IOZone seems like a nice tool for testing the performance of your own particular system. I'm not sure if it makes for a good benchmark to test against anyone else's system though. The performance of the server looks to be directly related to the horsepower of the workstation running the test. While running it on my own system, I saw my HTPC's CPU utilization hit <95% for a good portion of the test. This was with all other applications shut down, just IOzone running. In reporting results here, it might be useful to post what your workstation's specifications are as well. My HTPC is a little outdated but it still manages to serve up my movies and run FFDshow just fine (albeit at ~80% CPU utilization during playback).
So with that said, here's my specification & results:
Media Server:
ASUS P5PE-VM
Pentium 4 (Prescott), 3 Ghz, 800Mhz FSB
Corsair DDR400, 1GB
Coolermaster Stacker
-4-in-3 x three modules
-Couple of case quiet fans
- Dual 500W redundant PS's
- 800VA APC UPS
Sandisk Cruzer Micro, 512MB
Seagate 500GB, 7200, 16MB, SATA2, 500GB (Parity)
" " (Disk 1)
Maxtor 300GB, 7200, 16MB, IDE (Disk 2)
Maxtor 250GB, 7200, 8MB, IDE (Disk 3)
Maxtor 200GB, 7200, 8MB, IDE (Disk 4)
Maxtor 250GB, 7200, 8MB, IDE (Disk 5)
HTPC:
ASUS A7N8X
Athlon XP 2200 (1.8 Ghz)
Corsair PC3200, 512MB
Seagate 160GB, SATA
Edimax Gigabit PCI adapter
Pioneer 111D DVD Burner
Samsung SH-162D DVD reader
Oddball midtower ATX case I stumbled across at Compusa awhile back. Placed on it's side, blends right into the rest of the home theater components.
500W Antec PS (quiet!)
MS XP MC Edition, Various MCE plugins and tweaks.
Write Performance:
IDE (Disk 5) SATA-2(Disk 1)
32MB 25.5 37.9 (oddity)
64MB 26.6 24.4
128MB 23.7 23.7
256MB 22.0 22.8
512MB 21.5 21.7
1GB 21.7 20.3
Read Performance:
IDE (Disk 5) SATA-2(Disk 1)
32MB 27.1 27.2
64MB 27.4 27.2
128MB 27.3 27.5
256MB 27.4 27.4
512MB 27.3 27.7
1GB 14.4 17.8
Notes/misc:
- Unraid Server version 3.0 (Final)
- I also built my server over the Black Friday sale. Total cost was $790 shipped. Build cost included the server itself, the two 500GB drives and the gigabit NIC for my HTPC. That total does not include the 12 drive version of Unraid or the UPS ($35 on Fleabay with a new battery!).
- HTPC & Server are connected via a dedicated crossover cable (cat 5E, ~30ft), no switches, static IP's.
- HDD temps (according to SMART) typically sit between 17C and 30C (peak on parity drive). I would attribute this to the cooler room where the server sits (~65 F) and the excellent case ventilation afforded by the Stacker case. When my drives used to reside in my HTPC they would run extremely hot. I experienced multiple drive failures over the course of 3 years or so. While the Stacker case is certainly a behemouth, it sits in a spare bedroom out of sight quietly churning away.
- For "real world" file transfer tests, I use a little shareware app called Windows Commander. I've been using it for file management tasks since 1995 in various iterations. I typically see 14,000 - 18,000 kbytes/second when moving DVD vobs over to the server.
- With a *proper* PC software solution foir HD-DVD and Blu-Ray just on the horizon, I'm a bit motivated to finally upgrade the ole' HTPC. The new HTPC I'm building here shortly will utilize an NVIDIA nForce 680i chipset based Mobo, 3 Ghz Core2 Duo, 2 GB ram, Foxconn GEFORCE 7950, 512MB, dual head DVI video card and Vista. Once this is stood up, I'll run IOzone again and post the results here. I'm guesing there may be a bit of variance.
Ryan