Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9753/asustor-as6204t-braswell-nas-review
Asustor AS6204T Braswell NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on November 5, 2015 8:00 AM EST
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, targeting power users and SMBs. They have a wide variety of hardware platforms to choose from, ranging from ARM-based 2-bay systems to Xeon-based rackmounts. Asustor became the first COTS NAS (commercial off-the-shelf network-attached storage) vendor to introduce models based on Intel's 14nm Braswell SoCs back in September 2015. In this review, we take a look at the performance of the AS6204T, a 4-bay model.
Introduction and Testbed Setup
Asustor recently introduced ARM-based NAS models as well as an update to their Bay Trail models in order to serve both home consumers and SOHO / SMBs with better hardware platforms. Their Braswell lineup consists of four models, with each model name following the pattern AS6X0YT, where X (1 or 2) refers to the number of cores in the Braswell SoC in the model and Y (2 or 4) refers to the number of bays. The dual-core SoC used by Asustor is the Intel Celeron N3050, while the quad-core SoC is the Intel Celeron N3150. One of the more important updates in moving up from Bay Trail-based SoC such as the Celeron J1900 to the Braswell-based SoCs is the availability of AES-NI for accelerated encryption capabilities.
Asustor sampled us with the highest end model in the AS6xxx series, the AS6204T. The specifications of the Asustor AS6204T are provided in the table below. The corresponding specifications of some of the other contemporary NAS units are also included.
| Comparative NAS Configurations | ||
| Aspect | Asustor AS6204T | |
| Processor | Intel Celeron N3150 (Braswell 4C/4T Airmont x86 @ 1.6 GHz) | Intel Celeron N3150 (Braswell 4C/4T Airmont x86 @ 1.6 GHz) |
| RAM | 4 GB | 4 GB |
| Drive Bays | 4x 3.5"/2.5" SATA II / III HDD (Hot-Swappable) | 4x 3.5"/2.5" SATA II / III HDD (Hot-Swappable) |
| Network Links | 2x 1 GbE RJ-45 | 2x 1 GbE RJ-45 |
| External I/O Peripherals | 3x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, 2x eSATA | 3x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, 2x eSATA |
| Expansion Slots | None | None |
| Display Out | HDMI 1.4b | HDMI 1.4b |
| Power Supply | 90W (12V @ 7.5A) External Power Adapter | 90W (12V @ 7.5A) External Power Adapter |
| Full Specifications Link | Asustor AS6204T Specifications | Asustor AS6204T Specifications |
| Price (when reviewed) | USD 670 | USD 670 |
The various specifications of the NAS are backed up by the data gleaned via SSH access to the unit. The most interesting aspect here is the use of the Broadcom BCM57781 Ethernet controllers.
The industrial design of the Asustor units give us nothing to complain about. The LCD screen provides a quick way to look at and control the essential NAS configuration. The drive bays are solid and can take both 3.5" as well as 2.5" drives. The caddies also come with a basic locking mechanism to protect against accidental disk removal.
The setup process is quite straightforward. Upon connection to the network, the Asustor AS6204T receives a DHCP address even in a diskless state. The IP address can be determined either from the DHCP provider in the system or via the Asustor Control Center Windows / OS X utility. Starting off in a diskless state results in a prompt from the web UI to insert at least one disk in order to continue. The single disk can be configured in a JBOD volume and the login credentials can also be set up. The unit had no trouble in handling our standard RAID migration, expansion and rebuild operations using the 4TB WD Re drives.
In the rest of this piece, we will take a look at how the Asustor AS6204T takes advantage of the Braswell platform. We will be solely concentrating on objective metrics in this review. A discussion of the mobile apps, we UI and other subjective aspects will be covered in a future article. Benchmark numbers for both single and multi-client scenarios across a number of different client platforms as well as access protocols will be presented. We also have a separate section devoted to the performance of the NAS with encryption enabled. Prior to all that, we will take a look at our testbed setup and testing methodology.
Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology
The Asustor AS6204T can take up to 4 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 a RAID-5 volume. In order to keep things consistent across different NAS units, we benchmarked a RAID-5 volume with four 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 can run up to 25 Windows 7 or CentOS 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. However, keeping in mind the nature of this unit, we restricted ourselves to a maximum of 10 simultaneous clients.
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.
Single Client Performance - CIFS & iSCSI on Windows
The single client CIFS and iSCSI performance of the Asustor AS6204T 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.
The Asustor AS6204T provides acceptable performance in all workloads without particularly standing out in any particular one. That said, it manages to be in the top half of the performance pack in almost all of them.
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 iSCSI performance is slightly better than CIFS performance, but, again, nothing to make the unit stand out in the crowd.
Both CIFS and iSCSI have scope for performance improvements. It has to be kept in mind that ADM (the Asustor OS) is still a fledgling compared to other mature operating systems such as QNAP's QTS and Synology's DSM. The important takeaway here is that the system provides acceptable performance for all the workloads.
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. Asustor supports folder-level encryption only.
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. As mentioned in the first section, one of the adantages of Braswell is the presence of AES-NI even in the Celeron SKUs. The N3150 does have AES-NI support, and we should not be seeing much penalty in the performance of the encrypted shared folders.
First off, the presence of AES-NI ensures that we don't have abysmal performance for any workload. Moving on to the performance penalties, we find performance loss to be in the order of 10 - 15% for read-intensive workloads to as much as 40 - 50% for write-intensive ones. Again, there is some scope for optimization in ADM for these scenarios.
Multi-Client CIFS Performance for Consumer Workloads
The workloads experienced by a NAS unit in a typical home consumer setting have changed quite a bit over the last few years. Multiple mobile devices in a typical household raise the possibility that a NAS could be subject to the streaming out of multiple video files simultaneously. The popularity of IP cameras also make it necessary for NAS units to be able to record multiple video streams at the same time.
In our previous NAS reviews, we evaluated multi-client scenarios using synthetic workload traces and IOMeter. While there is nothing wrong in presenting numbers from such benchmarks, the reader is often left confused as to what those numbers might mean for his particular use-cases. Intel's NASPT benchmarking program gives us a good idea of the performance of the NAS unit when accessed by a single client. We took the source code of Intel's NASPT along with the supplied application traces and tweaked them to be able to run from more than one Windows client simultaneously in a co-ordinated manner. The graphs below present the results from tracking various metrics during the course of the benchmark runs. It must be noted that the average service times refer to what is obtained for all the traces when some of the data has already been cached in the client's memory. Unfortunately, NASPT doesn't provide any sort of guideline on what the optimal bandwidth and service times are for a good user experience.
Content Creation
The Content Creation workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 5 clients. Beyond that, the per-client bandwidth numbers start to plateau / get worse, and the average response time also starts ramping up steeply. The drop-down at the bottom of the graph shows other comparison points. We find that the QNAP TS-451+ can support an additional client and provide better per-client bandwidth for the same workload. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
Folder Copy from NAS
The Folder Copy from NAS workload seems to get acceptable performance across the maximum number of clients that we tested (10). In this workload, we actually see that the AS6204T can perform better than the QNAP TS-451+. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
Folder Copy to NAS
The Folder Copy to NAS workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 7 clients. Beyond that, we have a steep spike in the average response time. The QNAP TS-451+ performs better in this write-intensive workload. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
File Copy from NAS
The File Copy from NAS workload doesn't trouble the AS6204T. It gets acceptable performance across all tested clients (10). Unlike the QNAP TS-451+, the AS6204T is able to almost saturate the dual GbE links in this read-intensive workload. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
File Copy to NAS
The File Copy to NAS workload doesn't pose any problems to the AS6204T across the maximum number of clients we tested (10). The performance is actually neck-and-neck with the QNAP TS-451+ as we increase the number of clients. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
HD Video (1x) Playback
