Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/7608/netgear-readynas-716-review-10gbaset-in-a-desktop-nas



Introduction and Setup Impressions

Netgear launched the 6-bay ReadyNAS 716 10-GbE desktop NAS in November. To our knowledge, this is the first off-the-shelf NAS in a desktop tower form factor to come with built-in support for 10GBase-T. With an Intel Xeon CPU under the hood, the unit packs quite a punch within a small form factor. 10-GbE solutions have remained in realm of rackmount units so far, but, Netgear, along with QNAP (in its TS-x70 series), aims to bring them to desktop form factors also. While the QNAP TS-x70's 10-GbE capabilities are optional (the end user has to change the PCIe add-on card for that purpose), the ReadyNAS 716 comes with a two-port 10GBase-T NIC installed.

Netgear's storage lineup has been in a bit of flux over the last few years. While the x86-based versions have been quite stable, their SOHO / home consumer lineup had to shift from SPARC-based units to ARM-based ones. We covered the reboot of the ReadyNAS OS for ARM-based units in the review of the ReadyNAS NV+ v2. Despite Netgear's promise to work on adding features and making the new ReadyNAS OS better to use, here we are, two years later, looking at yet another reboot of the ReadyNAS OS. The reboot aims to unify the product features across both ARM and x86-based units. We already reviewed the ReadyNAS 312, which happens to be the entry-level x86-based NAS in Netgear's 2013 lineup. The ReadyNAS 716 (RN716X) is Netgear's flagship in the 2013 desktop form factor category. Based on the Intel Xeon E3-1265L processor, the unit runs the completely revamped ReadyNAS OS 6.

In terms of redesign, ReadyNAS OS 6.0 is the most ambitious yet. Unlike other NAS vendors who opt for the safety of the proven EXT3 / EXT4 file system for internal volumes, Netgear has opted for the cutting-edge BTRFS. The benefits of BTRFS over EXT3 / EXT4 are numerous. These include checksumming for integrity, in-built snapshotting mechanisms, continuous defragmentation, online data compression, scrubbing with error correction and built-in storage pools which make a separate LVM unnecessary. Compared to ZFS, the memory requirements are more manageable, but, deduplication support in ZFS is much better. However, there is an impression amongst some IT folks that btrfs is not stable enough for deployment in production environments. Netgear indicates that btrfs is part of Oracle's production kernel and, currently, the same code and kernel are being used in ReadyNAS OS 6.x.

The specifications of the RN716X are provided below:

Netgear ReadyNAS 716 (RN716x) Specifications
Processor Intel Xeon E3-1265L V2 (4C/8T, 2.5 GHz)
RAM 16 GB DDR3 ECC RAM
Drive Bays 6x 3.5"/2.5" SATA 6 Gbps HDD
Network Links 2x 1 GbE + 2x 10GBase-T (via add-on PCIe card)
USB Slots 1x USB 2.0 + 2x USB 3.0
eSATA Ports 3x (compatible for expansion with EDA500)
Maximum Capacity 6-bays + 15-bays via three EDA500 units for a total of 21 bays
VGA / Console / HDMI HDMI out
Full Specifications Link Netgear RN716X Specifications (PDF)
Suggested Retail Pricing US $3000

The ReadyNAS 716 runs a Linux kernel (v3.0.93). Other interesting aspects of the system can be gathered after obtaining SSH access to the unit.

The RN716X has an in-built 200W PSU. While enterprise rackmount units with similar platforms have redundant PSUs, the form factor of the RN716X precludes that feature. The motherboard has two native GbE ports, while the 10GBase-T ports are provided by an add-on PCIe card. After connection to the network, the unit could be discovered by RAIDar (offline discovery tool that has been around since the first generation ReadyNAS units). In addition, Netgear has also incorporated cloud discovery using the ReadyCLOUD service. I had faced issues in trying to start out with previously used disks while evaluating the RN312, but the issue was not much of a problem with the RN716X. The front panel has a LCM display as well as a touch-sensitive interface to navigate the options on the display.

We have already touched upon the various features of ReadyNAS 0S 6.x in our ReadyNAS 312 review. The snapshotting mechanism used by Netgear is quite advantageous in the market segment that the RN716X targets. The only surprise in our setup process was the fact that the Flex-RAID configuration (allowing users to manually control the RAID level) didn't allow for RAID-1 to RAID-5 migration when adding a third disk to an already existing two-disk volume. However, switching to X-RAID enabled this option without data loss. The volume could be converted back to Flex-RAID after completion of the migration.

In the rest of the review, we will cover the testbed setup and testing methodology, putting focus on our updates to enable testing 10GBase-T equipment. This is followed by benchmarks in single and multi-client modes. For single client scenarios, we have both Windows and Linux benchmarks with CIFS and NFS shares. We will also have some performance numbers with encryption enabled. In the final section, power consumption numbers as well as RAID rebuild times will be covered along with some closing notes.



Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology

Evaluation of NAS performance under both single and multiple client scenarios is done using the SMB / SOHO NAS testbed we described earlier. Tower / desktop form factor NAS units are usually tested with Western Digital RE drives (WD4000FYYZ). However, the presence of 10-GbE on the ReadyNAS 716 meant that SSDs had to be used to bring out the maximum possible performance. Therefore, evaluation of the Netgear RN716X was done by setting up a RAID-5 volume with six OCZ Vector 4 120 GB SSDs.

AnandTech NAS Testbed Configuration
Motherboard Asus Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA2011 SSI-EEB
CPU 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2630L
Coolers 2 x Dynatron R17
Memory G.Skill RipjawsZ F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL (8x8GB) CAS 10-10-10-30
OS Drive OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB
Secondary Drive OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB
Tertiary Drive OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid (1TB HDD + 100GB NAND)
Other Drives 12 x OCZ Technology Vertex 4 64GB (Offline in the Host OS)
Network Cards 6 x Intel ESA I-340 Quad-GbE Port Network Adapter
Chassis SilverStoneTek Raven RV03
PSU SilverStoneTek Strider Plus Gold Evoluion 850W
OS Windows Server 2008 R2
Network Switch Netgear ProSafe GSM7352S-200

Thank You!

We thank the following companies for helping us out with our NAS testbed:

Netgear XS712T

Our primary testbed switch, the GSM 7352S, doesn't support 10GBase-T. Its 10GbE ports are SFP+ needing copper direct attached cables. We could have gone in for SFP+ to 10GBase-T converters, but, keeping in mind the growing popularity of 10GBase-T, a dedicated 10GBase-T switch made more sense. Netgear came forward with the XS712T, a 12-port 10GBase-T switch. The unit also has two SFP+ copper ports to allow stacking / uplinking.

In our testbed, the SFP+ ports on both the GSM 7352S as well as the XS712T are link aggregated and connected to each other. The GSM 7352S acts as a DHCP server and provides an IP to the XS712T. The 10GBase-T ports of the NAS were also connected to the XS712T (which acts as a DHCP forwarder) and they obtained an IP address in the same subnet as the virtual machines connected to the ports of the GSM 7352S. For teaming purposes, link trap and STP mode were enabled. The mode was set to 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation and the hash mode was set to 'Src/Dest MAC, VLAN, EType,Incoming Port'.

Thank You!

  •   Thanks to Netgear for sponsoring the XS712T for use in our 10GBase-T NAS reviews.


Single Client Performance - CIFS and iSCSI on Windows

The single client CIFS performance of the Netgear ReadyNAS 716 was evaluated on the Windows platforms using Intel NASPT and our standard robocopy benchmark. This was run from one of the virtual machines in our NAS testbed. All data for the robocopy benchmark on the client side was put in a RAM disk (created using OSFMount) to ensure that the client's storage system shortcomings wouldn't affect the benchmark results. It must be noted that all the shares / iSCSI LUNs are created in a RAID-5 volume.

Netgear ReadyNAS 716 CIFS Performance - Windows

We created a 250 GB iSCSI target and mapped it on the Windows VM. The same benchmarks were run and the results are presented below.

Netgear ReadyNAS 716 iSCSI Performance - Windows

Encryption Support Evaluation:

Consumers looking for encryption capabilities can opt to encrypt a iSCSI share with TrueCrypt or some in-built encryption mechanism in the client OS. However, if requirements dictate that the data must be shared across multiple users / computers, relying on encryption in the NAS is the best way to move forward. Most NAS vendors use the industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption algorithm. One approach is to encrypt only a particular shared folder while the other approach is to encrypt the full volume. Some NAS vendors have support for both approaches in their firmware, but Netgear only opts for the latter. Details of Netgear's encryption strategy can be found in forum thread, but the summary is that encryption relies on a key created and stored in a mounted USB drive at the time of volume creation (the volume can't be X-RAID, but has to be set up in a manual RAID level). The USB key needs to be present at boot time for the encrypted volume to be mounted, but, can be removed later. This allows for maximum security, as the encrypted data remains safe even if the unit itself is stolen.

On the hardware side, encryption support can be in the form of specialized hardware blocks in the SoC (common in ARM / PowerPC based NAS units). In x86-based systems, accelerated encryption support is dependent on whether the AES-NI instruction is available on the host CPU (not considering units based on the Intel Berryville platform). Fortunately, the Xeon CPU used in the Netgear ReadyNAS 716 does support AES-NI. So, we can expect performance loss due to encryption enabling to be minimal / non-existent.

We enabled encryption on a a CIFS share to repeat our Intel NASPT / robocopy benchmarks. The results are presented in the graph below (with the unencrypted folder numbers for comparison purposes).

