TS-509 with 4GB RAM

[Dennis Wood]

In keeping with our rather exhaustive exploration of NAS performance, we've updated our two TS509 units to 4GB of RAM. A 4GB kit (2 x 2GB SO-DIMM 667 DDR2) did the trick. The RAM is from Kingston, part number KVR667D2S5K2/4G (http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/partsinfo.asp?root=&LinkBack=&ktcpartno=KVR667D2S5K2/4G) with a cost of about $80 (CAD) for the kit (2 sticks). These are SO-DIMM sticks which are typically used in laptops. To install in the TS509 takes about 2 minutes by removing the case cover, removing the 1 GB S0-DIMM and replacing with the two 2GB SO-DIMMS.

This may be voiding the warranty btw, so go at your own risk. The vast majority of failures in computer hardware occur relatively quickly, so after 30 days the odds are pretty slim of a warranty issue anyway.

More testing to come, but basically a 2.5GB file write to the NAS from a Vista RAID0 workstation ran at 101MB/s. More testing to come, but basically any single files up to about 3.5GB (or a file set under 3.5GB) should write at this speed. The test workstation is now running an Adaptec 3405 PCIe RAID controller card with 4 x 500GB WD drives attached. More tests on that coming too.

Cheers,

[Dennis Wood]

As expected, write speeds with a single 2.5GB test file have improved to 78 MB/s (4GB RAM), over the previous benchmark of 42 MB/s (1GB RAM), and read speeds remain similar. This makes sense as the 2.5GB file is fed into the NAS unit's 4GB cache. When re-reading or re-writing a cached file, performance is close to 100 MB/s. Increasing the NAS RAM will do little to improve read performance unless the file being read is already cached at either end.

This is where IOZONE is departing from measured performance...it models a much lower speed than actually measured. I can't find a single benchmarking program that does...they're either considerably over, or considerably under the measured results.

[Dennis Wood]

A bit more tuning with the result that using the Vista SP1 workstation with the Adaptec 3405, we're measuring 74MB/s writes and 91MB/s reads from the TS509. This is using our standard 4.8GB file set with a mixed set of files from 1.8GB to 75k or so.

An interesting downside of more RAM in the NAS is that if you write a large file set, and then request (read) a large file set immediately after, the read performance suffers while the previously cached files are written to disk.

Another improvement of note is the rate at which our ffmpeg encoding test over the LAN is sending data. A single 500MB HD file is split into two streams and these are written simultaneously to the NAS. The two streams are being written at a total of 65MB/s and read at 75MB/s.

[spikehome]

Nice.

Was not sure for buying the qnap ts509 or synology or readynas pro.
Synlogy is off because the speed.
qnap dont support iscsi but read at the qnap forum that it wil come.
readynas pro to expensive (yet).
so qnap with 4gb ram :D

[Don]

Great update. Thanks.

I have a question about the swap file. Does the size of the swap file need to be changed since you now have 4x the amount of memory?

Don

[Dennis Wood]

Once the RAM is installed, the NAS reports it in the system overview admin page....and that's it! There's nothing to configure on the unit.

[spikehome]

@Dennis Wood

Ordered this weekend a qnap-ts509 with the 4gb ram and 5x500gb disks.
One question: did you make the test with load balanced nics?
Or just with one nic?
(i hope my nas is here tomorrow:))

[Don]

Dennis,

I just installed two Kingston 2gb memory SODIMMS. When I go into web admin interface and go to System Logs -> System Information my systems shows Total Memory 3541.7 MB. Is this what yours shows? I assume it's because devices are mapped into this address space.

don

[faaip05]

So something must have went wrong with mine, it installed and booted just fine, then I go to see how much ram it is showing and I see:

Total Memory: 3033.7 MB

Also, the speeds (both read and write) are wayyyy slower then they were before. I am getting 14MB/s now, before I was in the 50-70MB/s range.

Any idea?

Current firmware version: 2.0.3 Build 1016T

[Don]

Don't know about the speed but it sounds like you have a 1gb and a 2gb installed. What is you network connection speed?

