Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/8757/asustor-as7008t-8bay-intel-haswell-smb-nas-review
Asustor AS7008T 8-bay Intel Haswell SMB NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on November 30, 2014 5:05 PM EST
Introduction and Testbed Setup
Asustor is one of the recent entrants in the NAS market. Over the last couple of years, they have tried to play in the same space as QNAP and Synology (with units based on the Atom D2700 as well as Evansport). However, they have recently opted to put more emphasis on the mid- to upper-range of the market with Haswell-based products in the 70-series. Rackmounts were introduced at CES, and the lineup was expanded at Computex. Asustor sent over the AS7008T, the 8-bay variant in a tower form factor, for review.
Unlike the 8-bay tower units from QNAP and Synology, the AS7008T opts for a horizontal drive strategy with two columns of drive bays. The main selling point of Asustor's 70-series is the presence of a high-performance Haswell Core-i3 processor (compared to the Atom-based models that QNAP and Synology are putting emphasis on for the SMB market). However, it has to be noted that the cost is correspondingly higher too. In terms of chassis I/O and hardware features, the AS7008T comes with a PCIe 3.0 x8 expansion slot and HDMI output. Other connections are pretty standard, with the usual bevy of USB 2.0 and 3.0 as well as eSATA ports. As usual for such systems, the 350W PSU is in-built. The PSU has a small fan in addition to the 2x 120mm fans in the rear responsible for cooling the drives and the motherboard components.
The specifications of the Asustor AS7008T are provided in the table below
| Asustor AS7008T Specifications | |
| Processor | Intel Core i3-4330 (2C/4T Haswell x86 Cores @ 3.5 GHz) |
| RAM | 2GB DDR3 (Expandable. Max 16GB) |
| Drive Bays | 8x 3.5"/2.5" SATA II / III HDD / SSD (Hot-Swappable) |
| Network Links | 2x 1 GbE |
| External I/O Peripherals | 3x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, 2x eSATA |
| Expansion Slots | PCIe 3.0 x8 |
| VGA / Display Out | HDMI |
| Full Specifications Link | Asustor AS7008T Specifications |
| Price | USD 1523 (Newegg) |
In the rest of the review, we will take a look at the Haswell / 8-series PCH and how the Asustor AS7008T takes advantage of it. This is followed by benchmark numbers for both single and multi-client scenarios across a number of different client platforms as well as access protocols. We have a separate section devoted to the performance of the NAS with encrypted shared folders. Prior to all that, we will take a look at our testbed setup and testing methodology.
Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology
The Asustor AS7008T can take up to 8 drives. Users can opt for either JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6 or RAID 10 configurations. We expect typical usage to be with multiple volumes in a RAID-5 or RAID-6 disk group. However, to keep things consistent across different NAS units, we benchmarked a RAID-5 volume spanning all drives. Eight Western Digital WD4000FYYZ RE drives were used as the test disks. Our testbed configuration is outlined below.
| AnandTech NAS Testbed Configuration | |
| Motherboard | Asus Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA2011 SSI-EEB |
| CPU | 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2630L |
| Coolers | 2 x Dynatron R17 |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsZ F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL (8x8GB) CAS 10-10-10-30 |
| OS Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Secondary Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Tertiary Drive | OCZ Z-Drive R4 CM88 (1.6TB PCIe SSD) |
| Other Drives | 12 x OCZ Technology Vertex 4 64GB (Offline in the Host OS) |
| Network Cards | 6 x Intel ESA I-340 Quad-GbE Port Network Adapter |
| Chassis | SilverStoneTek Raven RV03 |
| PSU | SilverStoneTek Strider Plus Gold Evolution 850W |
| OS | Windows Server 2008 R2 |
| Network Switch | Netgear ProSafe GSM7352S-200 |
The above testbed runs 25 Windows 7 VMs simultaneously, each with a dedicated 1 Gbps network interface. This simulates a real-life workload of up to 25 clients for the NAS being evaluated. All the VMs connect to the network switch to which the NAS is also connected (with link aggregation, as applicable). The VMs generate the NAS traffic for performance evaluation.
