LAN photo and video editing speeds

[pcmofo]

I am happy with my current FreeNAS setup running 9.2.1.6 on a 3.1ghz i3 with 16GB ram and 8x 2TB drives. However, after speed testing my FreeNAS, which is mostly used for media storage, I found it was 4-5x faster than my locally-attached drives I used for photo and video editing! Now I am wondering how I can optimize a separate share for the fastest always-on read-write speeds used in video and photo editing.

A quick overview of my setup.

I am connecting to my NAS via Cat6 on a GBe network via a Mac Mini, where the Mac and Server are about 20 feet apart. My actual data files for photos and video (RAW images, MOV, etc) are stored on the server, currently, in a separate AFP share on a separate dataset. The "working" files like the catalogs, previews, cache, etc, are stored locally on an internal SSD from OWC that is hitting close to 400MB/s R/W. This has had a huge improvement on the applications overall performance (Lightroom/Premiere) and I am very happy with the results.

I did a number of speed tests using AJA, BM speed test, and Helios, and found my Drobo (v2) connected via FW800 was only ever able to push 20-30MB/s in bursts, when the wind was just right. My internal 5400rpm HDD could hit almost 50MB/s, and my SSD could hit nearly 400MB/s. I was happy to find that the FreeNAS, using the above mentioned AFP share, could consistently hit speeds of 100+MB/s, which as far as I know, is close to "saturating" my Gbe network, which would be about 115MB/s.

So I know that I want to now use my FreeNAS box as my primary storage for my photos and video I am editing, but what type of share will give me the best reliability and performance? Using the AFP my Mac automatically sees the share as a shared network device. The remainder of my media is in a CIFS share that I mount manually using SMB:// but that has a tendency to drop with inactivity or for no reason once in a while. I am also looking into iSCSI but I am not sure if I would be able to resize the share in the future.

Can anyone recommend which share to use and why for a Mac that will offer the best speed and reliability for use as basically a networked external HDD by a single machine?

 

[pcmofo]

I setup a test iSCSI drive on the NAS then tested both the AFP and the iSCSI shares again. I formatted the iSCSI to Mac OS formatting. I was surprised to find the read and write speeds of the AFP to be ~100MB/s where the iSCSI was under 100 for reading (~90+) and 70MB/s for reading! Unless i am doing something wrong for the iSCSI then I think I have my winner.

 

[dlavigne]

I am also looking into iSCSI but I am not sure if I would be able to resize the share in the future.

Others can comment on the type of shares, but yes, it is possible to resize iSCSI: http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/ISCSI#8.7.9_Growing_LUNs.

 

[cyberjock]

Keep in mind that iSCSI is not always better for everything. For example, with iSCSi you shouldn't fill the pool more than 50% pull to ensure maximum performance and allow for the iscsi extent to 'expand'. Failure to do this can result in problems ranging from poor performance to a loss of the iSCSI extent.

If performance is what you are looking for you might want to do 2 vdevs instead of one, and up your RAM from 16GB to 32GB. Also going with multi-path iSCSI (if you can do this for your setup) would give you a theoretical 2Gb connection to/from your server.

But, comparing iSCSI and AFP based on your benchmarking merits is a "fools errand" because the situation is FAR more complex than just some benchmarks. :P