[faaip05]

Yeah, wow I had a dummy moment, I had the 1GB and 2GB installed.

But then I tried the 4GB and it was still slow, I was copying a 700MB file to the NAS and it was going as slow as 3.14MB/s :(

I put the 1GB back in and its still going at 13-14MB/s.

Network: Connection speed: 1000 Mbps, MTU: 1500 Bytes, LAN1: Down, LAN2: Up

I have no idea what is going on.

Don - what firmware are you running?

[Don]

I'm running version 2.0.3 build 1016. Your assuming the problem is on the NAS side. Try rebooting your PC and router to see if that helps.

[faaip05]

I'm running version 2.0.3 build 1016. Your assuming the problem is on the NAS side. Try rebooting your PC and router to see if that helps.

I was only assuming because I did all that stuff already, I changed the switch out, changed my NIC in my desktop.

All my other stuff on the network is still running at normal gig speeds, its just the NAS that is going so slow.

[Don]

Well your NAS is connecting at 1gb. Any messages in the log? Did you check System Information under System Logs to see if there are any LAN errrors? Have you tried using LAN 1 instead of LAN 2?

[faaip05]

Well your NAS is connecting at 1gb. Any messages in the log? Did you check System Information under System Logs to see if there are any LAN errrors? Have you tried using LAN 1 instead of LAN 2?

I went over all that, in the end I turned load balancing off and then I turned it back on and it shot up to 108 MB/s. Was that a bug? Or am I one of the lucky ones?

Thanks for your help Don, I really appreciate it.

TS 509 with 4GB ram + 100+ MB/s speed + SABnzbd = best NAS ever.

[faaip05]

Never mind that, seems the problem is back but resetting load balancing isn't fixing it.

Hmmm

[faaip05]

Is there some way that I can reset the TS-509 to factory settings? If I change the firmware if saves everything, how can I start from fresh?

I see the reset on the back of the unit, will that make it factory fresh?

Thanks

[Dennis Wood]

Don, yes, 3541GB. That's likely the OS at 16bit limit.

Faa, there was a post in the Qnap forum about the unit being slow after the disks had spun down. The poster had mentioned SAMBA sessions staying open. Check your connection log and see if there's a pile of open SAMBA sessions. We haven't seen that issue here at all, but if you are, definitely contact QNAP. One of our units has been up for about 13 days now...no issues to report.

Also, check your switches error log to see if your LACP ports are reporting ports up and down constantly. We've found that mixing LACP devices on the same switch is a sketchy proposition due to what seems a rather loose adherence to 802.3ad specs from various vendors.

[faaip05]

Don, yes, 3541GB. That's likely the OS at 16bit limit.

Faa, there was a post in the Qnap forum about the unit being slow after the disks had spun down. The poster had mentioned SAMBA sessions staying open. Check your connection log and see if there's a pile of open SAMBA sessions. We haven't seen that issue here at all, but if you are, definitely contact QNAP. One of our units has been up for about 13 days now...no issues to report.

Also, check your switches error log to see if your LACP ports are reporting ports up and down constantly. We've found that mixing LACP devices on the same switch is a sketchy proposition due to what seems a rather loose adherence to 802.3ad specs from various vendors.

Dennis, I've checked the logs and it always shows 1 SAMBA session for the file copying and 1 HTTP session from the Administration. The switch is fine from what I can tell, I've even put just the NAS and my Desktop on a separate switch to make sure. I sent an email to QNAP, I'm just hoping they don't want it back because of the 4GB of ram and voiding the warranty thing.

The thing that is getting me is that everything was fine until the 4GB and firmware upgrade, that is when my problem started, I was fine for months with my current equipment.

[faaip05]

So I just ended up resetting and formatting everything and started from fresh with the 4GB installed.

So far it seems good, I copied 700GB of data back to the NAS and it stayed at 100+ MB/s for all of the time (I did it 10-30GB at a time)

So I will just monitor it now and see how it goes

[Dennis Wood]

Definitely report back here if you have issues. Good to hear it's working ok for you. The RAM is pretty much a non-issue, other than perhaps optimizing SAMBA to take advantage. From what we're seeing on the two units testing though, the RAM update is performing exactly as predicted with files up to 4GB in size...and that's with zero code tweaks. If I had the time/patience to tweak SAMBA settings I would. We've got some extra parts floating around here so I smell an Ubuntu server coming soon....

