Hi Tim,
While I appreciate the stringent rules you put NAS's through to try to keep a homogenous set up utilizing the same drives and network set up and the like, I was wondering whether you could begin testing a couple of other factors too.
- Multi-usage, even in home. When, say you are watching a movie from a NAS, while recording to a NAS from a PVR, doing a backup and working out of a files directory shared off a NAS all at the same time is not atypical. Certainly not in my house. In fact, 2-3 simultaneous usages it quite average. I think it's important to test and see how badly NAS's get bogged down in such cases.
- With the advent of 10gig NAS's, we should see how NAS's behave when more than one user is accessing data. I have a 'smart switch' (Linksys SGE2000) but want to know when it's worth upgrading or not. Conversely with smaller smart switches like Netgear GS108T's being ridiculously cheap too, shouldn't you be proposing that any self-respecting NAS owner has a LACP-capable switch?
- Naming, shaming, laziness and shoddy support. The prime example was QNAP having a kernel problem that is in dire need of proper exposure: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=189&t=51741. There has been very little naming and shaming going on, which has led to QNAP getting away with shoddy support for far too long. If a NAS maker needs to be rapped over their fingers, do so! My QNAP TS-439 had suffered from 3 RAID failures (because mdadm wanted to - the same drives (Hitachi Deskstars) are still absolutely fine in my new solution), the kernel problem above and then the DOM failing the day after warranty ran out was the straw that broke the camels back for me with QNAP.
- Capacity-full and near-capacity-full problems. A lot of storage, especially these cheap NAS's begin to have serious problems with performance degradation at or above 80-85% capacity. Beyond the spindle slow down for sectors on the outside of the platter and fragmentation, there's no really good reason for this, but I'd expect NAS makers to compensate for this (if at least kick in defragmentation). Similarly, we should see what happens when it is absolutely 100% full, and how the NAS begins to fail. Even ZFS for example gets its knickers in a twist in this scenario. Most of this falls down to mdadm needing some capacity to manage the RAID, but it can be tuned, which leads me to...
- Proper tuning, experiment and using the right technologies for the job. I expect NAS makers to experiment and make use of new technologies for me, so I'm not the one risking my data to see what technologies would be best in my case. This means three things: 1) Tuning technologies properly. If anyone should be an expert on tuning the performance of Samba, iSCSI and mdadm, it should be the NAS makers. They all too frequently don't switch tunables to what is actually optimal for their own NAS's! 2) Experimenting with different file systems other than ext4 (In some cases Reiser and XFS are better, though agreeably ext4 is a very good 'default' until Btrfs gets its act together) and 3) Differentiation through advanced technologies like Flashcache and bcache (which is now nearing kernel inclusion:http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEwMDg),. The point is that Drobo has taken 'data aware tiering' to heart, and while Thecus did experiment with FUSE-ZFS, these efforts should be praised. Drobo has it's own problems (performance) and FUSE was a bad idea. SSD's and RAM in a NAS should matter more than they currently do. I think it's time for NAS makers to do so.
- Criticism to the general cost of NAS's, which is basically set at $100 per hard drive bay regardless of how many bays NAS's have is getting a bit tired. In reality, just how much more expensive is it to produce a TS-859 versus a TS-459? Don't NAS makers realise that the more bays a person has managed by a particular brand the more tied they are to their solutions going forward?
- Stacking. Why is only Synology allowing some limited form of expansion? It's ridiculous to assume that the boundaries of a NAS is limited to the metal shroud. Switches have been stackable since the 90's, it should be the case with NAS's too.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I'm sick and tired of seeing NAS's that cost more than a cheap PC (especially when you go to 8 bays and above) being supported so badly and simply not doing anything of any value to anyone but themselves. Can we shake the boat up a little and give them a bit of a kick up the behind please?
While I appreciate the stringent rules you put NAS's through to try to keep a homogenous set up utilizing the same drives and network set up and the like, I was wondering whether you could begin testing a couple of other factors too.
- Multi-usage, even in home. When, say you are watching a movie from a NAS, while recording to a NAS from a PVR, doing a backup and working out of a files directory shared off a NAS all at the same time is not atypical. Certainly not in my house. In fact, 2-3 simultaneous usages it quite average. I think it's important to test and see how badly NAS's get bogged down in such cases.
- With the advent of 10gig NAS's, we should see how NAS's behave when more than one user is accessing data. I have a 'smart switch' (Linksys SGE2000) but want to know when it's worth upgrading or not. Conversely with smaller smart switches like Netgear GS108T's being ridiculously cheap too, shouldn't you be proposing that any self-respecting NAS owner has a LACP-capable switch?
- Naming, shaming, laziness and shoddy support. The prime example was QNAP having a kernel problem that is in dire need of proper exposure: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=189&t=51741. There has been very little naming and shaming going on, which has led to QNAP getting away with shoddy support for far too long. If a NAS maker needs to be rapped over their fingers, do so! My QNAP TS-439 had suffered from 3 RAID failures (because mdadm wanted to - the same drives (Hitachi Deskstars) are still absolutely fine in my new solution), the kernel problem above and then the DOM failing the day after warranty ran out was the straw that broke the camels back for me with QNAP.
- Capacity-full and near-capacity-full problems. A lot of storage, especially these cheap NAS's begin to have serious problems with performance degradation at or above 80-85% capacity. Beyond the spindle slow down for sectors on the outside of the platter and fragmentation, there's no really good reason for this, but I'd expect NAS makers to compensate for this (if at least kick in defragmentation). Similarly, we should see what happens when it is absolutely 100% full, and how the NAS begins to fail. Even ZFS for example gets its knickers in a twist in this scenario. Most of this falls down to mdadm needing some capacity to manage the RAID, but it can be tuned, which leads me to...
- Proper tuning, experiment and using the right technologies for the job. I expect NAS makers to experiment and make use of new technologies for me, so I'm not the one risking my data to see what technologies would be best in my case. This means three things: 1) Tuning technologies properly. If anyone should be an expert on tuning the performance of Samba, iSCSI and mdadm, it should be the NAS makers. They all too frequently don't switch tunables to what is actually optimal for their own NAS's! 2) Experimenting with different file systems other than ext4 (In some cases Reiser and XFS are better, though agreeably ext4 is a very good 'default' until Btrfs gets its act together) and 3) Differentiation through advanced technologies like Flashcache and bcache (which is now nearing kernel inclusion:http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEwMDg),. The point is that Drobo has taken 'data aware tiering' to heart, and while Thecus did experiment with FUSE-ZFS, these efforts should be praised. Drobo has it's own problems (performance) and FUSE was a bad idea. SSD's and RAM in a NAS should matter more than they currently do. I think it's time for NAS makers to do so.
- Criticism to the general cost of NAS's, which is basically set at $100 per hard drive bay regardless of how many bays NAS's have is getting a bit tired. In reality, just how much more expensive is it to produce a TS-859 versus a TS-459? Don't NAS makers realise that the more bays a person has managed by a particular brand the more tied they are to their solutions going forward?
- Stacking. Why is only Synology allowing some limited form of expansion? It's ridiculous to assume that the boundaries of a NAS is limited to the metal shroud. Switches have been stackable since the 90's, it should be the case with NAS's too.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I'm sick and tired of seeing NAS's that cost more than a cheap PC (especially when you go to 8 bays and above) being supported so badly and simply not doing anything of any value to anyone but themselves. Can we shake the boat up a little and give them a bit of a kick up the behind please?