Windows Storage Server 2012? Compare to ZFS?

[tangoseal]

Anyone out there trying out Windows Storage server 2012?

How would it or so far how does it compare to ZFS or other NAS software products?

Besides my interest to (soon) build a ZFS server, I may also consider a windows storage server 2012 machine. I have read pretty cool things about it and there is supposidly some really great improvements and features that are supposed to challenge ZFS.

I see that you can download a trial copy and test Win SS 2012

Thanks and would love to hear some feedback and opinions.

 

[McTurkey]

Anyone out there trying out Windows Storage server 2012?

How would it or so far how does it compare to ZFS or other NAS software products?

Besides my interest to (soon) build a ZFS server, I may also consider a windows storage server 2012 machine. I have read pretty cool things about it and there is supposidly some really great improvements and features that are supposed to challenge ZFS.

I see that you can download a trial copy and test Win SS 2012

Thanks and would love to hear some feedback and opinions.

Writes are much slower in WSS. ZFS can also be implemented at zero software cost.

 

[wTheOnew]

Writes are much slower in WSS. ZFS can also be implemented at zero software cost.

What are write speeds normally like for ZFS? Turn off journaling in SS and write is pretty close to 1 while read is N-1 which is what I expect in a parity setup.

ZFS is definitely the cheaper solution, though.

fwiw, I've been running 2012 and storage spaces and I've been happy. No real issues to speak of.

 

[spankit]

What are write speeds normally like for ZFS? Turn off journaling in SS and write is pretty close to 1 while read is N-1 which is what I expect in a parity setup.

ZFS is definitely the cheaper solution, though.

fwiw, I've been running 2012 and storage spaces and I've been happy. No real issues to speak of.

Mind sharing what you're setup is? What kind of read/write speeds are you getting? How are the drives configured?

 

[kac77]

What are write speeds normally like for ZFS? Turn off journaling in SS and write is pretty close to 1 while read is N-1 which is what I expect in a parity setup.

ZFS is definitely the cheaper solution, though.

fwiw, I've been running 2012 and storage spaces and I've been happy. No real issues to speak of.

By default ZFS can easily fill a 1G (approx 125MB/s) connection on writes. On the same node? Much much higher.

 

[McTurkey]

What are write speeds normally like for ZFS? Turn off journaling in SS and write is pretty close to 1 while read is N-1 which is what I expect in a parity setup.

ZFS is definitely the cheaper solution, though.

fwiw, I've been running 2012 and storage spaces and I've been happy. No real issues to speak of.

I'll have to check when I get home, but I have no trouble saturating a gigabit link. The same cannot be said for SS. I would not ever turn off journaling unless I had a very good UPS.

 

[wTheOnew]

By default ZFS can easily fill a 1G (approx 125MB/s) connection on writes. On the same node? Much much higher.

Really? Got a link to something I can read that shows that? I don't doubt you, I've just never seen any tests that show it above 95MB/s or so using black or red drives.

I had other reason for going with Windows besides storage so I haven't put a ton of time into researching ZFS though.

I'll have to check when I get home, but I have no trouble saturating a gigabit link. The same cannot be said for SS. I would not ever turn off journaling unless I had a very good UPS.

I'm using 6 WD green drives. 5 with a hot spare. Single drive was around 85MB/s write, I get around 75MB/s write with SS. 450MB/s read so that saturates GigE. I use it to serve media to my HTPCs. Since it's mostly media files I read to it way more than I'll ever write to it so it works in my case.

I don't know anyone that would think it would be a good idea to run a server without a UPS. And what's the absolute worst that could happen if it still went down hard? We all have backups right?

 

[kac77]

Really? Got a link to something I can read that shows that? I don't doubt you, I've just never seen any tests that show it above 95MB/s or so using black or red drives.

I had other reason for going with Windows besides storage so I haven't put a ton of time into researching ZFS though.

These are some tests I ran. This system isn't optimized in any way. I'm still building it to be honest.

FIRST (DD):
dd bs=1M count=1024 if=/dev/zero of=test conv=fdatasync
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 2.47248 s, 434 MB/s

SECOND (BONNIE):

Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
FLESRV 12000M 92 99 413366 62 152340 40 214 98 491080 37 245.7 7
Latency 98234us 8131us 18225ms 162ms 113ms 197ms


Version 1.96 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
FLESRV -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files:max:min /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
10:102400:1024/1024 2103 43 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 3715 64 +++++ +++ 15896 99
Latency 2351ms 144us 134us 807ms 200us 154us

So basically on the same node I'm getting 400+ MB/s.