Cheers,
Dennis.

[faaip05]

Seems to be working great, seems that the drive spin down a little bit quicker then normal, but I can live with it.

After testing I have been able to sustain file reads and writes at around 75MB/s between my Desktop and the NAS.

At first I was disappointed when it was said to forgo the jumbo frames, but now I am perfectly happy with the TS-509.

[Dennis Wood]

That sounds about right. With large file writes (over 10GB), the first 3GB or so will go at 100MB/s and then settle in about around 50MB/s. With reads, we're seeing from 75 to 85MB/s. The unit using the WD "Green" drives is at 75MB/s and the unit using Seagate Enterprise drives is at 85MB/s sustained reads. What we have not explored is whether the Netgear GS108T hosting unit 1 is any faster/slower than the 16 port 3COM 2916 switch unit 2 is on. The Netgear GS108T may be the least expensive LACL switch on the planet right now that fully supports 802.3ad link aggregation. For 8 ports, some very advanced features (web managed) and silent operation, this little switch is very affordable.

[MrFixit]

Dennis,

I know you have the 24G model but would you rate the HP 8 port unit over the Netgear switch that you have?

Prices are similar here in the UK: Netgear is ~£94 and the HP is ~106 (both inc. VAT) for Dabs.com.

[Dennis Wood]

If the HP 8G OS is the same as the 24G, then yes, I'd take it over the Netgear. HP's LACP implementation is the only one that actually makes sense to me. So far, the HP 1800-24G switch is the only one that works well with load balancing enabled on the TS509, whilst using dual NIC workstations (Marvel chipset). Previously the workstation dual NIC's had to be disabled and single ports used leaving only the TS509s trunked.

Having now looked at five 802.3ad switches, the HP Procurve would be my preference in terms of it's LAG performance, silence!! and ease of configuration via the web interfaces. It's also lickity split quick.

[MrFixit]

If the HP 8G OS is the same as the 24G, then yes, I'd take it over the Netgear. HP's LACP implementation is the only one that actually makes sense to me. So far, the HP 1800-24G switch is the only one that works well with load balancing enabled on the TS509, whilst using dual NIC workstations (Marvel chipset). Previously the workstation dual NIC's had to be disabled and single ports used leaving only the TS509s trunked.

Having now looked at five 802.3ad switches, the HP Procurve would be my preference in terms of it's LAG performance, silence!! and ease of configuration via the web interfaces. It's also lickity split quick.

Thanks for the info Dennis - it is nice to have first hand experience to go on.

As far as I can tell the 8 port version is identical to the 24 port (but with less ports) except for the mini-GBIC port features. But then I was not planning on using fibre.

From HP's datasheet:

"The HP ProCurve Switch 1800 Series consists of two Gigabit, fanless, Web-managed switches that are ideal for deployment in open offices that require silent operation. The HP ProCurve Switch 1800-24G is a 24-port 10/100/1000 switch with two dual-personality ports for RJ-45 10/100/1000 or mini-GBIC fiber Gigabit connectivity. The HP ProCurve Switch 1800-8G is a small form factor, 8-port 10/100/1000 switch. The ProCurve Switch 1800 Series enables increased network capabilities and control versus unmanaged switches, with support for fundamental networking protocols such as trunking and VLANs. Both switches are managed through an intuitive Web interface. The ProCurve Switch 1800 Series is ideal for businesses making the transition from unmanaged connectivity to managed networks without added cost or complexity."

From this I guess the OS's would be very similar - they both use the HP ProCurve Manager via Web browser - the 8G just lacking anything to do with the GBIC ports.

