Testing the data throughput

[CA1271346]

Hello,

I've to test the storage speed of the NAS 2000S from some clients simultaneous.

I was creating a share on the RAID 5 and wanted to copy 1GB of data from 4 clients' RAM-Disk to the NAS. But the result was really bad, only 5MB/s for each client.

Is there an other, a better way to check the speed?
Is there a special benchmark or other tool?

Thank you
Tobias Mueller

[Jon Paul]

Hi Tobias,

There are a number of benchmarking utilities.
- NetBench
- IOMeter (www.iometer.org)
- IOZone (www.iozone.org)
Among others.

I prefer to use IOZone in quick tests.
1. because it's free
2. because it's fairly simple to use
3. it outputs data into an Excel format for graphing
4. I know one of the developers ;)

A lot of the benchmarking depends on the setup you have.
- RAM
- RAID Controller
- RAID Type, caching
- # of disks in the RAID set
- Network Speed

Try this, Run IOZone locally on the NAS Server, This will give you a good idea of the best speeds that the backend storage can give you. If this is greater than what you see from a client then the bottleneck is in the network. Make sure you use file sizes which will defeat any caching (controller and RAM)

You can also run PERFMON on the NAS server to see where your server is bottlenecking. (Processor, memory, network, disk)

[CA1271346]

Thanks for your answer.

I think, that IOZone wouldn't help me. I designed a network for a blade system and a NAS. I have to guarantee to a customer, that it will be possible to write with four blades 10MB/s to 15MB/s by each blade on the NAS.

Everything ist finished, but I have to test the system. That's the reason, I'm searching a special tool or method.

I need a software, which I can start on four blades, and write to the NAS simultaneous.

Any other idea?

[CA1118839]

Tobias,

Does your 2000s have one or two 3.2GHz processors? Have you maxed out the RAM (4GB)? Are you working with the internal HDD config or JBOD, such as a MSA30?

IOMeter is one of the benchmarking tools we use. Just my opinion, but to get the performance you want per client, I think you will need an attached JBOD.

[CA1271346]

My NAS has only one 3.2GHz prozessor. But the CPU idle is about 80%. It contains 2GB of RAM. I think, the RAM usage is also verry low. I'm using the internal 10k HDD.

Iometer worked. I tested with one to ten virtual workers, and I got the expected throughput.

Thanks
Tobias