FreeNAS RAID10 Performance?

[pivorsc]

Hello, im in preparations for building my own NAS, and i got a question.
Can someone please post a score done by CrystalDiskMark with FreeNAS set up in RAID10?
Im currently using Windows Storage Spaces and its performance is around 130mb/s, what is not so good compared to RAID done by motherboard controler.

 

[Nick2253]

I think there are a few inaccurate or misleading assumptions built in to your question.

First off, CrystalDiskMark is a Windows-only program, so no one can run it on FreeNAS. If you were to run it, you'd be running it from a client over the network, which means you're testing your network's performance as much as you are the array. (Assuming you can even do that. I think you could map a network drive, but you might have to use a iSCSI target.)

Speaking of testing the network performance, 130MB/s (megabytes per second) is about the max speed you can get from 1Gbps (gigabit per second) network. A 1G networked FreeNAS server won't be able to receive data any faster than that, no matter how many drives you have or how you configure them.

There's also a whole bunch of performance numbers that matter. Read speed, write speed, read and write I/O, etc. When you say "its performance is around 130mb/s", what exactly are you measuring?

You said you're trying to build your own NAS. I'm assuming this means a home NAS. If that's the case, then your network will be your limiting factor. It's quite easy to build a FreeNAS system that is capable of 500+MB/s read/write, but without a proper network to move the data, you won't be able to realize that speed.

It would actually be much easier if you give us your expected use case and needs, and then we can help you figure out if FreeNAS is right for you. There are so many variables that go in to this, it's hard (if not impossible) to make a recommendation based on one number.

 

[pivorsc]

The point is, right now my array done with 4 hdds is done by windows 10 storage spaces and it have poor performance, and im curious if there is a point for me to switch for FreeNAS right now.

Im just building simple home storage to get all my media on it or just use as an archive.

I got another question: Windows Storage Spaces allow to freely add more drives without redesigning whole array from scratch, can FreeNAS do it?

 

[Nick2253]

im curious if there is a point for me to switch for FreeNAS right now.

It's really hard to recommend anything concrete given how vague everything is you've said so far. It really depends on your use case, your expectations, and what you need from your NAS. If you've got any critical data, and your number one priority is data preservation, the time to switch may have been a long time ago. If you have a half TB of easily reproducible data, and your data needs only grow around 10%/year, there may never be a good time to switch to FreeNAS.

You said you have "poor performance". What does that mean? What is "good" performance to you? How many users do you have? How often are you accessing the data? How much data are you storing? How important is your data?

Then there's questions of budget: what hardware do you have now? How much are you willing to spend?

I got another question: Windows Storage Spaces allow to freely add more drives without redesigning whole array from scratch, can FreeNAS do it?

Yes and no. It helps to understand ZFS terms to understand this answer. Data is stored in a pool. Each pool is made up of one or more vdevs. Each vdev is made up of one or more drives. You can easily add vdevs to a pool, but you can't easily (or at all) add drives to a vdev. The security of your pool is based on the weakest link, so if you created a RAIDZ2 vdev, and a single drive vdev, and put them together in the pool, you pool would have the data security of a single drive. What that means is that if you have a pool with one RAIDZ2 vdev, and you want to add more drives, you need to add another RAIDZ2 vdev to maintain the balance.

A trivial replacement option is available: if you replace all the drives in a vdev with larger drives, the vdev (and therefore the pool) will grow to accommodate that additional storage (but only once all the drives have been replaced).

 

[pivorsc]

It's really hard to recommend anything concrete given how vague everything is you've said so far. It really depends on your use case, your expectations, and what you need from your NAS. If you've got any critical data, and your number one priority is data preservation, the time to switch may have been a long time ago. If you have a half TB of easily reproducible data, and your data needs only grow around 10%/year, there may never be a good time to switch to FreeNAS.

Long time ago? You mean FreeNAS is safer than Storage Spaces?

You said you have "poor performance". What does that mean? What is "good" performance to you? How many users do you have? How often are you accessing the data? How much data are you storing? How important is your data?

Well, i used to run hardware raid 10 with r/w speeds around 300mbps, so 130 is kinda low at least for me (its fine if its bootlecked by network anyway), currenly i got around 3tb of data that i would like to be safe.

Then there's questions of budget: what hardware do you have now? How much are you willing to spend?

Well, as few as i can, but if theres something must have (like stronger cpu) im fine with costs, i got drives and 8gb of DDR3 RAM, im thinking about cheap itx mobo (ASRock AM1B-ITX) with strongest CPU that i can get for it and Fractal Core 304.

 

[Nick2253]

Long time ago? You mean FreeNAS is safer than Storage Spaces?

Generally speaking, yes. In theory, a Storage Space with parity and ReFS is fairly equivalent to ZFS and RAIDZ1. However, ZFS is much more robust, given its longer lifespan, and more bugfix time. Also, ZFS supports dual (and triple) parity volumes, which should be considered the bare minimum today for reliable storage. Under the hood, ZFS has a number of optimizations and features that will probably make it to ReFS eventually, but are currently lacking.

A storage space with NTFS is much less safe than FreeNAS. NTFS does not support checksuming, so it cannot detect and correct bitrot or other data errors.

Well, i used to run hardware raid 10 with r/w speeds around 300mbps, so 130 is kinda low at least for me

There was a reason I was exceptionally clear about the units I used.

If you are only getting 300Mbps (megabits per second) with your RAID10 array, then I would say something was wrong. That is exceptionally slow for even one hard drive. On the other hand, if you are getting 300MB/s (megabytes per second; notice the capital B), I would still say that's slow for RAID10. For read, you should be getting somewhere between 1.5-2x your write speed, so the fact that your read and write are about the same tells me that something probably was wrong.

Storage Spaces/ReFS is known to be a terrible performer, especially with parity. ZFS runs circles around it (and that's saying something). However, no matter what your file system is, you won't ever get faster than your network.

Well, as few as i can, but if theres something must have (like stronger cpu) im fine with costs, i got drives and 8gb of DDR3 RAM, im thinking about cheap itx mobo (ASRock AM1B-ITX) with strongest CPU that i can get for it and Fractal Core 304.

Your CPU is unlikely to be a bottleneck, especially for your use case. You could probably get by with an Avoton system.

The bigger problem would be your choice of motherboard. Intel systems are generally preferred over AMD here for many reasons, the least of which is that Intel systems generally don't have problems, and the same can't be said about AMD systems. Also, that motherboard is fairly consumer grade, which can cause problems with FreeNAS. Lastly, that motherboard has a Realtek NIC, which is well documented to cause problems in FreeNAS.

ZFS is super memory hungry, so the more memory, the better. If you're serious about data protection, then I would consider ECC memory an absolute must.

This is just an intro. There are stickies with thorough and detailed hardware recommendations in the forum. If you want to go FreeNAS, then I strongly suggest you read those, spend some time to pick out your ideal FreeNAS system, and then create a new post with your hardware so the community can give you feedback. That should help get you on the right track.