| QNAP TS-879U-RP 10GbE NAS Server |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Network | |
| Written by Bruce Normann | |
| Monday, 19 March 2012 | |
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QNAP TS-879U-RP 10GbE NAS Server Review
Manufacturer: QNAP Systems, Inc. There is a glass ceiling in the world of NAS devices, and like all glass ceilings it's not that obvious until you bang your head against it a few times. The standard-issue network interface in the consumer market for the last several years has been a one-gigabit Ethernet connection, through an RJ-45 plug and socket at each end. Convert bits to bytes and you end up with a less impressive sounding 125 MB/s interface. Right away the ceiling comes into play, because even a single Seagate Barracuda 3TB Hard Drive ST3000DM001 can push 160MB/s through its SATA 6 Gb/s interface when it's running hard. That's about 25% more data throughput than a standard 1000BASE-T network is capable of handling. If that's just a single mechanical hard drive; think about what eight SSDs in RAID 5 can do! The answer from QNAP is, read and write speeds well over 1500MB/s with the QNAP TS-879U-RP Turbo NAS.
Last month we did an extensive review of the QNAP TS-879U-RP Turbo NAS server. We tested it with the network configuration that comes standard from the factory, which is: two GbE NICs integrated into the main system board, courtesy of Intel's WGG82574L and WG82579LM chips. The best Read/Write performance we could get on the underside of the glass ceiling was 117/121 MB/s. The good news is that the entire TS-x79 series can accept a variety of 10GbE NICs in an internal PCIe x8 slot, and that should make a huge difference in real-world performance. The bad news is that it didn't come with one (or two), and I had to go out and get two of them for my test bench. All's well that ends well though, and I ended up with two very nice cards from Intel that support CAT 6 (copper) cabling, so at least I didn't have to delve into the world of fiber optic interconnects. One new technology at a time, thank you. Let's have a brief look back at the QNAP TS-879U-RP, before we dive into the details of the updated NAS. With eight 3.5" drive bays available, it's the next logical step up from a typical four or six-bay device; there's the potential for 24TB of storage and transfer rates of more than 10 Gb/s. The TS-879U-RP is targeted a little higher than the typical small and medium business (SMB) IT needs, both by virtue of its size and its form factor. Its rack mounted design fits in with the rest of the networking, storage, and server hardware in use by high-end SMBs, and at the enterprise level. It's got storage space, plus it's also got enough CPU horsepower to do the job, with a Dual Core Intel Core i3-2120 CPU running at 3.3GHz, and 2GB of DDR3 system memory. I was a little frustrated when I first tested the TS-879U-RP, because I didn't have a network environment that could unleash its full performance. Now that I do, let's take a look at what it takes to get this corporate animal up to full speed.
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Comments
So, I would be happy to use the QNAP TS-879U-RP to test some SSD makers' new enterprise-class drives, and run them hard, in a realistic test case. But, just stuffing some consumer grade devices in the NAS to push it closer to 10Gbps throughput doesn't really do much for me.... I "get" why QNAP tested it that way, but I also think it would have been useful for them to publish additional test results with enterprise-class HDDs.
Use the SSD so you need to understand the physical limitations inherent in the product, it is obvious that no one ever use this product with SSDs, but the fact remains that with the HDD will never get to know the limits of the Qnap as well as any 'NAS or other product that has or needs to introduce SATA mass storage.
You CAN set up multiple iSCSI targets and/or multiple LUNs one one device, but they would all reside on one physical RAID volume.
RAID 10 (0r RAID 20)is usually best for database applications. RAID 5 can be slower in Write operations. Do you have the ability to set the system up in a test environment? I would strongly encourage that, so you can try the different configurations.
Details here: #qnap.com/static/landing/10gbe_en.html
Did I inspire them...? LOL
I got more than 450MB/s in ACTUAL real-world throughput, which is slightly more than the USB-IF expects the USB 3.0 connection to handle, so I would say that using USB instead of Ethernet would throttle the bandwidth somewhat. Of course, you lose all the advantages of having the device sitting directly on the network, which is a major feature of this and any other NAS.
In case of simultaneous streaming what total throughput can I expect... could the NAS handle 2x450 + 100 MB/s = 1000 MB/s? That should be supported by 8 high end disks but I do not know if the processor can handle a RAID5 encoding/decoding at this rate...
Last question: is it possible to wire the NAS with two 1 Gbe cables to the switch and handle two 100 MB/s streams from two different computers? Is it seamless - I mean would the computers all see a single disk or is it more complex to aggregate?
Your best bet would be to get a 10GbE switch, like the one I mentioned from Cisco, in the review. That way, all your workstations can get the bandwidth they need, and you have the bandwidth for future expansion.
Given this situation I think that the 10Gbe switch + many 10Gbe adapters is overkilling... I thought USB 3.0 would be very well suited to this kind of unsymmetric and non simulataneous access scenario. Where do you exactly see a problem? Do you think that the hybrid mode cannot work in practice or were you only saying the NAS cannot handle two USB 3.0 streams at 450 MB/s?
My main issue is that all the software for this, and most NAS devices, is designed and optimized to work in an Ethernet environment, not an ad-hoc USB network. The capabilities while connected via USB will be severly restricted. Upload and download, via a couple of built-in scripts, that's all.
FWIW, I'm never been impressed by the performance of USB with external drives. I guess I should test this one before I pull it apart...
Note: If you ever get the chance to test dual USB 3.0 transfer from two different computers ... :)
Thanks a lot for your help!
have such a box installed as ESXI 5.1 storage. Monday this week, the ESXI 5.1 freezed about 15 times after installing a additional RAID0 with 2 Samsung 830 512GB SSDs. Box is attached by 2* 10Gbit Intel X520 DA2.
Stopped to access this DataStore seams to fix the problem.
Support of QNAP always recommands to reset the box to the factory setup. Not very helpful.