The HD Video (1x) Playback workload is read-intensive, and, as we have seen from previous workloads, the AS6204T is able to easily surpass the QNAP TS-451+ both in terms of nett bandwidth as well as lower average response times. In fact, a little bit of caching on the clients side actually enables apparent saturation of the network links. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Playback.png)
HD Video(1x) Playback and Record
The HD Video(1x) Playback and Record workload involves both reads and writes. The full-duplex nature of the network links enables the total bandwidth to be more than 300 MBps for this workload. Performance is better than the QNAP TS-451+ across all metrics for this workload. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Playback-and-Record.png)
HD Video (1x) Record
The HD Video (1x) Record workload fares similarly in both the AS6204T and the QNAP TS-451+. This write-intensive workload comes close to saturating the network links for both systems. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Record.png)
HD Video (2x) Playback
The HD Video (2x) Playback workload pulls the AS6204T ahead of the QNAP TS-451+ as the number of read streams increases. The network links are close to saturation in the Asustor case. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Playback.png)
HD Video (4x) Playback
The HD Video (4x) Playback workload behaves similar to the 2x playback workload. The AS6204T performs better than the QNAP TS-451+ in this case. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Playback.png)
Office Productivity
The Office Productivity workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 7 clients. Beyond that, we have a noticeable drop in the per-client bandwidth numbers and a ramp in the response times. The QNAP TS-451+ is able to easily surpass the AS6204T in this IOPS intensive workload. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
Photo Album
The Photo Album workload seems to get similar performance for both the AS6204T as well as the QNAP TS-451+. All 10 clients seem to get acceptable performance. However, the average write response times for the AS6204T are a bit higher compared to the QNAP TS-451+. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
The detailed logs from the processing of our benchmarks - inclusive of metrics such as the file open times for each workload on each of the clients - can be found here
Multi-Client CIFS Performance for Professional Workloads
NAS units used in SMBs / SMEs need to provide good performance under heavy load from multiple clients. The SPEC SFS 2014 benchmark uses real-life workloads (just like Intel NASPT), but makes it easier for users to understand the benchmark results. This is achieved by using the concept of business metrics. Given a particular NAS unit, how many concurrently accessed databases can reside in it? How many IP cameras or video streams can be simultaneously recorded? To determine this metric, each load point is associated with a target required op rate. If the NAS under test doesn't meet that op rate, it is deemed as an 'invalid run'. SPEC requires all published benchmarks to follow certain strict rules - such as presented results having no invalid runs for at least 10 load points. Unfortunately, small-scale NAS systems with 7200 RPM drives can't meet these requirements, Hence, we can't officially publish SPEC SFS 2014 benchmark results for the evaluation of the Asustor AS6204T.
Using a popular filer benchmarking program, we did play back multi-client real-world professional workload access traces on the NAS using up to 10 Windows 7 VMs. The Asustor AS6204T with four 7200 RPM hard drives in RAID-5 can support,at any given point of time, recording of 10 or more video streams, or, up to five databases, or, up to four software builds, or, up to three virtual desktops.
Database Operations
The Database Operations workload seems to get / doesn't seem to get acceptable performance for up to 5 clients.The detailed metrics from our trace playback are available here
Software Builds
The Software Builds workload seems to get / doesn't seem to get acceptable performance for up to 4 clients.The detailed metrics from our trace playback are available here
Video Recording
The Video Recording workload seems to get / doesn't seem to get acceptable performance for more than 10 clients.The detailed metrics from our trace playback are available here
Virtual Desktops
The Virtual Desktops workload seems to get / doesn't seem to get acceptable performance for up to 3 clients.The detailed metrics from our trace playback are available here
Multi-Client NFS Performance for Professional Workloads
We looked at the multi-client performance of CIFS shares for professional workloads in the previous section. In a similar manner, we also evaluated the multi-client NFS performance of the Asustor AS6204T. Instead of the Windows 7 VMs, we used CentOS 7 VMs. The network configuration remained the same. The NFS share exported on the NAS was mounted with the following options.
<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
Using a popular filer benchmarking program, we did played back the same multi-client real-world professional workload access traces used in the previous section. Similar to the strategy for the CIFS performance evaluation, failing to meet the required op rate criteria at a particular load point made us stop the testing a couple of load points down the road. NFS shares on the Asustor AS6204T with four 7200 RPM hard drives in RAID-5 can support, at any given point of time, recording of 10 or more video streams, or, up to 4 software builds, or, up to 3 virtual desktops. However, it can't support any database operations.
