Performance Baseline ZFSguru on my ASrock C2550D4i

Created on 01-03-2014 – Last update on 17-03-2014

Testing the system

It is finally time to test my new system. But how do we test this system? Which parameters to test? What is good and what is not.  For inspiration I looked at the following site/artikel http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/5197/pro-netgear-readynas-716-baas-boven-baas it is in Dutch but if you look at the pictures you will get it.

On the site they use the next two programs

• Intel NAS Performance Toolkit
• NAS Performance Tester

The first program creates a set of files to test the NAS system. It will do this with video/photo fragments, office documents, files and a directory copys.

The second program is a straight through. It first write a file x times and then it read’s a file x times and the file has size of y.

For testing the network performance I used the following client system

• Intel Q6600
• Memory DDR2 8GB
• Gigabyte motherboard (GA-P35-DS3)
• NVIDIA Geforce 8600GTS
• 2x 500GB disk in RAID0

Settings Baseline

So, time to set a baseline of my new system. To start I will configure the disk that are in the system. Because this is the baseline I configure only single disk’s to measure the basics performance. So now tricks whit caching disk or something like that. Below are some picture of the setup.

and here how it is patitioned with a zfs partition. I also made a separte partition on the SSD drive

And here how it is partitioned with a FreeBSD-ZFS partition. I also made a separate partition on the SSD drive of 40GB because the disks itself are not that fast.The SSD disk is partition with the trim option enabled and aligned with 4k sectors.

The following I have set on the tuning tab under system. Memory tuning profile -> Performance tuning. And to be complete also a screen dump of the ZFS tuning tab.

Hardware baseline

Now before we test the network throughput we have to know have fast the hardware is inside the system. Luckily ZFSguru has a built-in performance benchmark test for the disks and the pools. Below are the simple disk benchmark tests for the HDD and the SSD and also a memory disk.

HHD -> Has a normal progress starting on the inner side of the disk with around 80MB/s and on the outer side of the disk running back till around 47MB/s

SSD -> I think the difference we see on the SSD disk on the first part (300MB/s) and on the secound part (500MB/s) is because the SSD uses MLC memory chips. That means it can save more bits by the same number of transistors. Most of the times it can store two bits of information per cell. The drawback of this technology is that of the two bits one is faster than the other. What result in the SSD graph.

MEM -> The throughput of the memory disk is around 2GB/s. I don’t know if this good or not for now

If we do the benchmarks on the different pools we get the next results.

The results are the same as of the disk benchmarks. This is not surprising when you consider that we do not use the techniques of ZFS caching.

Now we know the standard speed of our system, we can continue to benchmark how he does it on the network. We begin with the NAS Performance Tester to see what the raw network speed is.

Network Basline

First I have tested the system with the following three scenarios. No options, compression or deduplication. I have run the NAS Performance Tester once with the following option. 5 times a file of 4000MB shared with a samba share. And did this for both (identical) single disks.

 

After that I run de Intel NASPT tool. I run a full test on each identical disk a toke the average of that. The results are below.

The basline for the standard disk is done for now. And I’m now going to build the final machine setup.

Source used as reference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths

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Installation of ZFSguru

Created on 23-02-2014 – Last update on 25-02-2014

The build of the hardware is done now. So the next step is to set some first parameters in the BIOS and install an OS on the system. I looked at a few OS systems

• FreeNas/NAS4Free but this one was a stripped down version of FreeBSD. And I want to tweak it myself.
• FreeBSD itself but then I had to do al in configuring myself and I miss a nice easy web GUI option.
• ZFSguru is right between the two. It is a full installation of FreeBSD but whit a nice web GUI for ZFS management.

So the choice was fairly easy. Downloading ZFSguru was also very easy. But then I had to install it. I hoped to use the BMC module to connect the iso file as virtual media. But given that the BMC module wasn’t working (java problem) I had to do a normal install. There was still a problem because I did not have a CD-ROM player installed. And I was too lazy to find one. So I had to make a bootable USB stick. This turned into a tricky thing. I read on the site from ZFSguru that you first had to boot the .ISO file into a virtual machine. Luckily I’m a virtualization guy (VCP4, 5 and Hyper-V 2012 R2). I had no problem to install the iso into a VM (Virtual Machine) and connected the USB stick to it. Then I coed create the bootable USB stick under System -> Install -> Root-on-ZFS.

