FreeNAS vs unraid performance

[tucansam]

I have unraid, I'm not going to FreeNAS.  Just thought I'd put that out there 

 

This video:

 

 

Shows the new ASRock Avoton board doing a file copy under FreeNAS.  I had read elsewhere that someone got 50MB/s with this config; this video seems to prove that wrong (I know there are a lot of variables).

 

I'm wondering, from a throughput standpoint, of the differences between FreeNAS and unraid.  I don't know much about FreeNAS.  I run a cache disks (spinners, not SSD) in all of my unraid servers. 

 

Can this video of Avoton/FreeNAS be used to theorize throughput for an Avoton/unraid server?

 

Thanks.

[garycase]

Can this video of Avoton/FreeNAS be used to theorize throughput for an Avoton/unraid server?

 

No.  UnRAID performance is far more dependent on the speed of the disks than of the CPU.  The speeds shown on the video are likely to a striped array, where the data was being spread across multiple disks.  This is indeed faster than a write to UnRAID will be, where the data is on a single drive.  If you set UnRAID to never spin down the drives, and use the reconstruct write mode, then you'll get speeds faster than you do in normal write mode ... but as I just noted above, this is not dependent on what CPU you have.

 

 

[S80_UK]

One other point, sometimes missed - If using a single large file to measure throughput, then that file needs to be significantly larger than any cache in RAM that may exist in sending or receiving systems, otherwise you might only be testing the network speed rather than the unRAID (or other system) speed.  I am not saying that the video clip was invalid, but the system shown had 8GB of RAM and the file was below 2GB in size.  I would normally test raw throughput using blu-ray rips where the file size is generally 20GB or more to avoid RAM cache related effects.

[tucansam]

A couple of followups, then... 

 

I don't know what reconstruct write mode is.

 

And for a simple file server, with performance in mind, the more RAM the better?  If I can afford 16GB or even 32GB RAM, that will assist in keeping performance at its peak?

[garycase]

Reconstruct write mode is an option in the newest UnRAID versions to treat writes a bit differently ...

 

=>  A "normal" UnRAID write works essentially like this:  When a sector is going to be written, both that sector on the disk being written to and the corresponding sector on the parity disk are read;  then the sector is written to the disk; and the corresponding sector on the parity disk is updated and written [the initial reads are necessary to compute what the new values need to be on the parity disk].    This has the advantage that the only disks that need to be spun up are the parity disk and the disk being written.

 

=>  Reconstruct mode simply writes the new sector; and reads the corresponding sector on ALL of the data disks; the computes and writes the corresponding sector on the parity drive.    This is generally faster than the normal method -- although the total number of disk operations is larger, the total time involved is less, since no disk has two I/O's (thus no wait for a full rotation of the platter).    The disadvantage is that all disks must be spinning.

 

[hackztor]

I am only getting 20mb file copies with this avoton board while my q9450 was doing 80-90.

[garycase]

What is the configuration you're using for UnRAID on the Avoton?

 

What specific disks are connected to the board (i.e. make/model #s)?    ... and what is the UnRAID configuration? 

 

The areal density and rotational speed can make a big difference, as can whether or not the writes are to the protected array.

 

[thuy-nam]

I was used both of os: performance + data safety is freenas over unraid.

Flexible for modify data then replace hdd then unraid has advance point.

Large file as movie then freenas is better, smaller file as word excel then unraid easy to handling.

Freenas shall use ram to cache directory and data, but unraid only cache directory.. if you want to change name of file in freenas then you will fealing craisy because freenas feedback that some program still using this file.

My documents is small file then i use unraid.

[hackztor]

Use mixture of seagate 2tbs 5900, a few hitachi 7200 rpms, and wd 4tb reds. I had no problem on my q9450 reaching 80-100 mb speeds and parity checks. Same exact stuff on avoton 20-40mb.

 

What is the configuration you're using for UnRAID on the Avoton?

 

What specific disks are connected to the board (i.e. make/model #s)?    ... and what is the UnRAID configuration? 

 

The areal density and rotational speed can make a big difference, as can whether or not the writes are to the protected array.

[boyett]

I was used both of os: performance + data safety is freenas over unraid.

Flexible for modify data then replace hdd then unraid has advance point.

Large file as movie then freenas is better, smaller file as word excel then unraid easy to handling.

Freenas shall use ram to cache directory and data, but unraid only cache directory.. if you want to change name of file in freenas then you will fealing craisy because freenas feedback that some program still using this file.

My documents is small file then i use unraid.

 

I've been using Freenas for 2 years now,  starting Freenas 8 (just updated to 9.2.1.2 ), I never experience on what you describe about renaming a file in Freenas. Yes,  you can always rename/edit/modify a file in Freenas. But you're right about data protection in Freenas,  it's unparalleled!  I've got 600GB of personal/family files in my NAS...