Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d NAS Server

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Author  : qmacker
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OK. Some more results.

I setup an NFS share on the NAS and attached it to my ESXi server, a Dell Vostro 400 Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.40GHz with 8GB RAM. I added a dedicated NIC for the NFS (Intel PRO/1000 GT PCI). In fact, no switch, just a Cat6 cable directly from the Intel PRO 1000 to the 2nd port on the NAS. I put it on a different IP scheme and subnet from the other NIC (which I'm using to manage the NAS and do backups, etc.) just to be sure.

I straight COPIED an XP VM that I had handy. It has an 8GB "HDD" with about 1.40GB unused. I installed HD Tune and got the following results (see attached screenshot):

HD Tune: VMware  Virtual disk Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 21.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 41.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 36.9 MB/sec
Access Time           : 7.2 ms
Burst Rate            : 41.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage             : 7.6%

Next, I think I'll copy my own SBS 2008 server onto the NAS datastore. Is that the way to do it, by the way? Just "copy" from datastore to datastore? It's about 160GB. It's gonna take a while. Then do I just "add" it as a VM? What about when it askes me "Did you move or copy?"Does it matter, as long as I leave the old one off. This is a domain controller (DC) after all! Sorry if this last bit is off topic.

A new message was posted in the thread "Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d NAS Server  performance?":

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Author  : qmacker
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Okay, this is starting to really depress me.  

I just did the same test, on that little XP VM, which I moved back over to direct-attached storage on the ESXi server. Bear in mind now, that my  direct-attached drives are 7,200 RPM SATA-II setup in a RAID-1 configuration, so I'm not expecting them to be that fast. Not RAID-0 or RAID-10, just plain old RAID-1. Additionally, there is an SBS 2008 server running, as well as a Windows Server 2008 TS and a Windows Server 2003 TS. There's nobody logged on, and these servers aren't doing very much if anything - but they are turned on and Exchange 2007 is handling a little email traffic. So I expect a slight performance hit.

EVEN STILL, my own SATA drives waaaaaaay outperform the ix4-200d NAS, which had nothing at all running on it, other than my little XP VM. This kind of answers my questions...negatively, I'm sad to say. I had kind of hoped that the NAS in a RAID-10 configuration would significantly outperform my direct-attached SATA drives (on an HP E200i card, by the way). Definitely NOT the case. I'm already hesitant about installing direct attached SATA-II drives at any client sites - maybe I might in a  RAID-10 configuration. However, there is no way I would install this NAS at a client site, even a small one. I'm kind of thinking of returning it now. I mean, really...what use is it? What a bummer.  

Here are the results from the same test run on the XM VM (NOTE: THIS IS *NOT* THE NAS):

HD Tune: VMware  Virtual disk Benchmark:

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 71.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 51.7 MB/sec
Access Time           : 6.6 ms
Burst Rate            : 79.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage             : 8.3%

See attached, and also, again note it is NOT the NAS.

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A new message was posted in the thread "Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d NAS Server  performance?":

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1381933#1381933

Author  : qimen
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ix4-200r being a nework shared storage device, you can definitely take advantage of VMware HA, DRS, and VMotion with it. Now the question is, how do you define "enterprise"? And what is the performance requirements associated with that "enterprise"? I'd argue that the most important factor in sizing up your solution is to determine what is "good enough" performance. Take iSCSI for example, ix4-200r can deliver about 100MB/s in sequential read and about 85MB/s in sequential write, that's a performance close to the practical bandwidth of a 1Gbps network. Also, in theory, each SATA drive can deliver 71 IOPS, with a 3+1 RAID 5, the aggregate performance is no more than 280 IOPS. ix4-200r can deliver 242 IOPS with a 80% read 100% random profile in Iometer. Although ix4-200r is not officially in the Microsoft ESRP listing, testing has shown that ix4-200r can support up to 100 Exchange 2007 users using Jetstress. The only reason the product is not in ESRP is because it cannot physically separate Exchange data and log on separate spindles, which is an ESRP requirement.

So, ix4-200r may very well be the fit for your enterprise solution, it all depends on your application, the workload profile, etc. Some posts mentioned the Netgear ReadyNAS products and their high performance numbers. We need to be very careful with performance numbers, because they are determined by many factors such as I/O size, file size, I/O profile, cache size, etc. For instance, this is a performance report from SmallNetBuilder on ReadyNAS: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30725/75. Take a look at the first chart, when the file sizes are small, most I/Os are cached in memory, so you get ridiculously high throughput. But when file sizes are increased to take out the cache effect, you get real performance numbers around 40MB/s. So there are marketing numbers that are flashy, and then there are real performance nubmers that matter.

A new message was posted in the thread "Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d NAS Server  performance?":

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Author  : qimen
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Hi, just wanted to offer a few comments:

1) The copy job is a single-threaded sequential write, it has not pushed the storage (either Iomega NAS or the local DAS server) enough, so IMHO, it should not matter to the comparison whether there are other applications running light load in the background.

2) As far as comparison, why would you think NAS should outperform DAS? The DAS is direct block I/O from the server to the disks, but NAS introduces some overhead such as network overhead (for instance, slicing I/Os and then re-assembling) and NFS protocol overhead at both ends of the connection.

3) From your numbers, the NAS access time is 7.2ms while the DAS is 6.6ms. That's about 10% difference, but the average transfer rate is more than 20% different. Is it possible the numbers are skewed somewhere? I wouldn't look at the burst rate, it's just a single data point.

I would say though that the NAS rate of 36.9MB/s (sequential write) is close to what I have seen using Iometer running the profile described here: http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=73745&start=0&tstart=0. The disadvantage with DAS is that you cannot share files with other servers, certainly not in a VMware environment that requires HA, VMotion, etc.