There are still some other options to install ZFSguru as described here

– install to USB stick using Virtualbox
– install on different system then put the harddrive/USB stick in the target system
– buy Zalman VE-300 and use that to boot .iso
– borrow CD/DVD-RW drive from a friend

When I had my newly created USB stick and I coed install ZFSguru. The installation is a simple next, next, finish.

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Building my DIY Home NAS whit the ASrock C2550D4i

Created on 14-02-2014 – Last update on 23-02-2014

The reason to buil a Home NAS

For 2 to 3 years I use a popcorn hour C200 as online storage in my home network. Also it downloads my movies and TV series for me with couchpotato and sickbeard. As for the download program I use NZBget. This setup worked very well for me. But now the time arrived that my home network needs an upgrade because it isn’t fast enough. I’ll already running a 1Gb network but copying some files from the popcorn to windows has a max. trougput of around 6.5 MB/s. The websites (CP and SB) are running but it isn’t very fast.

So, time to look around wat is on the market. The wishes i have are. Somthing that is fast and will saturate my 1Gb network. Somthing where i have room to expand (disk and memory). And something that will last arround 5 years or longer. And also not unimported the system needs to be energy efficient because it will run 24/7.

The Hardware

After searching the net my eye quickly fel on a new motherboard from ASrock the C2550D4i. It has enough room for expension (12 sata and up to 64GB of memory). It is powerfull whit it’s quad core but on the same time it is enegrie efficient (max. 20W for the MB).

The full specs. that I have orderd now for my new Home NAS is

• ASrock C2550D4i
• 8GB DDR3 memory (crucial ballistix sport VLP)
• Seasonic G-series 360W PSU
• 60GB kingston SSD
• 3x Molex -> 2x Sata power connector

First I’ll will use some exsiting hardware in my  possession.

• 2x HDD drives 320GB (Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS, 320GB)
• 1x HDD 2TB Green Disk
• IBM netfinity 3000 case

After a few days I could pick up my order.

The Build

To start, I had an old IBM netfinity 3000 case. It is standing a few years in the garage for now. And before that it was heavily used for more than 5 years. You can imagine that the case needs a cleanup. So first thing to do is strip out al the old hardware,cables, and other stuff that was in it.

The Secound part was to clean of al the dust from the casing parts and the frame it self. Finaly the NAS while be behind or in a closet so cleaning up is enough. This will not be the most beautiful NAS for looks. but it is the content that is in it.

Now it is time the rebuild the case whit the new hardware. The tricky bits are the placement of the MB and if it was posibble to reuse the leds on the front wiht the power button.

The old MB was placed on 2 plastic slides. And each slide has two mounting points. It took some fiddling before the MB was properly fitted and I could only use 3 screw holes. But it is in place and will not fall off.

The next thing to do was screwing in the Seasonic PSU.

And then it was time to look at the PCB where the LEDs and the power button where on. I used the orignal cable because of the tight fit on the top. But the connector on the other side woudn’t fit on the MB. I took an old connector that will fit on the MB. And after some soldering I coud connect it to the new MB. At first it wasn’t working. I had to change some signals end at the end it finally worked. One working power button, Power Led, HDD Led and a Network Led.

So now the hard parts are done and the last bit is screwing on the outer panels and the HDD’s and installing the memory. I also used some gaffer tape to streamline the airflow inside the case. I hope the fan inside the PSU is enough to cool the complet system. But time wil know.

I installed the SSD and some temperary HDD’s (40GB and 80GB). The temp HDD’s are for freeing up the data on my excisting HDD’s of 320GB.  When the HDD’s of 320GB are installed I will use them first for testing and benchmarking the system.

Powering On.

Time to powering on the system. And look if everything is working as supposed to. And it does. Al devices are recognize by the system. And no error’s find. Now the first thing to do is setup an IP address for the BMC module. That was the easy part I discovered. Finding the default password of the BMC module was a bit harder. I thought I will find it in the paper manual but I had no luck. Then, just on the Internet after a few links I found another MB from ASrock that had a default password of admin/admin. So I tried it and it worked. Afterwards I found on the CD supplied a manual for the BMC module where the default password was written.

While looking around on the BMC module I saw all the fun things I see on the ILO (HP), iDRAC (Dell) or IMM (IBM) boards. Logging, sensor (temp,fan speed, etc), auto video recording and of course remote management. The last one is the most interesting especially if the system lays on a difficult to reach location or a remote location. Trying to start the remote management I get a message that I need java. So installed the java and acknowledge al the security warnings but eventually I got no picture in the remote management (black screen). For now I gave up but I will continue to get this working but you will read this in a new post here.

Next -> Installation of ZFSguru