From the spec the only real differience that I can see is that the installed memory is somewhat reduced:

8-G


1 MB flash, 64 KB SDRAM, 1 MB RAM/ROM capacity; packet buffer size 500KB

24-G


2 MB flash, 64 KB SDRAM, 2 MB RAM/ROM capacity; packet buffer size 144KB

I am assuming that this is only because there is no need with only one third of the number of ports, and obviously may impact the price - so it looks like I may be raiding the IT piggy bank:eek:

BTW - my workstations have one PCI-e Gbit interface and one PCI interface. While I know that the PCI one will be a little slower, I am hoping that the overall imapct of not having both as PCI-e is low.

[Dennis Wood]

Thanks for saying thanks :-) Yep, the 8 port HP is the one you want then. With the number of switches we've tested over the last 4 months it's nice to be able to help others make informed choices. Being that it's almost impossible to get your hands on these units before buying, the only recourse is folks sharing opinions via the web. The one thing missing from the HP switches is comprehensive error logging. That said, HP's LACP status page is the only one like it amongst these inexpensive switches.

If you need to max out your NAS performance there are two things you need on your workstations:

1. RAID 0 (onboard is fine, but use 3 drives if possible)
2. PCIe gigabit. I'm betting your slower workstation has a PCIe (1x slot) free.

Not the end of the world if you keep the PCI gigE workstation but it will limit speed. If you're using just a single hard drive in it...then the PCI card isn't that much of a hit.

[MrFixit]

Dennis,

Thanks again for the switch recommendation.

I probably could have been clearer about my NICs. I have two Workstations each of which have one PCI-e GBit interface and one PCI GBit interface i.e. they both have two GBit interfaces (built into the motherboard) with one of these being PCI-E and the other one just PCI.

So what I am considering is combining these GBit interfaces on each workstation to get maximum performance by connecting them to the 8 port HP switch (together with the two GBit interfaces on the TS-509). That then leaves 1 port to connect to my router and 1 spare.

Is that how it works?

[Dennis Wood]

Linux has the ability to "team" disparate NICs but windows does not (although I'd guess there's a tool or two out there to do this). Our workstations have dual onboard NICs (Marvel Yukon) based and although ASUS does not claim that they can be teamed...installing the driver from Marvell does work just fine. In other words, the NIC manufacturer normally provides the teaming driver in the windows environment.

Now if the workstations are not serving up files, or accessing two NAS units at the same time, there's little benefit to teaming them anyway. A busy NAS will do much better with dual NIC's in load balancing configuration so that multiple workstations don't saturate one "pipe".

I'll have to look at port stats a bit closer on the Procurve switch to see exactly how it's arranging it's pairs being that it's the first switch handling LACP as I'd expect. A first look would suggest it's dynamically adjusting the trunking depending on what's on the network.

EDIT: A quick look at the HP switch stats show that something different is going on as opposed to the 3COM 2916 switch. During a large file transfer from an LACP (dual NIC) workstation to the dual NIC (LACP again) TS509, both ports are busy with TX and RX traffic on both ends. In other words, for the first time, I'm observing a dual NIC setup where both ports are being used to increase bandwidth to the workstation..and that's pretty cool. Previously, one port was pretty much idle in the same situation. So when it comes to LAG and LACP, not all switches that claim to adhere to the 802.3ad standard behave the same...and HP so far is 2 thumbs up.

This also means that based on these observations (more testing required) a dual NIC workstation should perform better than a single NIC workstation when accessed a load balancing NAS...providing you're using a switch that does LACP like the Procurve does.

[david.woodward]

Thanks for the tip on upgrading to 4GB of RAM. I was trying to decide if the price was worth it because a lot of the files I access are 2-3 GB in size and the drop in performance after 1GB was not very attractive. The extra perfomance boost on large files after the memory upgrade made the decision easy. (They should really sell a "Pro+" version of this unit that comes with 4GB preinstalled)

So, anyway... my question is this. I noticed from the pics of the motherboard (on your review of the TS-509 Pro (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30549/75/1/1/)) that it looks like there is only room for one DIMM on the motherboard. Are the slots stacked on top of eachother or something? Does the unit really take two DIMMs?

