Drobo S Performance Testing

[jpimlott]

I looked at a Drobo but went with a non propriatary storage setup by lime technoligies. It is called UNRAID. It is perfect for home theater market. 1 parity drive protects up to 19 data drives of any size, speed and interface.
I have upgraded the drives in it 2 times now add them and format. The great part is they are stanard riserfs formated drives so any linux system can read them if the sever goes south. Moving to new hardware is a brease, just print out the config and set it up on the new hardware. Works with almost all intel/amd hardware from the last 8 or so years. I have 8 terabytes on mine and climbing. There is a starter kit for free 2 data drives and a parity. a basic 5 data drives, cache drive, and parity for 70 bucks. The pro is 120 buck with 19 data drives.

John

[stanger89]

I just wish they had a solution that didn't require an entire, separate PC.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by jpimlott

1 parity drive protects up to 19 data drives of any size, speed and interface.

Well, more specifically, 1 parity drive can protect usable drive space of

Size of Smallest Drive * (Number of Drives - 1)

on any combination of drive speeds or interfaces.

[stanger89]

Well actually unRAID setup is that the parity drive can protect the data on all drives that are the same size or smaller. The unRAID "array" isn't limited to the smallest drive like RAID-5/6. So as long as your parity drive is as big or bigger than the other drives, all your data is protected.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Well actually unRAID setup is that the parity drive can protect the data on all drives that are the same size or smaller. The unRAID "array" isn't limited to the smallest drive like RAID-5/6. So as long as your parity drive is as big or bigger than the other drives, all your data is protected.

Ahh, I didn't know that, thanks

[stanger89]

Yeah, I love the unRAID concept, an "array" of storage that can be made of arbitrary drives, and only spinning the ones in use. I just can't justify an entire separate PC to it.

Though I wonder, Windows Sage + unRAID running under ESXi on something like an Atom system... hm....

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Yeah, I love the unRAID concept, an "array" of storage that can be made of arbitrary drives, and only spinning the ones in use. I just can't justify an entire separate PC to it.

The PC can be relatively low power/low cost, and you would probably want a separate enclosure for the drives anyway (allowing you to grow to the 20 drive limit, not having to throw out your old drives, and allowing them to be spun down when not in use, is the real selling point of unraid) -- so I guess I don't really see it as a problem.

That said, while performance in unraid under a VM will suffer, you can, with some difficulty, run vmware under unraid -- allowing you to squeeze a little more use out of your unraid box.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by brainbone

The PC can be relatively low power/low cost, and you would probably want a separate enclosure for the drives anyway (allowing you to grow to the 20 drive limit, not having to throw out your old drives, and allowing them to be spun down when not in use, is the real selling point of unraid) -- so I guess I don't really see it as a problem.

I have a SageTV server, it runs Windows Server 2003, with SageTV, J River Media Center.

IMO it's "madness" to run an another full PC 24/7 just for storage, when I've already got a perfectly good machine running 24/7.

unRAID makes a lot of sense if you don't have a server already, but if you do, it's a tough sell to put together another machine.

[jpimlott]

You can install other services on it , Twonky server, backup server.
I like because then my sage server can be a low power Atom with only one drive. The core I3 chipset though looks real good for a HTPC/sage/playon/comskip box drawing about the same power as an atom. ASUS has a killer board for it. might even be a decent unraid board. I am tryin to do a full slackware install but my lack of linux knowledge ish shinning through.

John

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by stanger89

IMO it's "madness" to run an another full PC 24/7 just for storage, when I've already got a perfectly good machine running 24/7.

But would you have an issue running another NAS, like a Drobo, 24/7?

[stanger89]

No, but my ReadyNAS uses about 1/4 the power of my SageTV server.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by stanger89

No, but my ReadyNAS uses about 1/4 the power of my SageTV server.

And a server you build for unRaid could as well -- plus the drives not being used at any given time will spin down.

[stanger89]

Yeah, but if I did that my unRAID box would be more powerful than my Sage server. That just doesn't make sense. If I'm going to drop cash at this point it only makes sense if I can consolodate, or at least not expand the herd of computer boxen in the basement.

[brainbone]

True enough.

I am curious how well recent unraid builds perform under vmware -- that or how well SageTV server runs under slackware.

[stanger89]

I really thought about trying to run Sage under Linux, but it just seems way too much work. Between the upcoming MyMovies customization, my R5000 and the fact that I run JRMC (windows only), it just doesn't make sense to try and setup a linux server.

[brainbone]

Very similar reasons to why I went with a windows server for sagetv as well -- and built an unraid server

[jpimlott]

I agree , my sage started as a single box with one driver for content. I then upgraded the box to a core I7 gaming and htpc combined. I broke out the storage part with unraid and started ripping hundreds of DVDs to the NAS. The I7 was killing me on power for recording to i built the baby Atom ant box is great it is even doing playon transcoding well if i use a client for viewing of transcoded material. The atom will do online no playon videos and dvd playback with no problem. Its neat having a pc always on for gerneral use (reading sagetc forums hehe) and be recording. I do backups and twonky to the unraid box. Mine is setup to shutdown gracefully if power is lost using the APC deamaon.
John

[rajczi]

The Drobo S that I requested for this review has arrived and so far I am pretty impressed. I have connected it via eSATA to my workstation running Windows 7 x64 to get a handle on the performance before I put it on my sage server and so far pretty good. They sent it to me with 2x2TB and 3x1TB Western Digital Enterprise Black label drives.

It ran a steady 50MB/s read, 60MB/s write and 130MB/s burst across the entire volume. I am pretty sure that the write speed has some caching involved and I will rule that out with some actual data loading shortly.

If anyone has some specific tests they think I should run, please feel free to post them here so I can add them to the list.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by rajczi

The Drobo S that I requested for this review has arrived and so far I am pretty impressed. I have connected it via eSATA to my workstation running Windows 7 x64 to get a handle on the performance before I put it on my sage server and so far pretty good. They sent it to me with 2x2TB and 3x1TB Western Digital Enterprise Black label drives.

It ran a steady 50MB/s read, 60MB/s write and 130MB/s burst across the entire volume. I am pretty sure that the write speed has some caching involved and I will rule that out with some actual data loading shortly.

If anyone has some specific tests they think I should run, please feel free to post them here so I can add them to the list.

test for maximum use - multiple HD streams recording/viewing, comskip, encoding, etc.

i'm actually surprised the r/w speeds are that low - i was expecting more from their hardware. but what i realized testing my setup against some other servers i have access to, how it holds up to "multiple users" is the bigger test - a lot of the cheap NAS' do well with single or 2x access, but get 5 or 6 or 7 things happening at once and they start to falter.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by sandor

test for maximum use - multiple HD streams recording/viewing, comskip, encoding, etc.

i'm actually surprised the r/w speeds are that low - i was expecting more from their hardware. but what i realized testing my setup against some other servers i have access to, how it holds up to "multiple users" is the bigger test - a lot of the cheap NAS' do well with single or 2x access, but get 5 or 6 or 7 things happening at once and they start to falter.

oh, forgot to add - i thought the WD Black drives would give much better performance. my QNAP with WD Green drives test out about 70 MB/s write & 90 MB/s read.