS has something like that, but I was wrong. Apparently that's a feature that Microsoft is trying to add in the second version of WHS.

You can do incremental backups in True Image, but that's still a long way off from what Time Machine offers.

I still have a bit over a spare terabyte on my server, with room for two more drives if I really want, but in the long run I think I do want to get some sort of NAS. As I've said before, though, the current prices astonish me. I'm hoping there will be a relatively nice QNAP or ReadyNAS product in that price range in 6-12 months.

[simonen]

These things are sweet, you can use different drive sizes.

http://www.drobo.com/

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I have a Macbook Pro at work, and though I'm not a huge fan of the computer in general, I really do like the Time Machine software. I thought I read that WHS has something like that, but I was wrong. Apparently that's a feature that Microsoft is trying to add in the second version of WHS.

http://www.readynas.com/?p=253

I really don't know how the WHS "backup" stuff works.

Originally Posted by simonen

These things are sweet, you can use different drive sizes.

http://www.drobo.com/

Except they require a PC to be connected to, or you have to buy the extra DroboNAS thing.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

http://www.readynas.com/?p=253

I really don't know how the WHS "backup" stuff works.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I'm not interested in hooking up my Mac to a ReadyNAS and using Time Machine on the NAS. I'm interested in Windows getting an equivalent kind of incremental backup system, which, so I've heard, will require the use of a Windows Home Server (as opposed to Apple's Time Machine, which really works on any storage device). Presumably Microsoft is going to be putting the Time-Machine-like functionality on the server side, as opposed to Apple's system which has it on the user side.

[simonen]

Except they require a PC to be connected to, or you have to buy the extra DroboNAS thing.

True...

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I'm not interested in hooking up my Mac to a ReadyNAS and using Time Machine on the NAS. I'm interested in Windows getting an equivalent kind of incremental backup system, which, so I've heard, will require the use of a Windows Home Server (as opposed to Apple's Time Machine, which really works on any storage device). Presumably Microsoft is going to be putting the Time-Machine-like functionality on the server side, as opposed to Apple's system which has it on the user side.

Well I was just noticing that Window 7 has a "previous versions" thing in it. Though I haven't looked into how that works to see if you can point the target out to an network location.

Originally Posted by simonen

True...

The other thing is last time I looked (admittedly a while ago) Drobo didn't report actual size or free space to the OS, it pretended to be a 2TB volume (regardless of how much space you actually had), and would simply "slow down" to indicate it was getting full. You had to go into an special app to see actual free/used space.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The other thing is last time I looked (admittedly a while ago) Drobo didn't report actual size or free space to the OS, it pretended to be a 2TB volume (regardless of how much space you actually had), and would simply "slow down" to indicate it was getting full. You had to go into an special app to see actual free/used space.

I don't believe that's the case anymore

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by simonen

These things are sweet, you can use different drive sizes.

http://www.drobo.com/

I just checked Drobo. They have a Drobopro It has a 8bay and "iSCSI (utilizes Gigabit Ethernet)". Like most of you, I was staying away from DROBO because I thought they didn't have an Ethernet connection, + I think they were overpriced when they first came out.

[stanger89]

The problem is iSCSI, while using etherenet, isn't at all like a NAS. It basically uses Cat5/6 in leu of a SCSI cable. To put it more simply, you can only connect one PC to one iSCSI target.

Infrant added iSCSI to the Pro, and I was rather excited until I did some more research. Frankly I don't see the use of iSCSI in the home environment. It would be kind of cool to have diskless PCs that boot off iSCSI targets, but that seems like the end of practical use. If you just want supplimental storage, I don't see it offering any benefits over shared drives, and the big downside of not being able to be shared between computers.

And yeah, I kind of thought they might have fixed the volume size thing, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Just seemed like a hack design.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The problem is iSCSI, while using etherenet, isn't at all like a NAS. It basically uses Cat5/6 in leu of a SCSI cable. To put it more simply, you can only connect one PC to one iSCSI target.

Infrant added iSCSI to the Pro, and I was rather excited until I did some more research. Frankly I don't see the use of iSCSI in the home environment. It would be kind of cool to have diskless PCs that boot off iSCSI targets, but that seems like the end of practical use. If you just want supplimental storage, I don't see it offering any benefits over shared drives, and the big downside of not being able to be shared between computers.

