ioSafe 1513+ Review: A Disaster-Resistant Synology DS1513+
by Ganesh T S on August 13, 2014 7:30 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Storage
- Synology
- Enterprise
- ioSafe
Single Client Performance - CIFS & 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.
| ioSafe 1513+ - Linux Client Performance (MBps) | ||
| IOZone Test | CIFS | NFS |
| Init Write | 68 | 66 |
| Re-Write | 68 | 73 |
| Read | 34 | 123 |
| Re-Read | 35 | 123 |
| Random Read | 20 | 59 |
| Random Write | 62 | 73 |
| Backward Read | 19 | 46 |
| Record Re-Write | 38 | 1300* |
| Stride Read | 31 | 105 |
| File Write | 68 | 77 |
| File Re-Write | 68 | 78 |
| File Read | 24 | 92 |
| File Re-Read | 24 | 92 |
| *: Number skewed due to caching effect | ||
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jmke - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
ioSafe is the 3rd party backup copy;1st onsite, 2nd offsite, 3rd copy on the ioSafe.
with almost everything digital, the ioSafe is the equivalent of a... safe :) a high quality classic "fire and waterproof" safe will set you back ~$500-600. Add in the cost of the DS513+ and you get where the price comes from...
if you can backup offsite reliably! then surely do, ioSafe offers an alternative solution, never bad to have other options :)
robb.moore - Thursday, August 14, 2014 - link
Thx jmke. With this particular system (especially setup on HA), it's viable for many SMB's that the 1513+ be used as primary and maybe glacier or another offsite service be used for maybe a smaller set of tier1, hyper critical files. It's possibly the best of all worlds for RPO/RTO, cost, etc. And if a backhoe takes out your internet connection, you haven't lost all DR capabilities.Robb Moore, CEO
ioSafe Inc.
Gonemad - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Add some layers of kevlar, a spring-mounted cage, and a internal UPS that calls for 5-minutes safe shutdown. Bulletproof, explosion resistant, power outage resistant. Or shove it in a safe for good measure. I bet there is a market for it. If you change the drives to flash ones, you get even better explosion resistancy.DanNeely - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Where are the grill/swimming pool tests?romrunning - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Ganesh, did you check to see if this "disaster-resistant" Synology make-over is also "resistant" to SynoLocker (i.e., patched against it)? Someone encrypting all of my files would certainly qualify as a disaster to me! ;)ganeshts - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Our review unit came with DSM 5.0 installed, so that is immune to the SynoLocker exploit.That said, the lesson from the SynoLocker episode for me was that we might be better off not exposing the unit to the Internet at all. We might end up losing a lot of nice features of DSM, but I think it is worth the peace of mind. In addition, security vulnerabilities exist everywhere. Today, Synology has been exploited - tomorrow, it might be some other NAS vendor.
I also suspect that the use-case for ioSafe 1513+-like devices involves storing of sensitive data - no IT admin in his right mind would leave ports open from such devices for access from an external network. It would probably be through a VPN or something similar.
romrunning - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Sadly, I know of some "admins" who do not have the same regard for security. To them, it is just about reacting to the latest request, like "I want to access my files from home and everywhere else". They open it up, and then leave the default basic authentication as-is.From experience, I would wager the percentage of those types of admins are a bit higher than you might expect of such a position.
gizmo23 - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
LACP: I thought we moved on to 802.1X about 5 years agobobbozzo - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Something this big would quickly bake if you had it running in a sealed safe.jay401 - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link
Is it also EMP proof? :)