Thank You!
We thank the following companies for helping us out with our NAS testbed:
- Thanks to Intel for the Xeon E5-2630L CPUs and the ESA I-340 quad port network adapters
- Thanks to Asus for the Z9PE-D8 WS dual LGA 2011 workstation motherboard
- Thanks to Dynatron for the R17 coolers
- Thanks to G.Skill for the RipjawsZ 64GB DDR3 DRAM kit
- Thanks to OCZ Technology for the two 128GB Vertex 4 SSDs, twelve 64GB Vertex 4 SSDs and the OCZ Z-Drive R4 CM88
- Thanks to SilverStone for the Raven RV03 chassis and the 850W Strider Gold Evolution PSU
- Thanks to Netgear for the ProSafe GSM7352S-200 L3 48-port Gigabit Switch with 10 GbE capabilities.
- Thanks to Western Digital for the eight WD RE hard drives (WD4000FYYZ) to use in the NAS under test.
Setup Impressions and Platform Analysis
The setup process of the Asustor AS-304T was covered briefly in our detailed review. The process for the AS-7008T was very similar. Before going into that, let us take a look at what we get with the NAS package.
Asustor provides two RJ-45 cables, a US power cord, screws for both 2.5" and 3.5" drive installations. There is also an installation CD supplied with the unit, though we had no reason to use it in the setup process. The unit got a DHCP address after booting up even in diskless mode. Accessing the web UI enables the user to get started with a ste-by-step guide. A firmware update check is processed as soon as the initial setup is done.
The initial login screen allows users to take a tour of the major features of the ADM OS. The standard storage manager allows users to have a look at the various disks and volumes currently in the unit, along with the configured iSCSI LUNs and targets. Access control enables configuration of users, groups, shared folders and related permissions. While adding a shared folder, it is possible to set up encryption parameters. Beyond Access Control, we have Services as the next major configuration aspect. Some of the services such as CIFS are enabled by default. For our evaluation, we enabled CIFS, NFS and iSCSI, while ensuring that AFP was disabled. Enabling NFS service also enables a NFS privileges tab in the shared folders subsection of the Access Control section.
The other sections that we didn't pay too much attention during the review process were the App Central, Backup & Restore and Cloud Connect for external access. With the help of an Asustor ID, it is possible to have relay access to the NAS over the Internet. Ports can also be opened for direct access. App Central requires an Asustor ID for access. Enabling sideloading of apps would be a nice feature, but this currently doesn't seem to be possible.
Enabling SSH access allows more insight into the internal platform of the unit. We find that ADM 2.3 is based on Linux kernel version 3.12.20. The unit runs with 2 GB of RAM, with 256 MB reserved (the rest is available to ADM and apps). The motherboard sports an 8 series chipset (likely to be Q87).
The giveaway is the presence of a 6-port SATA controller. We still need to account for the 2 internal SATA ports and 2 eSATA ports. These seem to be fulfilled by the ASMedia ASM1062 PCIe x1 to 2x SATA III bridge chips. Interestingly, the platform utilizes Broadcom's NetLink BCM57781 Gigabit Ethernet transceivers (PCIe 2.0 x1 to 1Gbps Ethernet) for the network ports. The PCIe lanes for the expansion slot appear to be right out of the CPU rather than the PCH. The DRAM slots are SO-DIMM and run at 1600 MHz.
Single Client Performance - CIFS & iSCSI on Windows
The single client CIFS and iSCSI performance of the Asustor AS7008T was evaluated on the Windows platforms using Intel NASPT and our standard robocopy benchmark. This was run from one of the virtual machines in our NAS testbed. All data for the robocopy benchmark on the client side was put in a RAM disk (created using OSFMount) to ensure that the client's storage system shortcomings wouldn't affect the benchmark results. It must be noted that all the shares / iSCSI LUNs are created in a RAID-5 volume. As expected, the more power platform in Haswell enables the unit to shine in almost all the single client workloads.
