New TS-869 Pro Owner

[Q-nappin]

Hi All,

Finally got my TS-869 Pro all unpacked and setup, my success was due in part to these forums and the helpful hints and comments so a big thanks to all who have contributed information here.

I settled on this model after much deliberation and its probably a little over the top for my requirements but hey, so now I have it I would like to push it to the upper limits of its spec if possible and get the most out of the features available.

CURRENT SETUP
TS-869 Pro - 8x Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm - RAID 6
ASUS RT-N56U
CISCO 200 Series 8Port Smart Switch
i7-2600K 4.4HGz - ASUS P8P67 DELUXE REV 3.0 - 16GB Corsair Vengeance - 2x Kingston 128GB SSD RAID 0 - 2x WD Green 1TB RAID 1
MacBook Pro 15inch - 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo - 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 - 500GB HDD

So at the moment I have Port Trunking Enabled on the NAS only as I am waiting for my Intel Dual Port PCIe 1GB NIC to arrive and I will enable Adaptive load balancing on my PC as well. With this configuration I am able to achieve the following sustained transfer speeds;

PC SSD to NAS - 109 MBps
PC HDD to Nas - 104 MBps

NAS to PC SSD - 114 MBps
NAS to PC HDD - 94 MBps

These speeds were achieved with simple drop and drag copy with Windows 7 64bit using 24GB of multiple files between 700MB and 5.7GB in size. I am pretty happy with this so far as I am using only a single Ethernet port on the PC with fingers crossed the numbers will bump up when I get my new NIC. I will complete some more testing once I have the NIC installed and post my benchmarks.

I would appreciate and comments or advice in regard to my setup, I would like to know how these speeds stack up or if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can get a bit closer to the advertised specs for this box, I would like to get as close as possible purely for the sake of it.

Cheers

[P3R]

These speeds were achieved with simple drop and drag copy with Windows 7 64bit using 24GB of multiple files between 700MB and 5.7GB in size.

Copying multiple files will be slower and should make your numbers slower than the Qnap specified. Use only the 5.7 GB to get a comparable number.

What port trunking is configured on the NAS and on the switch?

I can't find it specified by Qnap what disk configuration was in use when they tested but historically they have often used RAID 5 and if they did, the RAID 6 you use should probably give you worse write performance. RAID 6 is however a good choice for other reasons. There are also other things to focus on but absolute performance.

[Q-nappin]

Hey cheers for the reply,

I definitely agree that multiple files will create additional network overhead during the copy tests, Ill take your advice and use a single ISO when I have finished setting everything up and I have my new NIC. Incidentally I assume that having a single connection to the PC at the moment wont help either as I am getting close to the theoretical limit for 1GB connection as is.

Port trunking on the NAS is set to "IEEE 802.3ad" and "Dynamic" on the switch, Jumbo frames are disabled on all devices at the moment but I will play around with this and see if it improves the throughput at all. In regard to the port trunking is IEEE 802.3ad the best setting I could be selecting on the NAS ? I am not concerned with fault tolerance so much as increasing the max throughput.

I think I read that the testing was done on a RAID 5 configuration as you said - Ill see if I can find where I read that and post the link. I was hoping the performance hit of RAID 6 wasn't going to be to huge as the single disk redundancy option RAID 5 gives just doesn't fill me with hope, hence RAID 6 with hot spare in my system.

Ill keep playing with the system and I appreciate the input, I would like to bump over 200MBps write to NAS even if only just over, but as you said other considerations are valid and I may just have to accept the performance hit !

[P3R]

In regard to the port trunking is IEEE 802.3ad the best setting I could be selecting on the NAS ? I am not concerned with fault tolerance so much as increasing the max throughput.

As far as I know IEEE 802.3ad will only use one gigabit connection per connection (based on MAC-address if I remember correctly) and will only improve the throughput when multiple concurrent workstation are active. I don't know enough technical details about the other port trunking configurations to give any advice regarding maximum performance.

I only asked about what you used to make sure that you at least wasn't running with an incorrectly configured network connection, as so many others do.

I don't know if Qnap achieved their numbers with a single workstation only (it looks that way by the description but it isn't clearly spelled out) and I don't know what port trunking configuration they used. You'd have to ask them about the details.

[Q-nappin]

I don't know if Qnap achieved their numbers with a single workstation only (it looks that way by the description but it isn't clearly spelled out) and I don't know what port trunking configuration they used. You'd have to ask them about the details.

I have been trying to find this out definitively as well, the promoted speed was achieved with a single file so one could assume single workstation connection, as far as network config thou its a bit tougher to nail that down. I have emailed the support staff but have only been able to find out that port trunking was used, no further details on the switch config or what protocol was selected.

I have read some articles on link aggregation and it seems that it comes down to individual setup and usage as to which config will yield the best results in terms of transfer speeds. New NIC comes in a couple of days so I guess ill find out then.

I only asked about what you used to make sure that you at least wasn't running with an incorrectly configured network connection, as so many others do.

This seems to be a common problem, with sometimes tragic results for performance

[Q-nappin]

Just an update to anyone whos been reading,

I have my new NIC installed and configured on my main PC with Teaming this has given me a slight performance increase;

PC SSD to NAS - 130 MBps
PC HDD to Nas - 119 MBps

NAS to PC SSD - 135 MBps
NAS to PC HDD - 124 MBps

Not exactly the gains I was looking for but this may come down to the single I/O process of drop and drag coping thru windows 7 I would really like to push it a bit closer to the advertised specs and find out exactly where the bottle neck is, I am considering using the hot spare as a single volume to test and see if its a RAID 6 limitation now.

Any advice as to how I can speed this connection would be greatly appreciated, I dont really want to have to configure iSCIS and much around with multiple IO access but if I have to then I would probably give it a go, if anyone knows some good how to links that would be great.

Cheers in advance

[Q-nappin]

Hi all who have been reading,

I have posted a more detailed writeup of my setup etc, hopefully in the correct area of the forums, hopefully I some information may be forthcoming from QNAP and any recommendations from other users would be greatly appreciated as I still cant seem to get better performance than I have above.

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