NAS Drive

ddrueding

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Apparently the MB cannot take the 10GbE card and still see the boot drive. :cursin: Can there be some interference between a PCIe slot and M.2?

There can, but typically it only effects a single PCIe slot (they are electrically connected, basically the same slot in two different form factors). Just move the card to another slot.
 

LunarMist

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There can, but typically it only effects a single PCIe slot (they are electrically connected, basically the same slot in two different form factors). Just move the card to another slot.

There are only four 8x slots. :(
 

LunarMist

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I replaced took the XP941 on PCIe card out of the main machine to free up the slot. The 951 is still on the M.2. I put the 941 in the secondary computer and finally also upgraded the RAM with the 32GB I got back in November.

Unfortunately the two X520s don't want to form a network, so the whole 10GbE thing is not going to happen. It may be time to buy the best individual drives for primary data and then get a larger, slow RAID 6 NAS for the backup. I made a mistake buying the DS1515 since it only has 5 bays and RAID 6 is not possible, but I was thinking the backup did not need to be the most reliable if the primary had RAID 6.
 

ddrueding

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We can probably sort out your networking issues pretty easily. What configuration did you have in mind?

The easiest for administration is a setup where the computer and NAS both connect to a switch that has the right ports.

A solution that requires less hardware takes a little setup:

Internet router - Computer - NAS

This requires the two network cards in your computer to be in "bridge" mode if you want the NAS to see the internet or some static IPs if you don't.
 

LunarMist

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We can probably sort out your networking issues pretty easily. What configuration did you have in mind?

The easiest for administration is a setup where the computer and NAS both connect to a switch that has the right ports.

A solution that requires less hardware takes a little setup:

Internet router - Computer - NAS

This requires the two network cards in your computer to be in "bridge" mode if you want the NAS to see the internet or some static IPs if you don't.

Thanks. Currently I have three computers, a printer, and the wireless/internet connected to a normal 8-port switch. I added the NAS to that switch (2 linked ports) also. That works OK so far.
Then I added X520-DA2s to the main and secondary computers and connected them directly together. I'm not planning to leave it that way, but wanted to test the performance and also try that FreeNSA storage thing with the 10GbE. I tried static IP for the two computers or even trying to the FREENAS, but no luck. Ultimately I would want to have a 10GbE NAS connected to the two computers, but connection to one would be OK. One of the reasons I did not even consider the 10GbE a few years ago was that the switches were all like three grand.
 

Stereodude

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You need to be more specific. What do you mean no luck? What specifically didn't work?

I did what you're describing and had no problems. I used a XP x64 machine with a x520 DA1 and Windows 10 x64 system with a Mellanox Connectx3 dual with a 3m SFP+ DAC. I assigned the 10GbE cards static private network IPs and then mapped the network shares to drives using those IPs instead of the hostname. Both systems were still connected to my 1GbE switch also.
 

ddrueding

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You've nearly done it. The part you are missing is to make sure that the static IPs used for the direct connections are in a separate subnet altogether.

For example, if your normal network uses the 192.168.xxx.xxx, you can use the range 10.xxx.xxx.xxx for the dedicated links. Then you use the 10. IP addresses when you want to use the direct link and the 192.168. addresses for talking to the rest of the network.
 

LunarMist

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You've nearly done it. The part you are missing is to make sure that the static IPs used for the direct connections are in a separate subnet altogether.

For example, if your normal network uses the 192.168.xxx.xxx, you can use the range 10.xxx.xxx.xxx for the dedicated links. Then you use the 10. IP addresses when you want to use the direct link and the 192.168. addresses for talking to the rest of the network.

Yes, I tried that earlier. 10.10.10.10 and .11 for the other. The network type is stuck on the pulbic (some diagram of the park bench) with no options for changing it.
 

LunarMist

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You can change it. I don't remember how exactly, but a Google search or two should show a method or two.

I was up to 3AM and can't figure it out since the described options are greyed out or not available.
I'm not always so dense, but networking is not my thing. I'm also not 100% mentally due a death. :(
 

ddrueding

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As a performance test for the QNAP TS-831X, I set up a RAID-0 of 8x 8TB drives after updating the firmware to the latest. I then set up the direct connect networking described above using the 10.0.0.2 and 10.0.0.3 addresses (with no gateway or DNS) on the workstation and NAS respectively.

Copying a bunch of 4TB files to the NAS is showing a sustained 250MB/s copy rate. I suspect some network optimization is necessary.

Edit: NAS to workstation averages 500MB/s
 

CougTek

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Something isn't right. It should be close to twice as fast in writes and 1.5x faster in reads.

Is AES on or off? That could explain it.
 

ddrueding

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Nope, no AES. Could it be Jumbo packets or something? I doubt it as the send and receive are different speeds; if it was network related they should be limited to the same value, no?
 

CougTek

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Too bad you can't run iperf on the NAS. You could know for sure if it's network-related or if it's the NAS which is limiting your results.
 

LunarMist

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We can probably sort out your networking issues pretty easily. What configuration did you have in mind?