Netgear ReadyNAS 716 Encryption Performance - Windows

As expected, encryption carries almost no performance hit. In a number of cases, the numbers seem to even favour the encryption case. It goes to show that the bottleneck is on the disk or network side for those cases, rather than the RAID and encryption-related computation on the NAS CPU.



Single Client Performance - CIFS and NFS on Linux

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. We have also shifted from IOMeter to IOZone for evaluating performance under Linux. 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.

Netgear ReadyNAS 716 - Linux Client Performance (MBps)
IOZone Test CIFS NFS
Init Write 76 16
Re-Write 76 16
Read 32 120
Re-Read 32 121
Random Read 19 51
Random Write 73 19
Backward Read 19 42
Record Re-Write 743 401
Stride Read 28 82
File Write 76 16
File Re-Write 75 17
File Read 23 84
File Re-Read 22 87

 



Multi-Client Performance - CIFS

We put the Netgear ReadyNAS 716 through some IOMeter tests with a CIFS share being accessed from up to 25 VMs simultaneously. The following four graphs show the total available bandwidth and the average response time while being subject to different types of workloads through IOMeter. IOMeter also reports various other metrics of interest such as maximum response time, read and write IOPS, separate read and write bandwidth figures etc. For this benchmark, the two 10GBase-T ports were link aggregated and connected to two ports teamed on the XS712T. The XS712T's SFP+ ports were teamed and connected to the teamed SFP+ ports of the GSM 7352S (to which the rest of the VMs were physically connected). The graphs below present the results. Other interesting aspects from our IOMeter benchmarking run can be found here.

Netgear RN716X Multi-Client CIFS Performance - 100% Sequential Reads

Netgear RN716X Multi-Client CIFS Performance - Max Throughput - 50% Reads

Netgear RN716X Multi-Client CIFS Performance - Random 8K - 70% Reads

Netgear RN716X Multi-Client CIFS Performance - Real Life - 65% Reads

The graphs for the some of the rackmount units we have evaluated earlier are also presented as reference, but do remember that most of them have different number of disks in RAID-5 configuration. The Synology DS1812+ was also benchmarked with hard disks instead of the OCZ Vector SSDs used for the ReadyNAS 716. With speeds reaching close to 800 MBps in RAID-5 for certain access patters, the RN716X lives up to the claim from Netgear of being the fastest desktop NAS. It is possible to obtain even higher bandwidth numbers for specific access patterns by enabling jumbo frames in the network path.



Miscellaneous Factors and Final Words

The Netgear ReadyNAS 716 is a 6-bay NAS, and there are many applicable disk configurations (JBOD / RAID-0 / RAID-1 / RAID-5 / RAID-6 / RAID-10). Most users looking for a balance between performance and redundancy are going to choose RAID-5. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild duration testing as well as power consumption recording with the unit configured in RAID-5 mode. The disks used for benchmarking (OCZ Vector 4 120 GB) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the unit as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities.

Netgear ReadyNAS 716 RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption
Activity Duration Avg. Power Consumption
     
Idle   24.23 W
120 GB Single Disk X-RAID2 Initialization   28.12 W
120 GB RAID-0 to 120 GB RAID-1 (1 to 2 Disks) 17m 09s 32.46 W
120 GB RAID-1 to 240 GB RAID-5 (2 to 3 Disks) 33m 03s 34.70 W
240 GB RAID-5 to 360 GB RAID-5 (3 to 4 Disks) 31m 46s 37.35 W
360 GB RAID-5 to 480 GB RAID-5 (4 to 5 Disks) 34m 04s 39.45 W
480 GB RAID-5 to 600 GB RAID-5 (5 to 6 Disks) 35m 09s 41.08 W
600 GB RAID-5 Rebuild (Replace 1 of 6 Disks) 31m 02s 40.56 W

Coming to the business end of the review, the ReadyNAS 716 is a bold product from Netgear. While ReadyNAS OS 6 needs further work to achieve feature parity with the competition (more apps, SMB features such as SSD caching etc.), Netgear must be appreciated for making an attempt to bring 10-GbE capabilities to the desktop NAS form factor. Additionally, the choice of 10GBase-T makes the product even more ground-breaking.

For SMBs making their first foray into 10-GbE, the use of backward compatible 10GBase-T equipment is a big plus. Netgear has affordable 10GBase-T switches in the XS series (the 12-port XS712T and the 8-port XS708E). Introducing a 10GBase-T NAS at south of $3000 also serves Netgear well in terms of expanding the addressable market for those switches. All in all, the Netgear ReadyNAS 716 is an impressive and revolutionary product. The market for 10G equipment outside of a server rack is currently limited. However, we believe that the ReadyNAS 716 is just the start of many more good things to come in terms of affordable 10-GbE equipment outside the datacenter space.

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