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Infrant ReadyNAS X6

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Richard Poelling
Brian
Infrant
Dec. 7, 2005

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Disk Bench

Diskbench (nodesoft.com/DiskBench/) version 2.4.3.1 is a small utility which can test such things as file creation and copying. For my testing I used this program against a mapped drive to a share on the X6.

Create File Benchmark

The first test I performed was a batch file creation with 2MB block size, 24 initial blocks, and an increase of 2 each time. This yielded a total of 60 files to create.

As you can clearly see, the throughput of the transfer is network dependant. The step up from 100Mbit to 1 Gbit is significant. A further performance jump can be realized by increasing the Maximum packet size to 9000 on the network adapter and enabling Jumbo frame support on the X6. Also of note is that throughput stays very consistent even as the file size approaches >256 MB.

Single and Dual File Creation

For this test, either a single file or two files of a certain size are created. For this test I chose a 500MB file, which is actually 50331648 bytes in size. For a second test, two files of 500 MB were created simultaneously.

Single 500MB File Creation

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

3.823

3.311

2.917

Throughput (MB/s)

Dual File Creation (Threaded)
(Show All Graphs)

File #1

File # 2

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

2.190

1.857

1.796

Throughput (MB/s)

File #1

File # 2

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

2.189

1.851

1.796

Throughput (MB/s)

Here again, the Jumbo frame enabled configuration performed better. The total throughput did decrease, but I did expect that to occur.

Dual File Read

This test performs a threaded (dual) read of two separate files you specify. For this test I chose to read the Windows XP SP 2 network install file and the Windows 2000 SP4 network install file. These are 278,927,592 and 135,477,136 bytes respectively.

Dual Read
(Show All Graphs)

129 MB File

266 MB File

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

5.426

5.566

3.795

Throughput (MB/s)

129 MB File

266 MB File

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

8.806

9.011

5.521

Throughput (MB/s)

Again, the increase in network bandwidth helps the read nicely. Enabling Jumbo frames has less of an impact with this test unlike the previous one. Still, on a 100Mb connection the read speed is pretty good for a networked device, especially for the capacity you can cram into it. (I can still put another hard drive into this thing!)

File Copying

This test is exactly what it says. A file is copied to the NAS and timed. I used a larger file and a smaller file. For the large file I used the Windows 2003 Enterprise ISO file which comes in at 569,366,528 bytes. A small MP3 of size 8,304,640 bytes was also used.

File Copy
(Show All Graphs)

Small File

Large File

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

12.356

7.186

6.417

Throughput (MB/s)

Small File

Large File

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

11.331

7.035

6.139

Throughput (MB/s)

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Page 7 of 10

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks
Page 3: Installation
Page 4: Hard Drives
Page 5: Services
Page 6: Testing
Page 7: Testing: DiskBench
Page 8: Testing: Iometer
Page 9: Quality, Security & Error Reporting
Page 10: Conclusion

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