​Storage enclosures come in many varieties to target different market segments. They usually have one or more downstream SATA ports, while the uplink might be USB, eSATA, or Thunderbolt. USB is one of the most popular interfaces, and the rapid adoption of Type-C has only strengthened its presence in the low-end and mid-range markets. Within the USB storage enclosure market, device vendors have multiple opportunities to tune their product design for specific use-cases. Today's review will take a look at HighPoint's RocketStor RS6114V, a 4-bay direct-attached storage enclosure backed up by their software RAID stack.

Introduction

The HighPoint RocketStor RS6114V is a prosumer RAID enclosure. Traditionally, multi-bay storage enclosures that advertise RAID capabilities use hardware RAID. However, the RS6114V is different. HighPoint's aim with the product is to present prosumers with an economical DAS option while also serving to introduce them to their versatile RAID stack.

The RS6114V can accommodate either 2.5" or 3.5" drives, and connects to the computer using a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port. It has a 250W internal PSU. A Type-C to Type-A cable is bundled with the unit. Screws for installing both 2.5" and 3.5" drives are supplied.

The price point of $300 is achieved by avoiding high-end RAID chips with USB 3.1 Gen 2 bridges. Instead, we have the ASMedia ASM1352R (seen in almost every 2-bay USB 3.1 Gen 2 DAS available in the market) coupled with two SATA port multipliers (1x to 2x) - the ASMedia ASM1092. There is a Xilinx CPLD on the daughterboard too (we are yet to figure out its purpose).

The software RAID management is done via the HighPoint RocketStor RAID Manager software. As far as the RS6114V is concerned, the software is available only for Windows and Mac systems. The software is entirely managed via a browser UI. The configuration access can be secured with a password (off by default), and the port for the web server (7404 by default) can also be modified. The gallery below shows a quick overview of the UI and the options available.

Aspects that differentiate the HighPoint RS6114V from the run-of-the-mill RAID enclosures and OS-provided software RAID include ability to set up emails for event notification, enabling auto rebuild (with continued rebuild even if an error is encountered), and the ability to set the priority for the rebuild process (important due to the software RAID nature of the enclosure).

Setting up a RAID volume can be done using either the wizard (Quick Config.) or the manual way (Advanced Config.). The wizard allows configuration of JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5 volumes. The advanced configuration option can be used to create volumes in RAID 10 (in addition to the vanilla modes available through the wizard). Additional flexibility is also available - the existing data in the disks can be retained, or users can opt for a quick initialization. The initialization process can also be set for background or foreground operation. The cache policy (write back or write through) can also be configured. Since the enclosure uses software RAID, the appropriate policy must be chosen keeping in mind the probability of a power failure. The policy is set to write back by default. It can be changed even after the RAID array is created. The block size for the RAID can also be configured (512KB by default, configurable between 16KB and 1MB). The sector size can also be set to 512B (default), 1KB, 2KB, or 4KB.

It is not necessary to use the full capacity of a selected disk for the volume, and certain disks can also be configured as hot spares. The software also allows for online RAID level migration or capacity expansion. The browser UI also includes an event view and a storage health inspector that presents S.M.A.R.T information of the installed disks in an easy to understand manner.

In the rest of this review, we take a look at the performance of the enclosure, but, prior to that, we have the detailed specifications and miscellaneous aspects of the various storage bridges that we have evaluated so far. As is evident, the RocketStor RS6114V stands in a league of its own, despite the absence of hardware RAID.

Our evaluation routine for storage bridges borrows heavily from the testing methodology for direct-attached storage devices. The testbed hardware is reused. CrystalDiskMark is used for a quick overview, as it helps determine availability of UASP support and provides some performance numbers under ideal scenarios. Real-world performance testing is done with our custom test suite involving robocopy bencharks and PCMark 8's storage bench.

Performance with SSDs

Storage bridges operate in the maximum possible performance mode when the storage media is able to saturate the SATA links. SSDs are best suited for this purpose. Our first set of tests help in understanding how the HighPoint RS6114V behaves with Crucial MX200 500GB SSDs in the drive bays.

CrystalDiskMark uses four different access traces for reads and writes over a configurable region size. Two of the traces are sequential accesses, while two are 4K rando accesses. Internally, CrystalDiskMark uses the Microsoft DiskSpd storage testing tool. The 'Seq Q32T1' sequential traces use 128K block size with a queue depth of 32 from a single thread, while the '4K Q32T1' ones do random 4K accesses with the same queue and thread configurations. The plain 'Seq' traces use a 1MiB block size. The plain '4K' ones are similar to the '4K Q32T1' except that only a single queue and single thread are used.

Comparing the '4K Q32T1' and '4K' numbers can quickly tell us whether the storage device supports NCQ (native command queuing) / UASP (USB-attached SCSI protocol). If the numbers for the two access traces are in the same ballpark, NCQ / UASP is not supported. This assumes that the host port / drivers on the PC support UASP. We can see that the RS6114V does support UASP, but, due to the software RAID, it is not as effective as what we saw in 2-bay hardware RAID enclosures.