And yeah, I kind of thought they might have fixed the volume size thing, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Just seemed like a hack design.

OH, I see. Thanks for pointing that out. The QNAP has an 8 disk but you can use iSCSI or use it as a regular NAS (so it says). Looks cool. Only thing, that model doesn't support Jumbo Frames. Don't know if that a killer. I thought Jumbo frames help in speed of data if you have supported hardware, but I need to do more reading. Is JBOD another term for X-Raid as in ReadyNas?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

OH, I see. Thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah, I went through the same "Wow! That's cool, wait, oh, that's not much use to me..." process

The QNAP has an 8 disk but you can use iSCSI or use it as a regular NAS (so it says). Looks cool.

Like the ReadyNAS, only issue is, my understanding is you devote a certain "space" to be the iSCSI target, you don't make a folder on the NAS one. iSCSI is a "block level" protocol vs file sharing which is a file level.

Only thing, that model doesn't support Jumbo Frames. Don't know if that a killer. I thought Jumbo frames help in speed of data if you have supported hardware, but I need to do more reading.

Seems to varry, I think it eases CPU requirements a bit since there are less packets to deal with, but if you've got the horsepower, I'm not sure it really does much.

Is JBOD another term for X-Raid as in ReadyNas?

JBOD is technically a spanned array with discs. But it's quite often used to mean "no-RAID". X-RAID is something between RAID-4 and RAID-5. I don't know (Infrant never said that I can find) if it uses striping, but it uses parity like RAID-4 or 5 to provide redundancy. X-RAID 2, is the same idea but more easilly expanded. With X-RAID (1 or 2), 1 drive -> no redundancy, 2-drives -> mirroring, 3-drives -> parity, 4 drives ->parity, etc. But then you can replace your drives to expand the array, but with X-RAID, the array doesn't expand untill all the drives are replaced, with X-RAID 2, it will expand as soon as redundancy can be obtained, meaning 2 drives replaced.

So with X-RAID (1), you can put in a 500GB drive and there's no redundancy, another 500GB drive creates redundancy and then the 3rd and 4th expand the space to 1TB and 1.5TB. Then if you replace them all with 1.5TB drives, you'll get 4.5 total.

With X-RAID 2, the same thing happens, but you can replace only 2 of the 500GB drives with 1.5TBs, and you'll gain that extra 1TB of space right away.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

OH, I see. Thanks for pointing that out. The QNAP has an 8 disk but you can use iSCSI or use it as a regular NAS (so it says). Looks cool. Only thing, that model doesn't support Jumbo Frames. Don't know if that a killer. I thought Jumbo frames help in speed of data if you have supported hardware, but I need to do more reading. Is JBOD another term for X-Raid as in ReadyNas?

JBOD means Just a Bunch of Disks. Basically, it just makes all your hard drives look like on big one. No redundancy. X-RAID sort of seems like a alternative to RAID5 where it's easier to add disks later. Stanger might have to correct me on that one. It doesn't look like QNAP has something comparable to X-RAID, although I think it is possible to add disks to a RAID5 array (I think you just have to rebuild it, which can take a while).

I think jumbo frames would be important. I know I got a huge speed boost on my network when I enabled jumbo frames. Edit to add: And my computers are pretty fast, so I don't think I was running into CPU speed issues before that. I agree it doesn't seem like it should matter with fast computers, but it apparently does.

[TobyG]

My NAS (a QNAP TS-409) works great as an archive, but it's too slow to reliably handle live recordings (and the network is theoretically subject to traffic slowdowns). So I use it as an automatic archive location, moving recordings to the NAS once they've been recorded. Since I use RAID 5, there's redundancy if one drive fails, and it's easy to expand with additional drives. I wrote about it here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...951#post332951

The QNAP TS-409 can be found much cheaper than many of the newest NAS devices (and some of even the newest NAS boxes still aren't going to be fast enough for direct recording, so do some careful research if that's your intention).

[reggie14]

Stanger, if you're still watching this thread, what do you know about performance on the ReadyNAS Pro? From the reviews on smallnetbuilder, it looks like the ReadyNAS Pro line tops out around 40MB/sec for RAID5 write speeds, and only 25MB/sec for X-RAID2 write speeds. It seems like the X-RAID2 functionality is probably the big improvement the ReadyNAS offers over the QNAP NAS, and that 25MB/sec write speed concerns me a bit, as I would hope for at least twice that.

