DroboShare Performance..
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 2:30PM Just did some simple tests on the Drobo MK II connected via a DroboShare and connected via FW800.
As I said in my previous post, I've no real need for startling speed from the Drobo as it's meant as a backup device. Hooking it up to a DroboShare just means that it's more convenient as it's accessible from all devices on the network as an SMB share. Not configuration required, it just seems to work.
I did get a few requests for some comparative speeds so before I start populating it with real data, I've unhooked it from the DroboShare and connected it to my Mac Pro directly using FW800. To run the tests, I've used the HD Drive Speed Test written by John Flowers over at Unscale. The application is designed for video professionals with special aims as per the website
Benchmarking tools do not accurately represent the real-world workflow of importing, editing and working with HD video files. This program was written to solve that problem by using actual system calls - just like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere (or Avid Media Composer) - and benchmarking your drives based on their ability to read/write/import the video files you’ve recorded.
So here are the results!
First, the Drobo connected via the Droboshare on a Gigabit Ethernet switch:
Click on the image to see a larger view but basically it's showing a sustained speed of 12.35 MB/s and should be capable of streaming 720p footage. Again, not spectacular and perfectly fine as a backup medium.
Secondly, the same Drobo directly connected via FW800
Oh! That would be a sustained speed of 33.45 MB/s and capable of streaming RED 4K video at 13 fps. That's quite a difference!
Of course, your mileage may vary depending on your network, network switch, drive size and configuration, etc.
This hasn't been a detailed comparison but should give you a rough idea of the comparative speeds.
It's very easy to configure the Drobo as a shared volume on the Mac and make that accessible on the network, as long as the Mac is on 24/7 or at least for when you want to access the data.
Reader Comments (16)
Don, perhaps speed is not an issue when backing up. It happens in the background. But when you want to restore, time is of the essence, so speed becomes very important.
Example: Restore 500 GB of data.
DroboShare = 11.3 hours; FW800 = 4.2 hours
Restoring 1 TB of data would be downright painful with DS.
I think I'm going to stick with the FW800 connection
Ya, I am not a fan of networked drives. Unless it's over fiber. Wirells is the worst!!!
You've reached the same conclusion that I did, Don. The DroboShare idea is great, just isn't very well implemented. Or maybe it's implemented as well as they could and it's just the nature of such Networked devices that make them so slowwwwww.
Thanks SmallNetBuilder: NOTE: As a reference, the maximum raw data rate for 100Mbps Ethernet is 12.5 MBytes/sec and 125 MBytes/sec for gigabit Ethernet. Throughput above these values is due to memory caching effects in the client OS and NAS under test.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30725/75/
Aren't you in essence maxxing out the 100M Ethernet here? Wouldn't DROBOshare simple be better on GB Ethernet?
Oh wait... DroboShare is GB Ethernet...!! Damn! I really like Drobo builds better than any other ... but the ReadyNAS' seem awfully hard to beat in a price/performance comparison.
Now that MacSales.com have got a 4 disk raid enclosure I'm curious about your thoughts on the Drobo versus a more conventional housing.
I realise the Drobo you can swap disks in and out. On the other hand, it doesn't (I believe) report the true disk free space to the operating system (which sounds annoying). Plus I presume that the Drobo unit must be doing some kind of block mapping to work its magic, which makes me wonder if fragmentation is going to become an issue. Plus are you really going to swap disks out (what would you do with these swapped out disks?), or in reality would it be better to buy a whole new raid enclosure when you need new space, and farm off the old unit to some other purpose. Just some thoughts I'm curious about.
BTW, did you think about the 8 disk Drobo?
I have both a traditional RAID enclosure plus the Drobo. The downside with the traditional RAID setup is a PITA to change the config. You have to move the data off, reconfigure and move it back. Not with the Drobo!
I think if someone started with say 2 x 500GB and 2 x 250GB drives, I could easily see them eventually swapping out for 4 x 1TB or even 2 TB drives when they become cheaper. As I started with 4 x 1TB the prices of the 2TB drives will need to drop a lot.
As far as not reporting the true disk space to the OS, yes, you're right. When you set it up you create a maximum volume size (I went with the maximum of 16GB for future expansion) and it displays this theoretical maximum size in Finder. The Drobo Dashboard utility does show you the correct space, so no biggie.
As regards the 8 disk Drobo, I didn't really want to spend that much this time round :-)
If you turn on jumbo frames you should get even better performance over gigabit networking. Your switch and devices have to support it though. Thats a pretty slow benchmark, I have a OpenSolaris NAS I built using normal pc parts and I get 30MB/sec on average over gigabit WITHOUT jumbo frames.
One other question, how does the drobo share actually work?
My understanding is that most Network hard drives share over Windows networking (SMB), and generally run DOSFS locally. Neither of which I like (Windows networking is un-maclike, and DOSFS doesn't support HFS file attributes).
But you seemed to be saying that you formatted the device as HFS. Does it only talk to one computer at a time and does it send data out at the block level? Or does it have built-in support for HFS and appleshare?
From my limited testing, it looks like the droboshare used SMB to share the Drobo, athough I did format the drive as HFS.
Not sure about your other points and unable to test as I've gone with directly connecting to the Mac Pro using FW800.
Really this is no big surprise.
While everyone assumes ethernet is a big pipe, with a theoretical maximum throughput of 1000 Mbit/sec, it is not. Ethernet has a protocol overhead - arising from the control traffic, broadcasts, acknowledgements and error correction required to get the communication working. And as you move up the stack of the OSI 7-layer model, each layer of the stack adds its own overhead. The end point is SMB, which in itself is not know for it transmission efficiency.
Even with that, their may be other bottlenecks. What is the maximum throughput of a Mac Pro ethernet card, for instance? Has that ever been benchmarked? All ethernet cards are not created equal.
Was there a switch in the way between the Mac Pro and the Droboshare? Consumer networking equipment is often constrained by small buffers and cheap processors, which is why an 8-port enterprise-level Cisco switch costs ten times as much as the Linksys ones on eBuyer.
As you say, Drobo is not designed as a high performance device. But, even if the overall throughput could be improved, it would be pointless to use a Droboshare to connect a single machine to a single Drobo if they were in reach of a Firewire cable. The clue in the Droboshare is in the name - it is meant to share amongst multiple machines.
I'm presuming you didn't reformat when you connected to the Mac Pro, and I'm assuming it is indeed formatted in HFS, so interestingly it must support HFS.
If you are going to share, it seems to me the best way would be either via an Airport, Time Machine or another Mac, since this would provide the more Mac-like Appleshare, rather than the SMB that the droboshare supports.
Hi Don, as a member of SCO, I like to follow what you get up to. I too, have a Drobo with the Droboshare and 4 x 1TB drives. I have for now left it operating via DS, it is a bit slow, but it all happens when I am doing other things so it does not bother me.
With all that said, I was wondering if you had tried to set up Firefly as yet, to work with your iTunes and music. I would be really interested to see how you went or even a SCO presentation of the setup and how you went.
FIrefly can be got here http://www.drobo.com/droboapps/index.php
Thanks Mike
Not sure if I'll be able to experiment that much with the Drobo as I'm using it a production backup device. Perhaps I should have kept the second one to play with :-)
It looks like the droboshare features a stupid USB 1 connector...