We created a 250 GB iSCSI LUN / target and mapped it on to a Windows VM in our testbed. The same NASPT benchmarks were run and the results are presented below. The observations we had in the CIFS subsection above hold true here too.
In a few of the benchmarks, the Rangeley-based Synology DS1815+ manages to take the lead over the AS7008T. This can be attributed to the fact that Synology's DSM is much more mature compared to Asustor's ADM.
Single Client Performance - CIFS and NFS on Linux
A CentOS 6.2 virtual machine was used to evaluate NFS and CIFS performance of the NAS when accessed from a Linux client. We chose IOZone as the benchmark for this case. In order to standardize the testing across multiple NAS units, we mount the CIFS and NFS shares during startup with the following /etc/fstab entries.
//<NAS_IP>/PATH_TO_SMB_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER cifs rw,username=guest,password= 0 0
<NAS_IP>:/PATH_TO_NFS_SHARE /PATH_TO_LOCAL_MOUNT_FOLDER nfs rw,relatime,vers=3,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2, sec=sys,mountaddr <NAS_IP>,mountvers=3,mountproto=udp,local_lock=none,addr=<NAS_IP> 0 0
The following IOZone command was used to benchmark the CIFS share:
IOZone -aczR -g 2097152 -U /PATH_TO_LOCAL_CIFS_MOUNT -f /PATH_TO_LOCAL_CIFS_MOUNT/testfile -b <NAS_NAME>_CIFS_EXCEL_BIN.xls > <NAS_NAME>_CIFS_CSV.csv
IOZone provides benchmark numbers for a multitude of access scenarios with varying file sizes and record lengths. Some of these are very susceptible to caching effects on the client side. This is evident in some of the graphs in the gallery below.
Readers interested in the hard numbers can refer to the CSV program output here.
The NFS share was also benchmarked in a similar manner with the following command:
IOZone -aczR -g 2097152 -U /nfs_test_mount/ -f /nfs_test_mount/testfile -b <NAS_NAME>_NFS_EXCEL_BIN.xls > <NAS_NAME>_NFS_CSV.csv
The IOZone CSV output can be found here for those interested in the exact numbers.
A summary of the bandwidth numbers for various tests averaged across all file and record sizes is provided in the table below. As noted previously, some of these numbers are skewed by caching effects. A reference to the actual CSV outputs linked above make the entries affected by this effect obvious.
| Asustor AS7008T - Linux Client Performance (MBps) | ||
| IOZone Test | CIFS | NFS |
| Init Write | 82 | 82 |
| Re-Write | 83 | 81 |
| Read | 46 | 122 |
| Re-Read | 48 | 122 |
| Random Read | 27 | 56 |
| Random Write | 82 | 78 |
| Backward Read | 26 | 44 |
| Record Re-Write | 1690* | 1637* |
| Stride Read | 44 | 104 |
| File Write | 82 | 81 |
| File Re-Write | 84 | 81 |
| File Read | 33 | 90 |
| File Re-Read | 33 | 91 |
| *: Benchmark number skewed due to caching effect | ||
Multi-Client Performance - CIFS on Windows
We put the Asustor AS7008T through some IOMeter tests with a CIFS share being accessed from up to 25 VMs simultaneously. The following four graphs show the total available bandwidth and the average response time while being subject to different types of workloads through IOMeter. The tool also reports various other metrics of interest such as maximum response time, read and write IOPS, separate read and write bandwidth figures etc. Some of the interesting aspects from our IOMeter benchmarking run can be found here.
The Asustor AS7008T shows remarkable consistency in this test, with the network links getting saturated with as little as 4 clients compared to the 12+ clients needed for the Seagate R8. The DS1815+ wins in terms of the raw numbers because of the four native GbE links on the board.
The 50% read workload presents a challenge to the AS7008T, though. Beyond 16 clients, we see a sharp decline in performance, something that the Synology DS1815+ doesn't suffer from. That said, the DS1812+ also demonstrated similar issues when it was evaluated last year.
