Drobo Review: Dabo or Drebo - Drobo 5N2 Network Storage Server First Experience, A Self-Contained NAS - Experience Drobo's Super RAID Last time, a friend mentioned that NAS performance has been limited by the Gigabit network. How can it be improved? The answer came. If one gigabit is not enough, then another good one. The Drobo 5N2's biggest upgrade is the second Gigabit network interface that has been added to 5N: Many early gamers who play NAS should know “Link Aggregationâ€. By binding multiple LAN interfaces, you can obtain more network bandwidth, achieve similar doubled effect of hard disk RAID0, and support the price of link aggregation switches. Not cheap. Big Wave's link aggregation does not require switch support, so the cost is lower than Synology and a variety of DIY NAS, learning cost is almost reduced to zero, just click the mouse to make a tick, let Drobo restart once, double The network port is connected. Does it seem simple? Other NASs generally need switches to support link aggregation, and the switch with this feature is absolutely cheap, and the cheapest NETGEAR GS108T also has 899. Other additional functions it can provide are actually not used by ordinary families. NETGEAR 8-port Gigabit intelligent network management switch supports power supply of other PoE terminals GS108T gray 899 yuan support link aggregation switch Jingdong direct link The cost of Drobo's double-port speed is zero, and my switch is just an ordinary Netcore 5-port Gigabit switch, which can be purchased in a hundred dollars. Netcore NS315 5-port full Gigabit Ethernet switch 110 yuan Drobo can use ordinary switches can achieve the same effect of link aggregation Jingdong direct link First of all, it is necessary to correct a misunderstanding here. Many people think that the dual-NIC link aggregation can make the computer and NAS achieve twice the Gigabit network--200MB/s transmission speed. In fact, link aggregation can only increase the NAS bandwidth service capacity, and the transfer speed between the computer and the NAS is still at the Gigabit level of 100MB/s. Even if you attach two NICs to the computer and Drobo is directly connected, the data performance can be read and written. Nothing will change, no matter which kind of NAS is the same Sounds disappointed? In fact, link aggregation is prepared for multiple users to access the NAS at the same time. When two computers simultaneously access data on the NAS, they will no longer be limited by the bandwidth of the Gigabit network. Since Drobo does not allow RAID 0 arrays to be built (for security purposes, Drobo's Beyond RAID is fully automated and does not need to interfere with the array configuration), the following performance tests are based on Seagate 2T*3 (theoretically RAID 5). The Drobo 5N2 is connected to the switch through two network cables. The two computers are respectively connected to the switch through a network cable, and the remaining one interface of the switch is connected to the router. The two computers' network adapters are the onboard Intel i219V and Realtek 8111, all using the default settings. The first is the test before unbound dual card: NAS to computers and computers to NAS, almost all around 110MB/s Unbound dual NICs Copy the same file on the NAS to two computers, one of which is approximately 66MB/s: Another copying speed is about 48MB/s. The speed of two computers plus one is almost 114MB/s, which is caused by the limitation of Gigabit network. Then bind the dual network card in Drobo 5N2, need to restart once to take effect: After binding, copy the same file from the NAS to two computers, one of which has a replication speed of 93 MB/s: At the same time, the copy speed of another computer was 90MB/s, and the Drobo 5N2 merged transmission speed reached 183MB/s. Although it is to read the same file, after all, the reading position cannot be consistent throughout the entire process. It is very difficult to have this efficiency. If you change the SSD, it may be faster. The above test is to read the same file from the NAS to two computers. Next, the test copies the different files from the two computers to different folders on the NAS, one of which is 58 MB/s: Another speed is 80MB/s, and the merger also has 138MB/s, which breaks through the Gigabit bandwidth, indicating that dual-NIC binding also plays a role. From the above tests, it can be seen that the Drobo 5N2 dual network card completely solves the Gigabit interface bottleneck, and now the new performance bottleneck is the multitasking capability of the mechanical hard disk. There is definitely someone here asking whether dual network cards are useful in the home? Imagine trying to remotely play NAS videos on a TV box. At the same time, the computer can download new videos to the NAS at full speed. In the case of two computers, one of the computers is backing up while idle to write data to the NAS. A computer can quickly access other files on the NAS at the same time. Some people think that big waves are expensive. In fact, buying a big wave is equivalent to buying a UPS uninterruptible power supply at the same time. Drobo's own power-off protection can save critical data in the cache when an abnormal power failure occurs, preventing array errors. In this way, Big Wave can save at least 900 pieces of link aggregation switches and two or three hundred pieces of UPS. If so, would Big Wave be less expensive? Drobo 5N2 dual NIC advantages summary: 1+1 breakthrough single gigabit network interface performance bottleneck, suitable for simultaneous access by multiple people Simple configuration, one-button binding dual network ports, no expertise, no additional settings Without high-end switch support, ordinary Gigabit switches can achieve dual-NIC binding Inadequacies: It is now the turn of mechanical hard drives that are the new performance bottleneck and cannot run full 2000Mbps. When a single user accesses the NAS, it is still restricted by 1000MB bps. This is the limitation of the link aggregation itself. Only the future 10Gb network ports are resolved.
