FreeNAS ZFS vs. other implementations...

[memilanuk]

Hello all,

Finally decided to join after finding more and more links here and really digging the subject material

Recently set up a very modest little FreeNAS box with three 500GB SATA drives in a RAID-Z pool... and have about 40% of that filled already (dang iTunes libraries had more in 'em than I thought!) so I'm kind of looking ahead. One option that interests me is grabbing one of the new HP Proliant MicroServer boxes and putting either CentOS 5.5 (since its supposed to be certified for RedHat) or doing another FreeNAS box - take advantage of the internal USB port and run it from a USB stick and have four 2TB drives in a RAIDZ pool. My home LAN is fairly modest as well (laying plans for some cabling so as to move beyond wifi/homeplug) so performance isn't perhaps the burning issue that it is for some folks here but I still like to dream about streaming media via house-wide CAT6

As such... the FreeNAS zfs performance stats listed in a review over @ zfsbuild.com kind of got my attention. Anyone here with the 'big iron' and zfs over gigabit network able to confirm/deny the performance (or lack there of) of the FreeNAS version? I've heard that the current FreeNAS release is based off an older/sub-par version of zfs... anybody played with the new .8x series for comparison?

TIA,

Monte

 

[ahmhardforumahm]

Hi Monte.

I've just got a MicroServer (still in its box as of now), with very similar plans to you. I'll report how CentOS 5.5 x64 goes on. Not expecting any issues. However, I do not expect FreeNAS (or in fact any FreeBSD release) will work, because as far as I can tell, the on-board Gb LAN is not supported by that OS yet. Also, no idea whether it will see/work with the on-board AMD SATA controller. I'll perhaps give it a quick go though, since various Intel Gbe PCIe LAN cards appear to be supported by FreeNAS/FreeBSD (e.g. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148376 ). I'll probably end up sticking with CentOS for now though.

Andy

 

[memilanuk]

Hmmm... hadn't thought about the onboard NIC not working, given that RH isn't exactly on the cutting edge as far as hardware compatibility goes. Good to know, though. I'd be very interested in how your CentOS install goes.

Still, more interested (for the purposes of this thread) in the ZFS benchmarks between FreeNAS vs. other platforms.

Monte

 

[adi]

Monte the link you provided is iSCSI performance evaluation. Most home users will be sharing via CIFS/NFS, and with the proper hardware (dual core, intel nic), has no problems saturating a gigabit network link. Sharing movies and music to a household in most situations could be done with 100mb.

iSCSI can perform well, but it can take more work to get it up to speed, but most home users just sharing files have zero concern for iSCSI performance.

 

[memilanuk]

So... you're saying the reason FreeNAS/ZFS lagged behind in almost every test (even behind FreeNAS/softRAID in one) is because of poor iSCSI implementation, and nothing to do with the generation of ZFS used?

 

[adi]

So... you're saying the reason FreeNAS/ZFS lagged behind in almost every test (even behind FreeNAS/softRAID in one) is because of poor iSCSI implementation, and nothing to do with the generation of ZFS used?

Not exactly. But I have no issues saturating a gigabit network with 3 disk raidz over CIFS on freeNAS 7.1.

Keep in mind the benchmarks in the link were done with SSD drives for ZIL and L2ARC, as well as 20 (iirc) SATA drives. If you are looking to run iSCSI with a similar setup (which you aren't), then you would probably have to find out the bottleneck if you use freeNAS. It could be an iSCSI issue. It could be a ZFS configuration issue. It could be a ZFS ported code issue. It could be a disk/network/etc driver issue. Those benchmarks show a very specific unknown issue with freeNAS, and shouldn't be seen to reflect on freeNAS performance issues as a whole.

For your 4 drive home network streaming movies and music, freeNAS should perform just fine.