In the Random 8K 70% reads workload, we find the Seagate R8 to be the surprise winner, but the AS7008T shows remarkable consistency.
The observations we had for the previous workload hold true for the Real Life - 60% Random 65% Reads case too.
On the whole, the four network links in the DS1815+ give it the lead in terms of raw benchmar numbers for most workloads. Except for the 50% sequential reads workload, the AS7008T shows remarkable consistency when evaluated with accesses from up to 25 simultaneous clients.
Multi-Client iSCSI Evaluation
As virtualization becomes more and more popular even in home / power user settings, the importance of the iSCSI feature set of any COTS NAS can't be overstated. Starting with our ioSafe 1513+ review, we have started devoting a separate section (in the reviews of NAS units targeting SMBs and SMEs) to the evaluation of iSCSI performance. The Asustor ADM only allows for iSCSI LUNs to be created as regular files and doesn't allow for multiple sessions to a single target. Even the Seagate NAS Pro units have this capability. Fortunately, from a review perspective, we only had one iSCSI configuration to evaluate.
We evaluated the performance of the Asustor AS7008T with file-based LUNs only. The standard IOMeter benchmarks that we used for multi-client CIFS evaluation were utilized for iSCSI evaluation also. The main difference to note is that the CIFS evaluation was performed on a mounted network share, while the iSCSI evaluation was done on a 'clean physical disk' (from the viewpoint of the virtual machine).
Performance Numbers
The four IOMeter traces were run on the physical disk manifested by mapping the iSCSI target on each VM. The benchmarking started with one VM accessing the NAS. The number of VMs simultaneously playing out the trace was incremented one by one till we had all 25 VMs in the fray. Detailed listings of the IOMeter benchmark numbers (including IOPS and maximum response times) for each configuration are linked below:
Synology provides multiple ways to create iSCSI LUNs, each with different pros and cons (we are only looking at the bandwidth and response time numbers in the graphs above). The problem for the AS7008T lies in the fact that there are only two network links. This severely hampers the benchmark numbers and causes performance to degrade beyond a couple of clients for the real life 60% random / 65% reads workload. The other traces have the same behaviour as the multi-client CIFS workloads, but Synology just provides more alternatives to the end-user.
Encryption Support Evaluation
Consumers looking for encryption capabilities can opt to encrypt a iSCSI share with TrueCrypt or some in-built encryption mechanism in the client OS. However, if requirements dictate that the data must be shared across multiple users / computers, relying on encryption in the NAS is the best way to move forward. Most NAS vendors use the industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption algorithm. One approach is to encrypt only a particular shared folder while the other approach is to encrypt the full volume. ADM doesn't support encrypted volumes, but only encrypted shared folders.
On the hardware side, encryption support can be in the form of specialized hardware blocks in the SoC (common in ARM / PowerPC based NAS units). In x86-based systems, accelerated encryption support is dependent on whether the AES-NI instruction is available on the host CPU. The Core i3-4330 has AES-NI support. Assuming that ADM takes advantage of AES-NI, we should see very little performance penalty for encrypted folders.
The graphs below compare the single client access numbers for an encrypted CIFS share for various 8-bay NAS units that have been evaluated previously. For the AS7008T alone, we have the numbers from a non-encrypted share for the same workload. This allows us to check the encryption penalty easily.
As expected, the encryption penalty is minimal. The DS1815+ fares a bit better in a few workloads, but, for the most part, things play out in a manner similar to what we saw in the single client CIFS performance section.
