Test Setup

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

We would like to thank OCZ for the RevoDrive 350.



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 the SSD can achieve up to 1800 MB/s read and 1700 MB/s write speeds (sequential).

We would like to thank ZyXEL for the XS1920 10GbE Smart Managed Switch.

Methodology

We use three different programs to evaluate the NAS server'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 with 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 because they actually measure the client's RAM buffer speed, not the network speed, so we 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 readings as the final results in 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 speeds for each. To extract results that are as accurate as possible, we run all selected tests ten times and use the averages as the final results.

We also perform our multiple client tests (up to ten clients are supported by one server instance of the program) through the same program. The server program runs on the server and the clients run the client version of the program. All are synchronized and operate in parallel; after all tests are finished, all clients report the 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 because ATTO cannot directly access network devices.