Single Client Performance - CIFS and NFS on Linux

A CentOS 6.2 virtual machine was used to evaluate NFS and CIFS performance of the NAS when accessed from a Linux client. In order to standardize the testing across multiple NAS units, the following parameters were used to mount the NFS and Samba shares:

mount -t nfs NAS_IP:/PATH_TO_NFS_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER

mount -t cifs //NAS_IP/PATH_TO_SMB_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER

Note that these areslightly different from what we used to run in our previous NAS reviews. We have also shifted from IOMeter to IOZone for evaluating performance under Linux. The following IOZone command was used to benchmark the shares:

IOZone -aczR -g 2097152 -U /PATH_TO_LOCAL_CIFS_MOUNT -f /PATH_TO_LOCAL_CIFS_MOUNT/testfile -b <NAS_NAME>_CIFS_EXCEL_BIN.xls > <NAS_NAME>_CIFS_CSV.csv

IOZone provides benchmark numbers for a multitude of access scenarios with varying file sizes and record lengths. Some of these are very susceptible to caching effects on the client side. This is evident in some of the graphs in the gallery below.

Readers interested in the hard numbers can refer to the CSV program output here. These numbers will gain relevance as we benchmark more NAS units with similar configuration.

The NFS share was also benchmarked in a similar manner with the following command:

IOZone -aczR -g 2097152 -U /nfs_test_mount/ -f /nfs_test_mount/testfile -b <NAS_NAME>_NFS_EXCEL_BIN.xls > <NAS_NAME>_NFS_CSV.csv

Some scenarios exhibit client caching effects, and these are evident in the gallery below.

The IOZone CSV output can be found here for those interested in the exact numbers.

Single Client Performance - CIFS and iSCSI on Windows Multi-Client Performance - CIFS
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  • Qiasfah - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - link

    The text rendering with the tables and text is messed up in the mobile version :(
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, December 27, 2013 - link

    Qiasfah, thank you for letting us know. The article has been tweaked to keep that from happening.
  • YoshoMasaki - Saturday, December 28, 2013 - link

    The drop down box I'm seeing on WP8 goes off my screen, and changing the selection doesn't change the graph. The usual button type picker you use for SSD reviews and such works fine.
  • ErrantOpinion - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    The drop downs work in Internet Explorer, but not Chrome/Opera 15+ for me.
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    Fixed. Sorry about that. I hadn't tested that code on Chrome.
  • P_Dub_S - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - link

    Who uses RAID 5 now a days? All the research I have done points to OBR10. Can we see some OBR10 numbers?
    Here are some articles that explain why RAID 5 needs to die.
    http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/07/hot-spare-or-a...
    http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/one-big-raid-1...
    http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/05/when-no-redund...
  • hydromike - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - link

    Tons of people still use RAID 5 in the enterprise. Further more lets call it by its real name RAID 10 instead of OBR10. You can get even further redundancy from RAID 50, RAID 60 and RAID 100.
  • P_Dub_S - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - link

    And when you go to rebuild that huge RAID 5 array and another disk fails your screwed.
  • xxsk8er101xx - Friday, December 27, 2013 - link

    Not if you setup a global spare.
  • Gigaplex - Saturday, December 28, 2013 - link

    It still needs to rebuild when it switches over to the spare.

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