Western Digital My Cloud EX4 and LenovoEMC ix4-300d Home NAS Units Review
by Ganesh T S on February 26, 2014 2:30 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Western Digital
- LenovoEMC
Single Client Performance - CIFS and NFS on Linux
We have recently revamped our Linux-client testing for NAS units, shifting from IOMeter to IOZone. Unfortunately, the ix4-300d was evaluated using the old methodology, so we won't have numbers for that unit in here. This section will deal only with the performance of the WD EX4. A CentOS 6.2 virtual machine was used to evaluate NFS and CIFS performance of the NAS when accessed from a Linux client. In order to standardize the testing across multiple NAS units, the following parameters were used to mount the NFS and Samba shares:
mount -t nfs NAS_IP:/PATH_TO_NFS_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER
mount -t cifs //NAS_IP/PATH_TO_SMB_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER
Note that these are slightly different from what we used to run in our previous NAS reviews. The following IOZone command was used to benchmark the shares:
IOZone -aczR -g 2097152 -U /PATH_TO_LOCAL_CIFS_MOUNT -f /PATH_TO_LOCAL_CIFS_MOUNT/testfile -b <NAS_NAME>_CIFS_EXCEL_BIN.xls > <NAS_NAME>_CIFS_CSV.csv
IOZone provides benchmark numbers for a multitude of access scenarios with varying file sizes and record lengths. Some of these are very susceptible to caching effects on the client side. This is evident in some of the graphs in the gallery below.
Readers interested in the hard numbers can refer to the CSV program output here. These numbers will gain relevance as we benchmark more NAS units with similar configuration.
The NFS share was also benchmarked in a similar manner with the following command:
IOZone -aczR -g 2097152 -U /nfs_test_mount/ -f /nfs_test_mount/testfile -b <NAS_NAME>_NFS_EXCEL_BIN.xls > <NAS_NAME>_NFS_CSV.csv
Some scenarios exhibit client caching effects, and these are evident in the gallery below.
The IOZone CSV output can be found here for those interested in the exact numbers.
A summary of the bandwidth numbers for various tests averaged across all file and record sizes is provided in the table below. As noted previously, some of these numbers are skewed by caching effects. A reference to the actual CSV outputs linked above make the entries affected by this effect obvious.
| WD My Cloud EX4 - Linux Client Performance (MBps) | ||
| IOZone Test | CIFS | NFS |
| Init Write | 40 | 18 |
| Re-Write | 40 | 19 |
| Read | 26 | 85 |
| Re-Read | 27 | 87 |
| Random Read | 12 | 33 |
| Random Write | 30 | 16 |
| Backward Read | 14 | 28 |
| Record Re-Write | 30 | 257 |
| Stride Read | 23 | 64 |
| File Write | 40 | 19 |
| File Re-Write | 40 | 18 |
| File Read | 17 | 59 |
| File Re-Read | 18 | 61 |
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Navvie - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
I am amazed that a torrent client is included in the Lenovo machine. I wonder how many customers will put that to honest, law abiding use?Although RAID6 has a big impact on capacity when dealing with four drives, I'd really like to see those numbers. I would be disappointed not to see those numbers at 5+ drives.
Beany2013 - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
I've found the torrent client pretty useful on my Syno DS214+ - if I find I need to download an ISO for a VM appliance or distro from work, I can dial into my NAS at home, and tell it to kick off the download while I'm out at work.Yes, you can use it for nefarious purposes, but that's down to the user - I could use a car to mow down some grannies at a bus stop or ram-raid a convenience store, but that doesn't mean we should ban cars.
(my word, that as an atrocious analogy. I shall flagellate myself later as punishment)
Also, nice to see that The Registers quick review a few weeks ago wasn't wrong about the performance of that WD unit, it's bloody pathetic.
ddriver - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Torrents are not intrinsically illegal.Death666Angel - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Why would you use RAID6 with 4 disks? Why not just RAID 10? RAID 6 only makes sense to me once you go to 5 and more.DanNeely - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Possibilities:A) It's provided as a feature check.
B) Leaving it in reduces the number of changes vs a baseline firmware that is also used for larger models.
C) If the enclosure supports a way to add external drives to an array. (doubtful)
I'm guessing a combination of A and B.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
1 and 2 only answer the question of "why should they have it" not "why would you use it". :)PEJUman - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
R6 can tolerate 2 any disks failure.R10 can tolerate 1 disk failure, maybe 2 (if both disks from the same stripe failed, you're hosed). I tend to think R10 as a higher performing R1, not a dual disk failure redundancy.
Nonetheless, I agree that the R6 usability on a 4 disks array is quite dubious.
Navvie - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
RAID6 would allow any two drives to fail without a loss of data. RAID10 also allows two drive failures, but only if those two drives don't mirror each other. Drives are more likely to fail while reconstructing a failed drive. In a RAID10 setup the failed drive is being rebuilt from data on just one drive, if that drive also fails? Bye bye data.RAID1, RAID10 offers no better reliability than RAID1.
RAID6 has something like 8-10x the reliability of RAID1, and 100x of RAID5.
Adding RAID6 numbers to reviews as this would allow devices with 4 bays and up to be tested consistently - assuming the firmware supported RAID6.
powerwiz - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Generally any NAS comes with a bit-torrent client. Lacies do I know for certain as I have a Lacie NAS. Works well to.Torrents if you do not know were created by University researchers to distribute large amounts of data fast. What you use it for is up to you. Take the internet..the biggest money maker is still porn. You can get a college degree via the internet but it seems worldwide its main use is porn. All up to the user.
vanel86 - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link
The torrent client within lifelines tends to corrupts downloads if the torrent relies on DHT(if it relies on DHT only it won't even start). When i download files out of it (linuxes iso what the hell are you thinking :P) i need to run those files out of utorrent to check if they are fine or not(most cases require a 1% redownload each time)