10GB > 25GB network worth it?

[Mattcee2]

I've been running my office network at 10GB speed but am finding pulling some large video files from the NAS into my video editing program (Davinci Resolve) takes up to 20-30 seconds sometimes.
I don't know that much about networking but my NAS is purely used for mass storage and working from those videos with x2 different PC's.

Here is what I have now:

x2 PC's which have 10GB ethernet built in to my Asus motherboards.
Synology 1821+ NAS with x2 SSD's for caching + 10GB network card
RAID 10 with x8 16tb drives
QNAP 10GB switch
Cat 7 cables.

I've been looking into M.2 NAS systems but for now, they don't offer enough storage or work out too expensive but the M.2 speed would be nice.
Copying the video files to my local M.2 drives is to much hassle as I use many per day.

So... I've seen some info about 25GB speed ethernet and has got me wondering, would this make things much faster than my current 10GB set up?
I know I'll need a new 25Gb switch, NAS 25Gb network card and x2 PC network cards but I don't mind paying for that if I get a notable transfer increase.

Has anyone gone down this route or knows if its worthwhile me doing this?
For reference, copying a near 9GB file now from my NAS to desktop takes about 18 seconds at 490MB/s.

 

[Subliminal Aura]

For reference, copying a near 9GB file now from my NAS to desktop takes about 18 seconds at 490MB/s.

10GB > 25GB network worth it?​

Short answer NO

490 * 8 = 3.9.gbs

Your problem is not the network capacity but the speed at which your NAS or PC is transferring data
Confirm that your network between the NAS and PC can utilise 10gbps - use iperf or something to verify that it can transfer more than 3.9gbps then work out where your bottleneck is. Personally I think it's the NAS and not enough SSD caching

 

[Mattcee2]

10GB > 25GB network worth it?​

Short answer NO

490 * 8 = 3.9.gbs

Your problem is not the network capacity but the speed at which your NAS or PC is transferring data
Confirm that your network between the NAS and PC can utilise 10gbps - use iperf or something to verify that it can transfer more than 3.9gbps then work out where your bottleneck is. Personally I think it's the NAS and not enough SSD caching

Thanks. I am very tempted to get the QNAP TBS-h574TX NAS which has a x5 bay for SSD only but most importantly, has x2 Thunderbolt 4 connections that could feed into each PC (or Mac If go down that route again).
That should be really fast but limits me to just 16TB really and isn't particularly cheap.

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Thanks. I am very tempted to get the QNAP TBS-h574TX NAS which has a x5 bay for SSD only but most importantly, has x2 Thunderbolt 4 connections that could feed into each PC (or Mac If go down that route again).
That should be really fast but limits me to just 16TB really and isn't particularly cheap.

Right, I see your pain. You need a LOT of highly available data, I'm afraid unless you can cut it down - you'll have to pay through the nose for it.

For example my use case is having 6 TB instantly available anything over that goes into archive ie onto mechanical drives - I can work with that but you most probably can't

 

[blueacid]

I've been running my office network at 10GB speed but am finding pulling some large video files from the NAS into my video editing program (Davinci Resolve) takes up to 20-30 seconds sometimes.
I don't know that much about networking but my NAS is purely used for mass storage and working from those videos with x2 different PC's.

Here is what I have now:

x2 PC's which have 10GB ethernet built in to my Asus motherboards.
Synology 1821+ NAS with x2 SSD's for caching + 10GB network card
RAID 10 with x8 16tb drives
QNAP 10GB switch
Cat 7 cables.

I've been looking into M.2 NAS systems but for now, they don't offer enough storage or work out too expensive but the M.2 speed would be nice.
Copying the video files to my local M.2 drives is to much hassle as I use many per day.

So... I've seen some info about 25GB speed ethernet and has got me wondering, would this make things much faster than my current 10GB set up?
I know I'll need a new 25Gb switch, NAS 25Gb network card and x2 PC network cards but I don't mind paying for that if I get a notable transfer increase.

Has anyone gone down this route or knows if its worthwhile me doing this?
For reference, copying a near 9GB file now from my NAS to desktop takes about 18 seconds at 490MB/s.

What size is your 'scratch' space? Do you need all 16TB of footage (say) available all at once? Or is that a number of projects?
Could you consider an upgrade to your desktop to give it a few large SSDs for the current project, rather than doing the work entirely from the NAS?

 

[Armageus]

Rather than looking at prosumer (Synology/QNAP etc), you might be better off getting some proper server grade hardware and looking at used enterprise U.2/U.3 SSDs - you can get them in decent capacities, and they'll also offer the speed you need to make the most of 10Gb+ networks.

