With kernel iSCSI of FreeNAS 9.3, how does it compares with Nexenta performance?

[viniciusferrao]

Hello guys,

The discussion is simply, how does FreeNAS 9.3 compares with Nexenta since FreeNAS are now using iSCSI builtin the kernel? I've readen about major advances in read performance of iSCSI shared but I was not able to see any discussions about this improvements.

Thanks in advance,
Vinícius.

 

[mav@]

There are too many factors and variables to do full direct comparison. If somebody wish to try that, it would be intersting, but as any benchmark is requires much care to get meaningful results. Some time ago I did some synthetic benchmarks of those iSCSI targets themselves (without testing backing storage for simplicity), and on large hardware with large load FreeNAS 9.3 iSCSI target shown times higher IOPS level then NexentaStor Community Edition's one.

If you wants some data/numbers, here is my slides from recent ruBSD'2014 conference: https://people.freebsd.org/~mav/CTL.pdf . You may see that on my hardware via iSCSI I've reached 1.2M IOPS and 60Gbps data rate. Slides are generally about FreeBSD HEAD, but FreeNAS 9.3 has very close iSCSI target stack.

 

[cyberjock]

I've talked with users that have used Nexenta and TrueNAS servers side-by-side. As mav said, a direct comparison really isn't possible. BUT, the users I've talked to that are using TrueNAS have been very happy with the performance. Most have claimed equal or better performance than the Nexenta. Keep in mind that TrueNAS is similar to FreeNAS, but has some software tweaks and proper hardware (along with great customer service when there are problems) so you can't exactly say that TrueNAS is the same as FreeNAS.

 

[jkh]

The discussion is simply, how does FreeNAS 9.3 compares with Nexenta since FreeNAS are now using iSCSI builtin the kernel?

We don't use Nexenta, but if you do, perhaps you could do some comparison benchmarks and tell us. ;)

 

[viniciusferrao]

We don't use Nexenta, but if you do, perhaps you could do some comparison benchmarks and tell us. ;)

Haha. I don't use Nexenta. I'm just curious due to the new iSCSI stack of FreeNAS. And what I've heard in the wild was that Nexenta was way better than FreeNAS using iSCSI. I just want FreeNAS to win :)