Infrant ReadyNAS X6

Reviews: Networking

Infrant ReadyNAS X6

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Richard Poelling
Brian
Infrant
Dec. 7, 2005

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Iometer

Iometer (www.iometer.org) is another disk benchmarking program. Like diskbench, Iometer was run against a mapped network drive for all tests. For the Iometer tests, the following was performed: 100% sequential Distribution, 256 KB transfer request size, either 100% write or 100% Read. A Maximum Disk size of 2048000 Sectors was used. The file that Iometer uses to test is 1,048,576,000 bytes in size. This size should ensure the X6 gets quite a workout. Each test was run for 2 minutes and run 3 times each. A second set of tests was also performed using a 512 KB transfer size. This setup of Iometer is what Infrant's tech support forums recommend. These settings were recommended for troubleshooting slow devices and general performance issues. This is why I did not rely totally on these results. The second test at 512 was an addition that I made in testing to see its effects at different network speeds.

256 KB Read/Write
(Show All Graphs)

Read

Write

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

25.772

26.540

7.948

Throughput (MB/s)

Read

Write

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

15.156

7.206

7.462

Throughput (MB/s)

512 KB Read/Write
(Show All Graphs)

Read

Write

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

25.167

17.906

5.271

Throughput (MB/s)

Read

Write

1 Gbit w/ Jumbo

1 Gbit

100 Mbit

12.981

5.695

7.186

Throughput (MB/s)

For both the 256KB and 512 KB block size write, the 1 Gibabit had fluctuating results. I am uncertain as to the cause, but in multiple tests my numbers were not as consistent as with the jumbo frames or the 100Mbit connections

For a comparison, I took similar benchmarks against some older file servers I had running on the network.

Server Comparison
(Show All Graphs)

Read

Write

ReadyNAS X6

P3 Fileserver

P2 Fileserver

7.948

8.596

7.670

Throughput (MB/s)

Read

Write

ReadyNAS X6

P3 Fileserver

P2 Fileserver

7.462

9.006

4.149

Throughput (MB/s)

Obviously, an old P2 server may not give the highest throughput, but for archival work, it does its job. The P3 is a 666MHz machine which also serves a similar function. Both machines are running windows 2000 server and have older PATA drives and a standard 100Mbit connection. These results show that the X6 gives equal to or better performance than some old piece of hardware you can scrounge up and throw on your network. Besides that, the small size and ease of use make management far easier than a standalone file server. As we all know, old hardware is not necessarily realiable in the long term. I would also have to add a 1Gbit NIC which the ReadyNAS already has integrated. I will also note that the X6 does not have any type of licensing issues which many server OS's can unless you go with one of the free Linux distributions.

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Page 8 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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