The QNAP TS-639 Pro doesn't really do any better. It seems to be roughly the same speed when it comes to RAID5 writes, and doesn't offer anything like X-RAID.

Is there something about RAID5 that limits performance to 40MB/sec (and are smallnetbuilder's performance figures for X-RAID2 accurate)? What are the disadvantages to running RAID5 versus X-RAID2? I think you can still add disks to RAID5 arrays, right? Is it that you can't swap out individual old disks for larger new disks?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Stanger, if you're still watching this thread, what do you know about performance on the ReadyNAS Pro? From the reviews on smallnetbuilder, it looks like the ReadyNAS Pro line tops out around 40MB/sec for RAID5 write speeds, and only 25MB/sec for X-RAID2 write speeds. It seems like the X-RAID2 functionality is probably the big improvement the ReadyNAS offers over the QNAP NAS, and that 25MB/sec write speed concerns me a bit, as I would hope for at least twice that.

Well everything I've read about the Pro, it should be capable of ~100MB/sec read/write. I know looking at the smallnetbuilder review they only had (IIRC) 3 drives in it. eg here:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewto...24038&p=141899

It can get kind of tricky getting the higher speeds because as you start going over 25MB/sec, especially trying to get over 50MB/sec, you run into the read/write speed of the disks in the "not-NAS" computer. What I mean is if you're copying a file to/from something like a ReadyNAS Pro (or anything with a really fast disk subsystem), and your machine has only single disks, then your "source" machine will be the limiting factor.

Is there something about RAID5 that limits performance to 40MB/sec (and are smallnetbuilder's performance figures for X-RAID2 accurate)?

SNB did retest the pro with the newer firmware and got better results:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30725/75/

I'm not finding their X-RAID2 benchmarks at the moment, but if they're only using 3 drives like I remember, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if their results are slower than with a "full" NAS.

What are the disadvantages to running RAID5 versus X-RAID2?

Well the big one I think you already know, it's much pickier about what drives you use. X-RAID2 can "mix and match" more than RAID-5 can.

I think you can still add disks to RAID5 arrays, right?

It's possible, but depends on the implementation. For example you can configura a ReadyNAS for RAID-5 but you can't expand the array if you do.

Is it that you can't swap out individual old disks for larger new disks?

There's that, you can't have a single volume with different sized drives and use all the space either.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

It can get kind of tricky getting the higher speeds because as you start going over 25MB/sec, especially trying to get over 50MB/sec, you run into the read/write speed of the disks in the "not-NAS" computer. What I mean is if you're copying a file to/from something like a ReadyNAS Pro (or anything with a really fast disk subsystem), and your machine has only single disks, then your "source" machine will be the limiting factor.

That's why I'm a little suspicious of the smallnetbuilder reviews. Their older test system was pretty underpowered. The new one is better, but as you pointed out, there's limited performance information. I now see they did retest a 5-drive X-RAID2 system and averaged about 50MB/sec for a 4.5GB transfer. I just don't now what that translates to in actual sustained write speeds, as there seems to be some major caching effects going on in the initial 500 megabytes or so. Even that test was using a questionable test system, using an 80gig 7200RPM hard drive as the source and destination for write/read tests respectively. The hard drive in my desktop doesn't have any problem going well beyond 25MB/sec for average reads/writes, but I'm not sure that one can.

SNB did retest the pro with the newer firmware and got better results:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30725/75/

It isn't clear if the firmware helped, if the move to RAID5 from X-RAID2 helps, or if the new test system helped. I think there was something wrong with their initial test, so I'm not inclined to trust the 25MB/sec figure. The 50MB/sec for X-RAID2 seems plausible, although I find it a little hard to believe that X-RAID2 would be faster than RAID5.

SNB's new test system really ought to be able to test gigabit NASes to their limits. But, even those tests still peg sustained RAID5 writes at around 40MB/sec. People on various forums report higher speeds, but sometimes they report speeds that aren't even possible, and other times they don't indicate whether they're using RAID5/RAID0/X-RAID/etc.

I'm not in the market for a NAS quite yet, but hopefully by the time I'm ready for one there will be some more reviews.