How much work goes between the two PCs? If it's a lot then skip the NAS aspect and just copy direct between the two. If you've already got PCI-E 5.0 NVMEs then a 25Gb network would actually speed that part up.

 

[Caged]

You're not close to maxing out the network currently, so that's not the problem. What's the Synology doing in terms of CPU and volume utilisation while you are copying from it?

Also what SSDs do you have? If you're using a consumer drive and the files you're moving around are larger than the DRAM cache then it might be quicker to write straight through to the array.

 

[Snapshot]

You could look at the Asustor Flashstor Gen 2 range - 6 NVMe +1 x 10Gb or 12 NVMe +2 x 10Gb - or the TerraMaster F8 SSD - 8 NVMe + 1 x 10Gb

 

[RSR]

MOAR is always better, thus the art of MOAR.

However, on a serious note, it all depends on what you are doing and if you are hitting the limits of a 10Gb link and with SSDs today that's pretty easy.

I run 25Gb NIC on my desktop / NAS / EFG (When it arrives). However, I have noticed an increase in performance from my NAS since swapping out the Syno 10Gb card with a ConnectX-4-LX as I can often get transfers over ~10Gb with it now and that's on a DS1621XS+

The reason why I run 10Gb / 25Gb at home is backups, as my desktops get imaged every day and on a 1Gb connection that can take hours but with 10Gb / 25Gb it only takes about 5/10mins and I have some lab stuff which I used to demo/learn stuff for work on. I also have a Steam library which I can run directly from the NAS which comes in handy when swapping between different desktops.

 

[RSR]

Rather than looking at prosumer (Synology/QNAP etc), you might be better off getting some proper server grade hardware and looking at used enterprise U.2/U.3 SSDs - you can get them in decent capacities, and they'll also offer the speed you need to make the most of 10Gb+ networks.

How much work goes between the two PCs? If it's a lot then skip the NAS aspect and just copy direct between the two. If you've already got PCI-E 5.0 NVMEs then a 25Gb network would actually speed that part up.

I would really recommend this approach over a turn-key NAS solution but then it becomes a game of picking the correct gear, as it can be a minefield with NIC's / NVMe's / PCIe lanes etc...

However, a correctly spec'ed NAS / SAN will outperform most turn-key solutions, so I am excluding enterprise-grade NAS/SANs here.

 

[Mattcee2]

Thanks all and just realised my NAS has x2 10GB network outputs on it.
Would plugging another ethernet cable from the second output on the NAS (into my 10GB switch) make any difference or will I still be stuck at 10GB speed as my PC's only have one 10GB connection?

To clarify, I'm happy with the overall speed but it just seems to be the video files that I've used Topaz video AI to upscale clips that seem to take much longer to import to Resolve than any other video file I use despite them not having a bigger file size in certain cases.

 

[Armageus]

Thanks all and just realised my NAS has x2 10GB network outputs on it.
Would plugging another ethernet cable from the second output on the NAS (into my 10GB switch) make any difference or will I still be stuck at 10GB speed as my PC's only have one 10GB connection?

It will make no difference as it doesn't sound like the network throughput is the bottleneck

 

[blueacid]

Thanks all and just realised my NAS has x2 10GB network outputs on it.
Would plugging another ethernet cable from the second output on the NAS (into my 10GB switch) make any difference or will I still be stuck at 10GB speed as my PC's only have one 10GB connection?

To clarify, I'm happy with the overall speed but it just seems to be the video files that I've used Topaz video AI to upscale clips that seem to take much longer to import to Resolve than any other video file I use despite them not having a bigger file size in certain cases.

Taking longer to import despite being a similar file size is what's caught my eye. The NAS doesn't care if the data it's handling is compressed, encrypted, x265, mp3, whatever. It'll just be asked "give me these blocks from the disk" and it'll hoof them in your direction as fast as it can.

So if importing a 4k media file takes longer than a 1080p one, that points the finger somewhat at your desktop.
It might be worth you copying a couple of exemplar files directly to your workstation and experimenting with import times etc, to see if it's a bottleneck on your workstation, and the NAS is innocent.

 

[Meddling-Monk]

OP, I don't think you have confirmed yet, but as you have 10g connections on both your motherboards, have you tried sending a large video file between the two as well? Confirm your network isn't the issue first that way?

If they're getting 9.8gbits per second or near 950MB/s+, then the issue is not the network and any upgrade won't change anything. As it will be you PC, NAS or your storage on the NAS that's not going higher than 460MB/s.

:: edit ::
Have you also tried locally storing the files that are taking longer to import from the NAS first and seeing if there's still the same speed issue? If you don't experience the same speed issue when stored locally, you can rule out your PC and look towards the NAS or the storage on the NAS as the cause of why you're only seeing less than half the speed potentially available on a 10 network.