Thanks again,
David

[Dennis Wood]

Yes, the SODIMMS insert at about 45 degrees then rotated downwards to engage the two plastic retaining clips on each side of the SODIMM. Right now there is one slot used with a 1GB SODIMM. You remove that and replace with 2 x 2GB SODIMMS which end pretty much laying on top of each other. This is a convention used in many laptops to save space.

Cheers,
Dennis.

[Don]

Yes it does take two dimms.

[lifeisfun]

One additional 1GB woul be also acceptable - Right ?

[Dennis Wood]

Absolutely.

[lifeisfun]

Perfect, leftover from laptop upgrade will be put to good use !

[andbir]

In keeping with our rather exhaustive exploration of NAS performance, we've updated our two TS509 units to 4GB of RAM. A 4GB kit (2 x 2GB SO-DIMM 667 DDR2) did the trick. The RAM is from Kingston, part number KVR667D2S5K2/4G (http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/partsinfo.asp?root=&LinkBack=&ktcpartno=KVR667D2S5K2/4G) with a cost of about $80 (CAD) for the kit (2 sticks). These are SO-DIMM sticks which are typically used in laptops.

These are CAS Level 5 (CL5) memory chips, did anyone try it with faster (i.e. CL4) chips?

Thanks,


andreas

[AndyJapan]

One additional 1GB woul be also acceptable - Right ?

These are CAS Level 5 (CL5) memory chips, did anyone try it with faster (i.e. CL4) chips?


I like the idea of 'lifeisfun' as an upgrade to 2GB might deliver a speed boost at a rather low cost. (Buying only 1x 1GB SODIMM vs. buying 2x 2GB SODIMMs)
The question is whether any 1GB SODIMM would be compatible.
Does anyone know the brand and specs of the 1GB SODIMM that is installed by QNAP? I assume that Dennis might know it as he upgraded his TS-509.
I am asking as I would try to pick a SODIMM with identical specs in order to avoid any compatibility problems.

[Don]

Does anyone know the brand and specs of the 1GB SODIMM that is installed by QNAP? I assume that Dennis might know it as he upgraded his TS-509.
I am asking as I would try to pick a SODIMM with identical specs in order to avoid any compatibility problems.

The specs are in the previous post.

[AndyJapan]

The specs are in the previous post.

Don, you are right that Dennis mentioned that Kingston 667MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL5 SODIMMs worked, but Dennis removed the 1GB DIMM and installed the 2 Kingston SO-DIMMs that he purchased as kit - usually a troublefree & safe solution. However, I would like to install an additional 1GB SO-DIMM only.
I had trouble with incompatible RAM in the past and might therefore be a little bit overcautious when it comes to RAM upgrades.
I now decided to open the TS-509 and check out what RAM is installed before ordering an additional SO-DIMM. Best case scenario would be if I could just use the 1GB SO-DIMM from my previously upgraded EeePC 1000H.

[faaip05]

You are correct, they are stacked.

The 509 does in fact take two.

[Dennis Wood]

I did indeed decide to install a matched set to get to 4GB. Things may have changed in the industry but after about 18 years of building and otherwise messing with PCs, the RAM being matched (particularly given the set was only $80!) is an old habit :-) Installing your spare 1GB SODIMM will almost certainly not damage anything, so I'd give it a try and test for stability.

The existing TS509 1GB SODIMM specs are "667MHz DDR2 Non-ECC" which is why I was pretty confident the Kingston 667MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL5 would work. Kingston also has an 800MHz version which is more expensive but I'm pretty sure would work just fine.

[GEoMaNTiK]

Hi Guys,

I'm ready to lay down the $$$'s on a TS-509.

Just a quick question, I want to hold on to my warranty for the 1 year and then upgrade the memory from it's 1GB to 4GB. Does it matter that by that time I will have my drives loaded with files, as I noticed faaip05 had some rather strange speed issues and had to re-setup.
Or is the correct way to do the memory upgrade, is to install the memory first and then setup the RAID5 drives etc?

Has anyone else installed memory after the drives had been configured & loaded with files, has this caused any slow transfer speeds that have required a reformat?

Cheers in advance.