NAS Configuration

Test Setup for Single Client Tests

Our test system (client PC) for single client tests consists of the following components:


As you can see, we use a pretty strong test system with an ultra-fast PCIe SSD from which all the tests are executed to make sure there is no bottleneck on our side, since OCZ's RevoDrive 350 480 GB can achieve up to 1800 MB/s read and 1700 MB/s write speeds (sequential). We also equipped the above system with an Intel X540-T2 network adapter for up 10GbE transfer speeds. The Zyxel XS1920 smart managed switch is essential in achieving such high speeds with copper wires.

Test Setup for Multi Client Tests

The test setup we use for multi-client tests is described in the table below.


We chose to use twelve real clients instead of virtual machines for our multi-client tests to ensure our tests are conducted in a way that is very close to real life. We believe twelve clients with our custom-made software are more than enough to figure out the capabilities of a NAS, even for extreme usage scenarios.



We use a very strong, high quality Cyberpower UPS featuring pure sinewave output to protect our client PCs and the NAS. The PR2200ELCDSL belongs to the Professional Tower Series and has a capacity of 2200VA, which is more than enough to handle all twelve client PCs and a business-centric NAS with multiple HDDs installed.

Thanks Section

Building a suitable test bed for NAS reviews is really hard and expensive; however, we were lucky enough to have the support of several companies we would like to mention and thank, one by one.

Shuttle for helping us acquire twelve DS81 barebone slim-PCs.



OCZ for the RevoDrive 350 and the dozen ARC 100 SSDs with 240 GB capacity each.



ZyXEL for the XS1920 10GbE Smart Managed Switch.



CyberPower Systems for kindly providing the PR2200ELCDSL UPS (Professional Tower Series).



Caseking.de for kindly providing six Intel Pentium G3260 CPUs.



Overclockers.co.uk for kindly providing six Intel Pentium G3260 CPUs.



Corsair for kindly providing the DDR3 SODIMM memory kits.

Methodology

We use three different programs to evaluate the NAS's performance. The first is Intel's NAS Performance Toolkit. Intel was kind enough to build a NAS performance toolkit and not only release it for free to the public, but also provide its source code. The only problem of this toolkit is that using a client PC with more than 2GB of memory will results in two tests ("HD Video Record" and "File Copy to NAS") being heavily affected since they actually measure the client's RAM buffer speed, not the network speed, which had us set the maximum memory of our test PC to 2GB via msconfig's advanced options. We also exploit its batch run function, which repeats the selected tests for five turns and uses the average as the final result for all the tests with this toolkit.


The second program is custom-made. It performs ten basic file-transfer tests and measures the average MB/s speed for each. To extract results that are as accurate as possible, we run all selected tests ten times and use the average as the final result.

We also perform our multi-client tests (up to ten clients are supported by one server instance of the program) with the same program. The server program runs on the main workstation and the clients run the client version of the program. All are synchronized and operate in parallel; after all tests are finished, the clients report their results to the server, which sums them up and transfers them to an excel sheet for the generation of the corresponding graph(s).


The third program we use in our test sessions is ATTO, a well-known program for storage benchmarks. In order to use ATTO for benchmarking, we are forced to map a shared folder of the NAS to a local drive, since ATTO cannot directly access network devices.