Database Operations
The Database Operations workload was a challenge to get up and running on a NFS share in the AS6204T. This workload makes extensive use of server-side NFS locking. Asustor's currently available firmware doesn't support NFS server locks (lockd). Upon providing an error report, they got back to me with a beta firmware integrating NFS server lock support. It enabled the workload trace to replay properly, but, unfortunately, the op rate seems to be limited by the software rather than the disk IOPS. The detailed metrics from our trace playback are available here
Software Builds
The Software Builds workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to four clients.The detailed metrics from our trace playback are available here
Video Recording
The Video Recording workload seems to get acceptable performance for more than 10 clients.The detailed metrics from our trace playback are available here
Virtual Desktops
The Virtual Desktops workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to three clients.The detailed metrics from our trace playback are available here
Miscellaneous Aspects and Final Words
In order to keep testing consistent across all 4-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. In the general state with the hard disk powered on, but not actively reading or writing data, the power consumption was around 47 W, though it dropped to around 14 W with the disks in sleep mode.
| Asustor AS6204T RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration (HH:MM:SS) | Avg. Power (W) |
| Single Disk Init | - | 19.94 W |
| JBOD to RAID-1 Migration | 08:08:00 | 31.27 W |
| RAID-1 (2D) to RAID-5 (3D) Migration | 17:31:00 | 43.65 W |
| RAID-5 (3D) to RAID-5 (4D) Expansion | 18:50:00 | 54.53 W |
| RAID-5 (4D) Rebuild | 08:23:00 | 55.25 W |
The graphs below show the power consumption and rebuild duration when repairing a RAID-5 volume for the various 4-bay NAS units that have been evaluated before.
The Asustor AS6204T is not the most power-efficient NAS around. The ARM-based 4-bay NAS units perform better in that respect. However, Asustor continues to have the shortest rebuild duration for a RAID-5 volume among all the 4-bay NAS units that we have tested before.
Concluding Remarks
Asustor became the first vendor to bring a Braswell-based NAS to the market with the AS6xxx series. The capabilities of the unit make it ideal for power users, SOHOs and SMBs. Since the AS6204T is based on the latest Braswell platform and uses the quad-core Celeron N3150, there is a slight pricing premium over the other 4-bay NAS units based on Intel platforms. With a street price of $670, it is approximately in the same ballpark as the recently reviewed QNAP TS-451+.
Asustor's ADM OS (v2.5 was used in our review) has been receiving numerous fixes and feature additions over the last year. One of the things that I like about Asustor is their prompt attention to feedback and bug reports, as well as speedy resolution of reported issues. Asustor knows that they have a lot of catching up to do in terms of OS features and performance. However, it is good from a consumer viewpoint that they are taking all efforts to bridge that gap as soon as possible.
Coming to the performance aspects, we find that CIFS read performance is very good, while write performance could definitely do with some improvements. NFS support, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired (both in terms of performance as well as supported features such as server side locks). The good aspect is that a beta release with a few fixes is already in our hands. The fixes will be migrating to a stable release shortly.
The AS6204T also comes with a HDMI 1.4b port and bundled media playing apps. The NAS can also be used as a media player for 4K videos with support for multi-channel audio over SPDIF as well as HDMI. The presence of AES-NI enables powerful encryption capabilities at a reasonable price point. The unit ships with 4GB of RAM, but users can upgrade easily to 8GB (the unit has two SO-DIMM slots). This could be important if a lot of apps end up running on the NAS simultaneously. Unlike competitors who provide a 2-year warranty for this class of products, Asustor advertises a 3-year warranty for the AS6204T.
Coming to the business end of the review, Asustor's top-end Braswell NAS is power efficient, extensible and performs in an acceptable manner. There is obviously scope for improvement on the software side - both in terms of performance as well as feature set. However, having observed the evolution of ADM over the last couple of years and the commitment shown by Asustor, I can say that they are on the right track.
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