Power Consumption - CrystalDiskMark
HighPoint RS6114V - RAID 0HighPoint RS6114V - RAID 5Axtremex Micro SSD Gen2TerraMaster D2-310 - RAID 1TerraMaster D2-310 - RAID 0Satechi B01FWT2N3KCRU ToughTech Duo C - RAID 0CRU ToughTech Duo C - RAID 1Inateck UA1001Inateck FE2010StarTech.com S251BU31C3CB	HighPoint RS6114V - RAID 5Axtremex Micro SSD Gen2TerraMaster D2-310 - RAID 1TerraMaster D2-310 - RAID 0Satechi B01FWT2N3KCRU ToughTech Duo C - RAID 0CRU ToughTech Duo C - RAID 1Inateck UA1001Inateck FE2010StarTech.com S251BU31C3CBHighPoint RS6114V - RAID 0

Performance with Hard Drives

The benchmarks processed in the previous section were also run with four WD Red 10TB hard drives in the unit. Running the robocopy benchmarks segment of the AnandTech DAS Suite with hard drives attached to the storage bridge gives us the following performance numbers. The graphs show that the storage bridge is able to sustain around 340 MBps for real-world workloads when recently launched hard drives are used. The RAID configuration and parameters, as well as the workload characteristics, deeply influence the numbers. The results below are with the RAID volumes configured with the default parameters.

Power Consumption - CrystalDiskMark Workloads
HighPoint RS6114V - RAID 0HighPoint RS6114V - RAID 5TerraMaster D2-310 - RAID 0TerraMaster D2-310 - RAID 1	HighPoint RS6114V - RAID 5TerraMaster D2-310 - RAID 0TerraMaster D2-310 - RAID 1HighPoint RS6114V - RAID 0

​Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks

The RS6114V allows for hot-swapping of drives. That essentially means that the unit is able to tolerate sudden failure of one of the drives, and also rebuilds automatically once a new drive of equal or large capacity replaces the failed drive. We tested this aspect by hashing the contents of a folder in a RAID 5 volume (4x Crucial MX200 500GB) and yanking out one of the drives during the operation. There was an immediate queuing up of SATA commands to the volume, but the unit soon recovered and resumed servicing the requests.

A similar delay in request servicing was observed when a fresh drive was inserted to replaced the yanked out drive. That said, the volume remained online throughout.

RAID Rebuild

Rebuild was evaluated by using another Crucial MX200 500GB SSD to replace the one that was yanked out. The progress was monitored via the web UI We tracked the power consumption at the wall during the process.

The rebuild process for a RAID 5 volume took more than 3 hours for a 1.4TB volume. We started a similar experiment for a 4x 10TB RAID 5 volume, and the estimated rebuild time was around 84 hours. In any case, the rebuild process is software-based, and the numbers are heavily reliant on the capabilities of the host system.

TRIM Support

Storage bridges that support UASP fully can translate the SCSI UNMAP command to TRIM commands for SSDs connected to the downstream port. Checking for TRIM support has been a bit tricky so far. CyberShadow's trimcheck is a quick tool to get the status of TRIM support. However, it presents a couple of challenges: it sometimes returns INDETERMINATE after processing, and, in case TRIM comes back as NOT WORKING or not kicked in yet, it is not clear whether the blame lies with the OS / file system or the storage controller / bridge chip or the SSD itself. In order to get a clear idea, our TRIM check routine adopts the following strategy:

• Format the RAID volume in NTFS
• Load the trimcheck program into it and execute
• Use the PowerShell command Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter Z -ReTrim -Verbose (assuming that the drive connected to the storage bridge is mounted with the drive letter Z)
• Re-execute trimcheck to determine status report

Conclusions can be made based on the results from the last two steps.

Unfortunately, the RS6114V does not support TRIM passthrough.

Final Words

The HighPoint RS6114V is a solid 4-bay direct-attached storage unit. The enclosure's industrial design is pleasing to the eye. Despite its prosumer focus, the RAID management is novice-friendly. At the same time, it provides plenty of configuration options for the RAID volumes. The performance numbers are a tad disappointing, with the unit being unable to take full advantage of the USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface. That said, for its price point and feature set, it is difficult to find a comparable unit. 4-bay enclosures with higher performance numbers (such as the Akitio Thunder 3 Quad with software RAID or the HighPoint RocketStor 6314A with hardware RAID are Thunderbolt-based and priced significantly higher.

​The HighPoint RocketStor RS6114V is available on Amazon for $300. The closest competitor in terms of feature set is the Akitio Thunder 3 Quad for $380. The Akitio unit is capable of much better performance due to its Thunderbolt interface, but, it is incompatible with traditional USB ports and lacks the software RAID stack that makes the RS6114V an attractive option. Considering these factors, the RS6114V appears to provide good value for money.