Intel Atom vs. VIA C7: Which Makes a Faster, Cheaper NAS?

[Pyrroc]

Tim,

How was CPU utilization on the Atom while you were testing? I'm assuming that since it was only mirroring that there weren't any issues and that the bottleneck was pretty much getting the data in and out of the round, brown, spinning stuff.

...for the mdadm questions:

1. Yes, you can add mirroring to an existing setup without reinstalling.
2. Yes, mdadm let's you replace failed drives without data loss
3. Even cooler, using mdadm and LVM/filesystem you can do online RAID expansions (replacing the disks one-by-one, letting each rebuild before moving to the next, then run some commands to expand or adding another disk to an existing array and having it redistribute the data across the new array)

and finally, something I found out there and used in my recent Chenbro 34069, Intel E5200, Intel DG45FC NAS build: OpenFiler. It's based on rPath (a RedHat derivative), uses mdadm, and provides iSCSI, AD/LDAP, NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV, FTP, RSync, Snapshotting (manual or rotating schedule), Quotas, etc. I had a network driver issue with the DG45FC as the board is relatively new, but I was able to get it solved.

 

[thiggins]

I didn't look at CPU utilization and don't know what the performance limit is for the Atom. I'm guessing CPU related, since performance didn't approach the 70 MB/s limit that is set by a 64 KB limit on network tranfer block size.

 

[Pyrroc]

Oh, FYI, NewEgg has the dual-core Atom 330 MSI Wind for $149

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167037

 

[Chris]

Wake on Lan

How do you configure wake on lan for the Wind? I don't see an option for it in BIOS.

 

[heen2001]

artigo A2000 gigabit speeds

Hi Tim,

Your great review actually convinced me to go and buy an Artigo A2000 - having a few speed issues tho, as you've already been there and done it was hoping you might shed some light on my problem.

I've installed ubuntu 8.10 server on it (on a CF card) and got samba runnning on there - i have 2 HDD in RAID0, 64Kb Chunk size - but i'm only seeing read/write speeds around 12Mbytes/s max - what did you do to get the charted gigabit ethernet speeds?


heen2001

 

[thiggins]

I didn't have to do anything special to get the Artigo 2000 to connect at gigabit speed with Ubuntu 8.10 server. Excuse me for asking the obvious, but you are testing with a computer with a gigabit NIC and a gigabit switch, correct?

I did have a problem with FreeNAS, however. You need a patch from Via to enable gigabit.

 

[heen2001]

I am running one PC with Vista Business and an intel gig-e NIC PCI-card. I checked the settings in the system settings in the driver properties - it comes up as running full duplex at 1000Mbps Auto Negotiation.

yes, i have a Dell gigabit switch.

when i copy a file from the A2000 it doesnt break over 12Mbyte/sec when i copy files to the A2000 it hits well past 50Mbytes/sec - i guess this is buffering at work. I put 2Gb RAM in the A2000.

I ran some tests, to gauge performance, using iperf here are the results (these are from the windows pc running 2 consecutive tests with the artigo A2000, first as a server then as a client).

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.





c:\Temp>iperf -c palais
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to palais, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[320] local 192.168.1.65 port 57500 connected with 192.168.1.67 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[320] 0.0-10.0 sec 155 MBytes 130 Mbits/sec

c:\Temp>
c:\Temp>iperf -s
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[164] local 192.168.1.65 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.67 port 58060
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[164] 0.0-10.0 sec 110 MBytes 92.2 Mbits/sec


This is my /etc/network/interfaces file on the a2000

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp



here is my ifconfig on ubuntu

heen2001@palais:~$ ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:40:63:f9:6f:6d
inet addr:192.168.1.67 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::240:63ff:fef9:6f6d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4657475 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1002278 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2370393115 (2.3 GB) TX bytes:700738959 (700.7 MB)
Interrupt:28 Base address:0xec00

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:36 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:36 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1800 (1.8 KB) TX bytes:1800 (1.8 KB)




Finally my Ethtool output


heen2001@palais:~$ sudo ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: Not reported
Advertised auto-negotiation: No
Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 0
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: puag
Wake-on: g
Current message level: 0x00000002 (2)
Link detected: yes

 

[thiggins]

What speed do the switch port lights report for the A2000? 100 or 1000 Mbps?

When using iperf/jperf you need to increase the buffer length or it will under report speed. See Measuring Network Performance – Jperf and TCP, Part 2

 

[Osamede]

Thanks. I'm not sure what chipset the VIA uses, but at least for the MSI, the ancient 945GC chipset is probably dragging it down unnecessarily in terms of power consumption. It'd be interesting to see whether one of the mobile chipset-equipped boards can fare significantly better. For now, the higher costs of these boards negate any gain (in terms of costs) in power reduction.

For example which ones?

 

[bigclaw]

It'd be interesting to see whether one of the mobile chipset-equipped boards can fare significantly better. For now, the higher costs of these boards negate any gain (in terms of costs) in power reduction.

For example which ones?

For example, this one: http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9830

BTW, if you don't want to wait for the price of the above board to drop, and you're not limited to mini-itx form factors, here are the main stats of my DIY NAS build that was posted in the silentpcreview forums also (inspired by an article there that praises a very similar build for energy efficiency).

Board: Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 (AMD 740g) Micro ATX (~$50)
CPU: AMD 64 X2 5050e (2.6GHz Dual Core 45W) (~$60)

With 2GB of RAM and 2 WD Green Power HDDs installed, the above system idles around 30W, even lower than the integrated boards reviewed in this article. Performance-wise, it should blow them out of water too. The board has integrated video/audio, gigabit LAN, 6 SATA 3.0Gb ports, and can support a discrete PCI-e graphic card if needed (although I can't see why in a NAS).

 

[Osamede]

Pretty good looking performance! Without the GPU, is it possible to do that setup fanless?

 

[Unregistered]

Raid?

So does this mobo support hardware raid or only software raid?

 

[thiggins]

So does this mobo support hardware raid or only software raid?

Software. I don't know of any motherboards with onboard hardware raid controllers.

 

[SaphBoaball]

Intel Atom vs VIA C7 Which Makes a Faster Cheaper NAS

Thank you for your response

Now, im trying to syncronize the demo r3 version with the full version but i have some difficult to do this because in the manual it isnt explained. Can you tell me how i can do?
Thanks

 

[Unregistered]

must be missing something

why ever bother with a limited NAS box..? as the guy just previously wrote, you can set up a low cost / small pc with low power components that will not only blow away the performance of these little nas boxes but also function as an ftp server or anything else you need with a lot more expandability & i/o. .. even use it as a regular pc or a whole 'nother cpu resource engine available to you through uvnc on another desktop .. plus a small pc case would be slightly larger and therefore have more room for better cooling instead of frying your drives away in those little tiny toaster oven nas boxes with pathetically inadequate cooling.. and you wanna store all your data there?? this is all marketing & a lot of people are falling for it.. time to wake up guys.. (-:

 

[Tecgblan]

Actually I am thinking the same thing too! Small itx board

Why don't they make an m-ITX board with dual gig Eth and dual USB(mouse,KB, or optical reader), pci-E for video via a riser card, "audio and other HDMI" are optional via plugged-in daughter board to save cost and encouraged other 3rd party maker. I am not asking for x58 MB just a 1366 or 1156 socket that can take Gulftown SLBUZ i7-980X or
Xeon Nehalem-ws SLBEW, and minimum of 8 Gig of RAM ( low power server)

That would be a sight.