From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jan 26 13:04:06 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BADFD1065674 for ; Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:04:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from alo-freebsd-lists@louko.com) Received: from x1.louko.com (x1.louko.com [195.218.71.106]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 78B4D8FC22 for ; Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:04:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from alo-freebsd-lists@louko.com) Received: from alo98.louko.com (alo98.louko.com [10.0.0.87]) by x1.louko.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 42113135A1C; Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:54:10 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <497D9651.6050607@louko.com> Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:54:09 +0200 From: Antti Louko User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (X11/20090105) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: fbsd@dannysplace.net References: <490A782F.9060406@dannysplace.net> In-Reply-To: <490A782F.9060406@dannysplace.net> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Areca vs. ZFS performance testing. X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:04:07 -0000 Danny Carroll wrote: > I've just become the proud new owner of an Areca 1231-ML which I plan to > use to set up an office server. > I'm very curious as to how ZFS compares to a hardware solution so I plan > to run some tests before I put this thing to work. Having just read this whole thread, I would like to comment: - For machine room rack mounted solutions Areca with SATA drives or similar is probably the way to go. - For ad hoc and home users, external FW (or USB, shudder) disks are quite nice. FW supports or at least is is supposed to support hot removal and insertion. And with glabel, everything is neatly under control. But what would really be nice for home use and in some cases even for data center use, would be inexpensive NAS drives. Most units so far only support 10/100M and barely exceed the 1MB/s. We tried LaCie Network Space which has 1G ethernet but: 1) It only supports SMB. 2) Performance sucks. Peak transfer rate is 9MB/s and sustained rate is about 2MB/s. Manual says it is essential to have 1G connection and switch. Actually, the performance is just the same with 100M ethernet. I tried ZFS over md over file over file in SMB share and it works. It crahses when the NAS is reset and SMB goes offline, but it could be made to work. I wonder, if there would be vblade (ATA over Ethernet) for that (or any) NAS, what kind of performance would be possible? Ideal would be an inexpensive (under USD40) AoE dongle but there is not one available. Any ideas of existing products or anything? Regards, Antti