NAS or File server - Is there any real speed difference?

[Phunky Phish]

I just thought I would ask this as have been wondering!

I just set up a NAS on my network at home. Write speeds are about 20MB and read about 10MB.

Now a lot of people suggest building an Atom based file server, that way you get full read/write potential of the drives, but do you?

I have a 100m/bit network at work to a nice SBS 2003 and that only transfers at roughly the same speeds.

So, speed for speed, why do so many people say build a file server?

 

[themistry]

Because they don't know what they are talking about.

Your limitation is network and disk speed, so either way makes no different.

A NAS device however has fewer moving parts that can fail, thus are better for long term data storage.

I.e. hardware RAID, OS stored in ROM etc etc. No need to "maintain" a windows machine etc etc.

TM

 

[Zarf]

Build your own, if you have a gigabit ethernet network (and they are cheap to set up anyway if you don't) you can get way more performance out.
My 5x1TB RAID5 fileserver built last summer gets me over 100MB/s sustained transfer speed over the network, which makes it as fast as locally attached disks.

Building my own server was the right choice for me, since i wanted decent Hardware RAID5, fast network transfers, and room to expand (I can go up to 8 drives at the moment). The hardware cost was less than a Thecus or other decent quality NAS box.

 

[PC-M Vip3r]

Because they don't know what they are talking about.

Your limitation is network and disk speed, so either way makes no different.

A NAS device however has fewer moving parts that can fail, thus are better for long term data storage.

I.e. hardware RAID, OS stored in ROM etc etc. No need to "maintain" a windows machine etc etc.

TM

A NAS device will perform poorly in comparison to a file server, look at real world tests between a NAS and any old file server. Even on a 100mb network were the network speed is limited a file server will perform much better...

 

[Phunky Phish]

As I said, I have a Xeon server on a 100m/b network (actually 1g/b to the hub, then 100m/b to the 3 pcs connected as they are limited by the nic in the PC) and only get roughly (within 10%) the same speeds as my NAS at home!
So I am running a true file server and getting no major performance boost compared to the NAS!

 

[wesley]

phunky phish

i dont really understand what you're trying to say.

let say you got GB network (not just hub, i mean everything at GB speed)

cheap atom server will be MUCH faster than cheap NAS boxes due their very slow CPU (200mhz etc) and totally carp onboard controller.

if i remember right, HEATRAT pulled 90mb/s from file server

the reason your Xeon server is slow cos of your slow network. simple as that.

if you look at speed chart at small net builder website and you will see most cheap windows file servers are hell much faster than cheap NAS devices unless you spend at least £600+ for high performance NAS.