Dennis Wood
Senior Member
Tim, regarding link aggregation testing, here are a few comments based on 3 different NAS units, 4 different 802.3ad capable switches, and many tests between dual NIC workstations.
1. Aside from older (buggy) Qnap TS509 firmware, and Nvidia's dual NIC "teaming" option, link aggregation on a given workstation has not increased read or write performance to or from a NAS unit in any of our testing. This is where both the NAS and workstation had dual NICs configured as 802.3ad compliant, on a properly configured 802.3ad switch.
2. In terms of your testing, I'd clear, then monitor the port stats (using the gigabit switch GUI) for each member of the LAG to the NAS unit in question. This is a pretty easy way to see what's going on in terms of RX/TX volume on each port. I have seen differences between switches, and certainly clients in terms of how LAG is handled. Monitoring the switch ports of both NAS and test workstation(s) though tells the complete story of what's going on.
3. LAG does make a big difference if you have two RAID0 workstations hitting the NAS unit where the NAS unit has read or write performance in excess of 100MB/s or so (again, obviously not the case for your test on the 809). For example, we've got a TS-639 Pro here with six 1TB drives in RAID0. Read/write speeds to the box from 1 raid0 workstation hovers at about 94MB/s sustained large file read. From two raid0 workstations (Vista SP2) the aggregate is just under 130MB/s and the port stats on the switch show that each workstation is basically getting its own pipe to the NAS. This NAS in RAID5 mode has pretty slow write speeds..so we use it as a fast backup in RAID0. This is using an HP procurve switch.
In other words, I haven't seen what you've seen on the 809 but I'll run this same test to a GS108T connected to a TS-509 unit in LACP mode. Link aggregation in my opinion is not quite the standard it should be between manufactures of switches, NICS, embedding chip sets etc., and the testing results show this.
Cheers,
Dennis.
1. Aside from older (buggy) Qnap TS509 firmware, and Nvidia's dual NIC "teaming" option, link aggregation on a given workstation has not increased read or write performance to or from a NAS unit in any of our testing. This is where both the NAS and workstation had dual NICs configured as 802.3ad compliant, on a properly configured 802.3ad switch.
2. In terms of your testing, I'd clear, then monitor the port stats (using the gigabit switch GUI) for each member of the LAG to the NAS unit in question. This is a pretty easy way to see what's going on in terms of RX/TX volume on each port. I have seen differences between switches, and certainly clients in terms of how LAG is handled. Monitoring the switch ports of both NAS and test workstation(s) though tells the complete story of what's going on.
3. LAG does make a big difference if you have two RAID0 workstations hitting the NAS unit where the NAS unit has read or write performance in excess of 100MB/s or so (again, obviously not the case for your test on the 809). For example, we've got a TS-639 Pro here with six 1TB drives in RAID0. Read/write speeds to the box from 1 raid0 workstation hovers at about 94MB/s sustained large file read. From two raid0 workstations (Vista SP2) the aggregate is just under 130MB/s and the port stats on the switch show that each workstation is basically getting its own pipe to the NAS. This NAS in RAID5 mode has pretty slow write speeds..so we use it as a fast backup in RAID0. This is using an HP procurve switch.
In other words, I haven't seen what you've seen on the 809 but I'll run this same test to a GS108T connected to a TS-509 unit in LACP mode. Link aggregation in my opinion is not quite the standard it should be between manufactures of switches, NICS, embedding chip sets etc., and the testing results show this.
Cheers,
Dennis.
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