Realistic Network Speed?

[Lunas]

Hello,

I am new to NAS4Free, building a new box, new parts and am wondering what a realistic network speed (LAN) I should or could expect. Will list build and network specs. Hopefully someone can give a definitive answer although I do understand that this question is very subjective in nature and real world may not meet expectations. Having said that there surely should be someone here that can at least give me a general idea of what to expect.

NAS Specs:

Asus H87i Plus motherboard
Intel i5-4570 LGA 1150 CPU
GSkill DDR3 1600 RAM 16GB (Non ECC)
WD RED 3 TB Drives (4)

Mother board has an Intel I217 Gigabit NIC

Lan Specs:

Internet Access - Comcast Cable Modem
Router - Trendnet TEW692GR 450Mhz Dual Band Wireless Gigabit with 4 port switch


There will be 2 desktop PC's (Win 7) attached via cat 5e cable short run (less than 20 feet) and 1 Ultrabook laptop (Win 8.1) which can use either ethernet, wireless, or USB 3.0 for connection using the NAS.

Off Topic a bit! I know that I should be running ECC ram but that won't be happening. I also have read about the advantages including speed increases using ZFS. Question is will ZFS be happy with non ecc RAM?

Any guidance, help, suggestions are all appreciated. My thanks in advance.

[crowi]

You will get something between 50 to 95 MB/s

Don't do ZFS without ECC!

[raulfg3]

am wondering what a realistic network speed (LAN) I should or could expect.

90 to 110 if you do some tunning and be patient ( tune is probe and test)

[ku-gew]

That for big files. With small files expect much less. If you do a RAID10 small files should be fine too.

[Lunas]

Thanks for your input. As I suspected opinions differ a bit. Have two more question, can you tell me is the Intel I217 NIC fully supported in the latest release? Is WOL working too?

[raulfg3]

i217 works on lates BSD 9.2 but WOL is not supported viewtopic.php?f=56&t=4906&p=26371&hilit=i217#p26371

[kenZ71]

Out of the box, no tuning I am seeing about 20 MB/s.

I would say go with UFS until you can get ECC memory.

[ku-gew]

No reason. Stay with ZFS even with normal memory.

[sasben]

Hi ku-gew,
how can you give such an advice?

No reason. Stay with ZFS even with normal memory.

Did you read this?
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?thr ... zfs.15449/

[ku-gew]

Of course I read it, but that hypothesis requires a stuck bit in the memory module. Common experience shows that is quite uncommon and it can be checked by regular memtest86 testing.
Using ZFS however gives you safety against HD issues, that are BY FAR more common. Moreover, if you start with UFS and you have a big pool, you may be unable to move data later (for example, I couldn't: my pool would require too many HDs for the swap). The transfer may also compromise the data.

Summary: I wouldn't trade a small risk that I can reasonably avoid (memtest) for a much bigger risk I can do anything against it (corruption in UFS).
Look at the big picture... otherwise you end up like the guys who are against nuclear where the trade a small risk with low probability (nuclear) with an higher one with much higher probability (everything else).

[Lunas]

raulfg3,

Thanks for clearing up the NIC question. What seems to be the issue with WOL, have any idea?



kenZ71,

So you are seeing 20MB/s no tuning. You do not think that is somewhat low? I have no idea what you network equipment is but it appears to me that you should be seeing more than that tuning or not.


ku-gew,

I am somewhat in your camp here, I do understand the corruption issue, I do agree with you about the stuck bit point, test your ram, a good idea for normal maintenance anyway. I totally agree with your position on how ZFS handles your data giving you a bit of a safety net that is way beyond that of any other filesystem which of course is the attraction to ZFS. My main concern was that ZFS might complain about not having ECC ram to work with. I think the answer to that is an obvious NO it will run and be happy with out ECC ram and it is up to the user to accept the corruption risk. Thanks for confirming that.

Given the replies to my questions here I can see that there are users in both camps when it comes to ZFS and ECC ram. I will assess the information here and will make my decision based on what has been offered and what my risk tolerance is.

Thanks to all whom replied!

[sasben]

The problem here: when memtest reports an error, it might be already too late, because ZFS 'repairs' the files on READ. So if you do a scrub with degraded non ECC RAM, all of your data gets shredded

But, of course it's your data and your decision, just be advised NOT to run ZFS without ECC and you hopefully also have a backup

[ku-gew]

It's true that bad RAM will corrupt the data, but the example of that article is a worst-case scenario: it expects the corrupted file to go back to more or less the same memory block.
Of course ECC is suggested, since ZFS will spread data errors, but we are still talking about quite low risks. I had an uptime in my old Mac Pro at work of weeks and I never saw any reported ECC corrections in the System Info.
I tested old RAM at home (several years old) and I got no errors (a friend did with even older RAM and he did find errors though), so I assume the risk is there, but low.
Given the low price of an ECC system (see the thread linked, with G2020 as processor and ECC-aware mobo) I would go for it, but it's a small addition that for home-use may be overkill (I use ECC RAM on all my home servers).

[ku-gew]

Also because if you take the fundamentalist approach, I would like to remember you that consumer HDDs don't use ECC memory inside, while enterprise HDDs do. And I'm not sure I trust their embedded non-ECC chips more than the non-ECC RAM I can choose from a good brand (competition is strong among HDD manufacturers).

[Lunas]

ku-gew,

Your points are well taken. I agree as N4F is not an enterprise class environment for one thing. If you really want enterprise class assurances against data corruption/loss then you must build enterprise class machines at a much higher price point and run on an enterprise class OS systems. Otherwise efforts in using only ECC ram in a system where the remainder of the data stream is not ECC compliant or capable serves no purpose.

[sasben]

Haha, whitewashing at it's ultimate state:

@ ku gew http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_n ... _incidents
ZFS is using any bit of available memory, and memory errors are more common as thought. :-/

@lunas:
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?thr ... ure.17995/
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?thr ... nas.18571/
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?thr ... post-87136
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?thr ... ume.15816/

But anyway,your hardware, your data, your decision! Just feel warned and please don't complain later.

[kenZ71]

As for my slow network speeds, i have noy put a lot of effort into troubleshooting as I mostly stream video and store desktop files.

So moving a spreadsheet or streaming a video dont make big difference at 20MB/s or 90. I hope to work on the tuning at some point.

As for ZFS & ECC. I ran my first NAS with non ECC and ZFS for a couple years. No trouble. I was very lucky and foolish.

[ku-gew]

@ ku gew http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_n ... _incidents
ZFS is using any bit of available memory, and memory errors are more common as thought. :-/

I'm not saying that there are none, just that stuck bits are uncommon and someone may not care.
That list is mixed, includes also minor accidents, and you haven't shown the list of accidents in normal plants. Your list is only part of the picture.

If it is possible, go for ECC. If not, you CAN live without, it's just risky.
I only started the discussion because people jump on the extremes easily and I wanted to mitigate.