SAN / NAS Read Write Speeds

[ict_support]

What sort of read/write speeds are people getting from their FileServers SAN and NAS setups?

 

Currently my main fileserver is giving average write 487Mbps and read speed of 406Mbps over a 1Gb network with a 2Gb trunk to the fileserver.

 

I am wondering if I can get a SAN / NAS setup that is quicker?

 

I used LAN Speed Tester to give me the results writing 100MB file...

[Duke]

I can benchmark ours later if you want. LAN Speed Tester looks fairly obvious to use so I should be able to set it up the same way you did. Bear in mind in the real world it depends hugely on read/write random/sequential data access.

EDIT: Your figures looks pretty good TBH mate, I get 339Mbps Write / 393Mbps Read on one SAN and 250Mbps Write / 280MBps Read on the other. However, the file's really to small to test anything properly - can you try it with a couple of GB?

 

Chris

Edited April 1, 2010 by Duke

[pete]

What sort of read/write speeds are people getting from their FileServers SAN and NAS setups?

 

Currently my main fileserver is giving average write 487Mbps and read speed of 406Mbps over a 1Gb network with a 2Gb trunk to the fileserver.

 

I am wondering if I can get a SAN / NAS setup that is quicker?

 

I used LAN Speed Tester to give me the results writing 100MB file...

 

You might want to try again with a file that's larger than the amount of ram on your fileserver.

 

Say a random mix of files totalling 5-10GB and then a large file of 30GB or so.

[Duke]

10GB File

 

FAS2020

241Mbps Write / 234Mbps Read

 

S7410

297Mbps Write / 369Mbps Read

 

Windows Server w/15k disks

129Mbps Write / 234Mbps Read

 

That software does seem to have a bit of an odd access pattern though, I'd suggest trying IOMeter with an access pattern that matches the type of read/writes your expecting, then post the config file here for others to use.

 

http://www.hardenhuish.wilts.sch.uk/avatar/s7410_lantest.png

 

Cheers,

Chris

Edited April 1, 2010 by Duke

[ict_support]

Thanks all for your replies will test on Tuesday after eating all my Easter eggs. Will use I/0 meter and some larger 5GB with LAN tester.

 

We are currently using premiere pro editing across the network which works fine most if the time but under really heavy loads we are getting locks of the network. I am thinking of getting either another file server or a SAN but it all depends on speed

[Duke]

If you're definitely bottlenecking on disk then the SSD flash accelerators in the Sun S7000 range would really help. If you need the bandwidth after that then it might be worth considering getting a 10Gb NIC card for it and ensuring there's a fast link to your client PCs.

 

It's worth mentioning my S7410 is configured in RAID6 and the Windows server in RAID5, neither of which are optimal for disk performance. The S7000 stuff will stripe or triple-mirror a disk pool if you want more speed.

 

Chris