[ale] Network Performance Gurus - Question about Ubuntu basedNAS

[Shane McKinley]

I use jumbo frames on my iSCSI openfiler system (9000MTU) and I can max
out 1Gb. This is a quadcore system w/ 4GB RAM.

Shane 

-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Freemyer [mailto:greg.freemyer at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 1:53 PM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] Network Performance Gurus - Question about Ubuntu
basedNAS

Jim,

Per the spec, it has 2 NICs.

And per the review:

The two gigabit Ethernet ports are provided by two Broadcom BCM5787
NetLink Gigabit Ethernet Controllers with PCI Express. Those last two
words are encouraging, since a PCI Express interface should provide more
bandwidth headroom for gigabit network transfers. But I was disappointed
to find that QNAP has chosen to not enable jumbo frame support in the
509 Pro!
...
QNAP responded that the Broadcom BCM5787 does not support jumbo frames.
But they chose it because it had the best throughput of the chipsets
they evaluated.

Greg

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 87MB/s is the theoretical MAX for TCP using normal frame sizes. By 
> using jumbo frames more data per packet is transferred (i.e. lower 
> framing overhead).
>
> The 802.3ad load balancing data shows there is some poor network 
> performance in the device. With a single client connection to a bonded

> dual server it was possible to max out the client line. HOWEVER! A 
> look at the hardware shows the server has a single NIC so it must have

> been the CLIENT causing the bottleneck.
>
> So the 802.3ad data sounds suspicious to me as the server only has a 
> single 1Gbit NIC.
>
> On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 13:07 -0400, Greg Freemyer wrote:
>> Network Guru,
>>
>> I've done lots of work with 100 Mbit, but not much performance 
>> testing with 1Gbit/sec Ethernet.
>>
>> I'm looking at the QNAP TS509 NAS unit (reviewed at 
>> http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30549/75/1/1/).
>>
>> It is running Ubuntu internally (customized I'm sure).
>>
>> Per the last page of the review, it shows max. read throughput at 
>> about 56 MB/sec. (via what client?)
>>
>> But one gets the impression, that it is the Ethenet link that is 
>> limiting the speed, not the disks/CPU.
>>
>> And from the post 
>> http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=492
>>
>> One reads that load balancing via LACL (802.3ad) allowed at least one
>> TS509 user to get 87 MB/sec with a single client workstation.
>>
>> And with two clients, the user is claiming 62 MB/sec per client
simultaneously.
>>
>> == questions
>>
>> 1) With a single socket, does 1 Gigabit ethernet tend to max out at 
>> only 60MB/sec or so?  Or is that more likely a limitation of a 
>> Windows client PC?
>>
>> 2) If I get a LACL (802.3ad) compliant switch, do I just need 2 cat5 
>> cables from it to my NAS and my client machines get accelerated via a

>> single gigabit connection?  Is the answer OS dependent?
>>
>> 3.1) In particular, I have a Fedora box I want to connect and get as 
>> much throughput to/from the NAS as possible.  Will I also need to 
>> implement load-balancing on it via LACL?
>>
>> 3.2) And what about XP?  Vista?
>>
>> 4) For my Fedora box, do any of the performance tests even mean 
>> anything for this NAS, since they were testing via Windows clients.
>>
>> Thanks
>
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http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer
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