Miscellaneous Aspects and Final Words
In order to keep testing consistent across all 8-bay units, we performed all our expansion / rebuild testing as well as power consumption evaluation with the unit configured in RAID-5. The disks used for benchmarking (Western Digital WD4000FYYZ) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the unit as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities.
| Asustor AS7008T RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration (HH:MM:SS) | Avg. Power (W) |
| Single Disk Init | 00:12:00 | 40.64 W |
| JBOD to RAID-1 Migration | 08:23:00 | 47.76 W |
| RAID-1 (2D) to RAID-5 (3D) Migration | 19:16:00 | 63.32 W |
| RAID-5 (3D) to RAID-5 (4D) Expansion | 19:55:00 | 74.33 W |
| RAID-5 (4D) to RAID-5 (5D) Expansion | 20:05:00 | 86.9 W |
| RAID-5 (5D) to RAID-5 (6D) Expansion | 20:12:00 | 99.19 W |
| RAID-5 (6D) to RAID-5 (7D) Expansion | 20:08:00 | 114.14 W |
| RAID-5 (7D) to RAID-5 (8D) Expansion | 20:23:00 | 128.76 W |
| RAID-5 (8D) Rebuild | 08:25:00 | 131.23 W |
The graphs below show the power consumption and rebuild duration when repairing a RAID-5 volume for the various 8-bay NAS units that have been evaluated before.
Asustor has the best RAID rebuild durations amongst all the NAS units that we have evaluated so far. The power numbers, though, are a bit skewed by the fact that the current version of ADM has a major problem with the fan curves in the Auto setting.
We observed that the fans would remain at 600 RPM till one of the HDD's temperature reached 53 C. After that it would suddenly ramp up to more than 3000 RPM, but go back to 600 RPM as soon as the temperature dropped below 50 C. The duration for the medium speed settings (around 1500 RPM) was very minimal. The end result was that, during the RAID expansion and rebuild processes, the fan would ramp up to very high speeds periodically ever 20 - 30 minutes. On top of this, after around 3 days of the ramping up and down, we found that the fan control stopped working (hot HDDs wouldn't trigger higher fan speeds). Manually altering the fan speeds wouldn't work either. Only a restart managed to solve the problem. In order to ensure system safety, we put the Fan Speed settings on High all through the RAID-5 rebuild test. [Update: Asustor has released a new firmware version which fixes this problem.] This explains the unreasonably high system power consumption in the above graph. With the speed setting at 600 RPM, the rebuild process only consumed around 123 W on an average (compared to the 131 W we observed above).
Concluding Remarks
The business-oriented COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) NAS market is interestingly poised. While Seagate and Synology have decided to target it with Rangeley-based systems, QNAP has decided to go the Bay Trail-D route. The nett result is that 8-bay systems from Synology (DS1815+) and QNAP (TS-853 Pro) retail for less than $1100. The decision to go with Haswell means that Asustor is targeting the higher end of this market segment. The price is correspondingly higher at more than $1500.
Haswell ensure better performance for many workloads compared to the competition. The ADM OS is very pleasing to use (particularly when compared to other fledgling OSes such as the Seagate NAS OS). 'System Migration' from existing low-bay count Asustor NAS units was quite easy (We tested it out by moving the disks from the Asustor AS-304T to the AS7008T for long term testing, and the AS7008T just worked with the settings from the previous NAS). Asustor has put in lot of focus on the ADM packages as well as mobile apps.
The above advantages aside, there are certain areas where Asustor could improve. The first is on the hardware side - Both QNAP and Synology's offerings at a lower price point come with four network links included in the package. While the AS7008T does have a PCIe expansion slot to plug in 10GbE cards, it really should have been part of the base platform. The second is the fact that ADM needs some more time to mature - For example, even the Seagate NAS OS has the ability to have multiple initiators to connect to a single iSCSI target. Asustor indicated that it is on their roadmap, but, unless their customers start demanding in more numbers, it will not be prioritized. The web UI could also use some polish with resizable inner windows.
On the whole, it is heartening to see another strong and upcoming contender in the SMB / SME NAS space. Asustor currently puts a premium on the AS7008T, with Newegg pricing slightly above $1500. They are able to command the premium not because of the wealth of hardware features, but more because other vendors have not really updated their Core i3-based models that target this particular market segment. We look forward to the Asustor Data Manager (ADM) OS getting more updates and becoming a more well-rounded operating system.
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