The easiest for administration is a setup where the computer and NAS both connect to a switch that has the right ports.

A solution that requires less hardware takes a little setup:

Internet router - Computer - NAS

This requires the two network cards in your computer to be in "bridge" mode if you want the NAS to see the internet or some static IPs if you don't.

Will this solve all my problems? The main PC and the new NAD would connect to the SFP+ ports. The other computers, slow NAS, internet, etc. would be on the Gb ports.
 

LunarMist

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ddrueding

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It should work directly. Mine worked straightaway this afternoon, but my network was labeled as "work" instead of "public". You should be able to change it by clicking on the link that is the network type name.

This video is very poor, but factually accurate if you need additional guidance.

[video=youtube_share;4peYtls8ydI]https://youtu.be/4peYtls8ydI[/video]
 

LunarMist

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That would be nice but the type is not clickable.

I can connect The Synology NAS directly to the computer so my problem seems to be something else about connecting the two computers.

There are a couple of viable options overall.
1. Buy 3-4 of the 10TB Helios Seagate drives for internal non-RAD use and replace the Synology with the TS-831TX, adding one more 8TB to make RAID 6. The QNAP would still be the backup.
2. Buy the QNAP EC1080 and 7-8 6TB drives for use as the primary. Continue to use the Synology in RAID 5 as the backup.
 

ddrueding

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Running a copy to the NAS from the workstation ran two of the cores at 90-95% and the other two to 50%. It says these are hyper-threaded cores, so that is basically maxed out.

Reading data from the NAS to the workstation kept the average CPU utilization around 50% on all the cores. This was managing 540MB/s, so may be a network optimization issue or possibly a bottleneck of the workstation drive. I'll build an array of SSDs just to make sure.

<--2 hours later-->

Built a RAID-0 array of 4x Samsung 850Pro 512GB drives. CrystalDiskMark shows sequential read/write speeds of 1589MB/s and 1313MB/s respectively.

Aside: While copying the files from the system drive of the workstation (Samsung XP941 512GB) to the RAID0, speeds were averaging 850MB/s.

//back to testing

Writes to the QNAP are unchanged; 250MB/s and the CPU is pegged. The disk performance tab of the Resource Monitor screen is showing sustained 500IO/s with latency in the 17ms range. Memory use is negligible.

Read speeds from the QNAP are also unchanged; 500MB/s
 

CougTek

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So the mecanical drives limit the performance of the NAS. What are those drives? You wrote they were 8TB, but I missed the model. If they are WD Red (not Pro) or Green, then it's plausible. If they are something like Seagate Enterprise NAS drives, then it's weird.
 

Stereodude

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Clearly it's got some issues with the overhead of the hardware. It might not have very good HW acceleration of the 10GbE. I could push more BW than that using iperf and used only a few percent CPU with the Connectx3 in Windows 10. My RAID cards also use single digit CPU when pushing > 1GB/sec.
 

ddrueding

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I've submitted a ticket, and we'll see what they say. Honestly, a quad-core @ 1.7Ghz should have no issue keeping up with 1GB/s in RAID-0, particularly if the NIC is hardware accelerated. RAID-5 or -6 I can understand bottle-necking of writes (due to parity calcs), but this isn't expected.

Still, it is 250% faster than GbE, so would be worth it even if this is all it can do.
 

Stereodude

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Honestly, a quad-core @ 1.7Ghz should have no issue keeping up with 1GB/s in RAID-0, particularly if the NIC is hardware accelerated. RAID-5 or -6 I can understand bottle-necking of writes (due to parity calcs), but this isn't expected.
ARM cores are not equal to Intel's cores. They probably don't sustain 1.7gHz for very long either. The processors in phones sure don't, though the NAS could have a heatsink and fan on it.
 

ddrueding

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More computing power is always better, unless you care about power consumption or price. The thing about appliances like a NAS is that the use case is very specific, and the hardware should be able to be tuned to match it.

For example, if you put a 10GbE interface on a NAS, it should be able to (under ideal conditions) manage 10Gbps.
 

LunarMist

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More computing power is always better, unless you care about power consumption or price. The thing about appliances like a NAS is that the use case is very specific, and the hardware should be able to be tuned to match it.

For example, if you put a 10GbE interface on a NAS, it should be able to (under ideal conditions) manage 10Gbps.

I'd expect at least 500MB/sec. up and down in RAID 6 with 8 decent drives, but what do I know.
 

LunarMist

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I purchased it as soon as you linked it. I've been looking for something in this configuration (10-gig, 8-drive) for a while and it was not a hard decision. I'll be populating it with 8TB HDDs and a direct-connect cable to a high-end machine with SSDs in RAID0. We'll see how it performs. Might be Monday before I can get it done, though.

I see out of stock at the egg, or did you buy the 16GB version? I'm not seeing $200 worth of difference from 8GB in the NAS, especially for my uses.
 

ddrueding

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Amazon. I'd hold off until I hear back from their tech. He wanted to talk to me yesterday, but I was busy spending 10.5 hours installing 15 DirecTV receivers in a large house.
 
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