Blow Me Away—the Factory Default Option

Re-installing the firmware on the ReadyNAS NV+, returning it to its out-of-the-box factory configuration, or switching the ReadyNAS between X-RAID and Flex-RAID mode, all require performing the Factory Default operation. With a push-pin or paper clip, you’ll need to press and hold the System Reset Switch inside the little hole labeled “SYS RST” on back of the ReadyNAS NV+ while it’s powered down, then powering it on again while holding the switch. How long you hold the switch depends on what the ReadyNAS does next.

Re-install ReadyNAS Firmware – The first step in recovering your ReadyNAS NV+ if you’ve inadvertently made a configuration change that has made it inaccessible. With the ReadyNAS off, press and hold the System Reset Switch and keep it held for 5 seconds as you power the ReadyNAS on. The disk LEDs will flash once as you pass the 5-second mark. Release the switch immediately—this is important. You’ll see a message on the Status LED that the firmware is being re-installed. The process takes several minutes. Re-installing the firmware does not affect your data or settings on the ReadyNAS. But if you hold the System Reset Switch down too long, you’ll initiate the destructive Factory Default.

 

Factory Default – The last resort in recovering your ReadyNAS NV+ if you’ve inadvertently made a configuration change that has made it inaccessible—or if you want to change the ReadyNAS between X-RAID and Flex-RAID mode. With the ReadyNAS off, press and hold the System Reset Switch and keep it held for exactly 30 seconds as you power the ReadyNAS on. The disk LEDs will flash once as you pass the 5-second mark with the switch depressed and the unit on; then a second and final time once you’ve passed the 30-second mark. Release the switch. Factory Default resets the ReadyNAS to all of its default parameters and wipes out all user accounts, shares, and data on the unit.

As soon as you initiate a Factory Default, if you want to change the RAID mode on your ReadyNAS you have a 10-minute window to launch RAIDar and click the Setup button, which will launch the ReadyNAS Volume Setup Wizard, where you can choose which RAID mode to use and how much disk space to allocate for snapshots. Note that if you choose Flex-RAID, the ReadyNAS NV+ will be configured with whatever RAID level that is appropriate for the number of drives installed in the unit. If you do nothing, your ReadyNAS NV+ will set itself back to its original volume configuration and RAID mode.

Benchmarks

I used a combination of synthetic and “real word” tests on two different PCs to measure the performance of the ReadyNAS NV+ in X-RAID and Flex-RAID (RAID 5 + hot spare) mode. The following hardware was used:

Both PCs and the ReadyNAS NV+ were connected to an SMC 8508T 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch which has Jumbo Frame support. After confirming that the ReadyNAS had the latest firmware revision (RAIDiator™ v3.01c1-p6 [1.00a034]), I downloaded the latest version of RAIDar (Version 3.01c1-p1) from Infrant's website, and installed it on both PCs.

The synthetic test consists of using Iometer (Build 2006.07.27) to measure sequential reads and writes using a 1GB test file. This procedure is used by Infrant to measure NAS performance, and you can get more details on the benchmark here. The “real world” test involves copying over 7 gigs of digital photos, and movies of various sizes, and my entire iTunes music collection to a share on the ReadyNAS through Windows Explorer. NetWorx 3.2—a bandwidth monitoring and statistics utility, was used to record the amount of time it took to copy all of the files down to the ReadyNAS, and the maximum transfer rate achieved during the process. Network interfaces in both PCs and the ReadyNAS NV+ were confirmed to be at Gigabit speeds, Full Duplex.

To gauge the effect of Jumbo Frames on Gigabit Ethernet performance, for the first phase of the test, Jumbo Frames were disabled on the network cards of the two test systems and the ReadyNAS. For the second phase of the tests, the network cards on the two PCs and the ReadyNAS had Jumbo Frames enabled to their highest settings:

For both sets of tests, the ReadyNAS Performance Options were configured as follows:

All other settings under the ReadyNAS Performance Options were left unchecked. In their lab with their specific setup, Infrant is getting 30 MB/sec on reads, and 24 MB/sec on writes. Since my configuration isn't identical to theirs, and since so many variables can effect network performance, I may not hit the same numbers on reads and writes, but I should come reasonably close. We'll see...

First, the Iometer tests:

Jumbo Frames definitely helps network throughput, provided you have all the necessary components in place (Jumbo Frame-ready network interface cards or integrated controllers, switches or hub, and at the minimum, CAT5e cable). The Athlon 64’s writes showed the most improvement under X-RAID, while gaining next to nothing in reads. The situation almost plays out the same for the Core 2 Extreme system, except it does manage to squeeze out a bit more read performance with Jumbo Frames.

The Flex-RAID results are interesting. With Jumbo Frames disabled the abysmal read scores on both systems certainly reinforce Infrant’s claim that X-RAID can perform at least 20% faster than conventional RAID. The nForce 4 network controller on the AMD box seems to have a slight throughput advantage over the Intel’s PRO/1000 PL controller in the Core 2 Extreme rig. Things start to look up for both boxes and Flex-RAID a bit, once we turn Jumbo Frames on. The writes aren’t quite as quick as they were under X-RAID, but they’re no longer in the toilet, either. The AMD system’s read scores have even improved a little, closing the previous gap under X-RAID with the Core 2 Extreme box quite nicely.

Neither system was able to hit Infrant’s 24 MB/sec score for writes on this ReadyNAS NV+ but they came fairly close. Still, they were able to squeeze by Infrant’s 30 MB/sec read score, and under X-RAID, the Core 2 Extreme posted the highest score of the tests and blew on by it. Not bad!

Now let's take a look at the File Copy tests:

There’s nothing like throwing some live data around to get an idea on how a piece of hardware really performs. Clearly, Gigabit Ethernet and Jumbo Frames are the way to go if you want to get the most out of your network. Although the transfer rates are practically identical, X-RAID does show an advantage over Flex-RAID in terms of the actual time it takes to back up a lot of medium to large-sized files. This is particularly important if your backup software performs file-by-file backups—as EMC’s Retrospect bundled with the ReadyNAS does. It’s even more important when it comes to performing restores, as you obviously want your backup to recover a crashed system as quickly as possible. You’d be surprised how the differences in minutes that you see here adds up with every additional gigabyte of data during a backup or restore.