Samba Server

[tkaiser]

Do you really believe Pine64 is the first ARM based SBC on this planet?

Of course not. If you read the whole thread, you can see that i mention i have a Pi B+

OK, I always forget about Raspberry Pis since they all are just an insane joke when it's about NAS/server usage due to their single USB2.0 connection to the outside all USB ports and the slow Fast Ethernet adapter have to share (of course blocking each other).

With real SBC you'll have a look which interfaces are connected in which way, test them individually and then you already know what to expect. For Pine64+ or any other sunxi board that lacks SATA but features GbE this is easy since: USB2.0 + BSP kernel + GbE Ethernet = ~30MB/s (with mainline kernel and UASP it gets close to 38MB/s).

I did some measurements of course neither using Windows nor Samba but OS X and Netatalk instead (fresh debs for Netatalk 3.19dev + requirements available here)

Netatalk is pretty good in caching so I used 3 GB filesize, the settings from here (IRQs distributed accross CPU cores, some network tunables enabled) and also some ionice/taskset tweaking. Best conditions tested with a 3.5" Seagate Barracuda (usual bus powered 2.5" disks do not work on Pine64 since current is limited to 650mA):




Worst conditions (I disabled the ionice/taskset stuff and limited max cpufreq to our current minimum 480 MHz):



With Samba you will most probably end up with 2-3 MB/s less but even the worst case scenario (using a wrong cpufreq governor that never increases CPU clockspeeds or a silly enclosure leading to constant overheating/throttling) outperforms any Raspberry easily.

Regarding cheap: Nope, Pine64/Pine64+ aren't cheap when you want to build a good NAS. High shipping costs combined with only one real USB2.0 host port... not the best idea.

H3 based boards are way better suited if you take care that you get a board that exposes all 3 USB host ports and the OTG port too (eg Orange Pi Plus 2E said to be available at the end of this week for less than $40 including shipping to most locations)

[rahlquist]

Code:

##Reference Test #1 Server based, usb 2.0 write to Lexar USB Thumbdrive.
[root@corgi jperf-2.0.2]# rsync --progress /newmedia/torrents/12k\ Wallpaper\ dump.zip /run/media/rahlquist/LinuxExt4/
12k Wallpaper dump.zip
 5380123148 100%   15.68MB/s    0:05:27 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)

sent 5380779988 bytes  received 31 bytes  16429862.65 bytes/sec
total size is 5380123148  speedup is 1.00

##Reference Test #2 Server based, usb 2.0 write to Toshiba THNSNJ128GMCT SSD in http://www.amazon.com/USB-3-0-MSATA-II-ENCLOSURE/dp/B017O3NSKE?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage
results incomparable

####Reference Test #3 Server based, usb 3.0 write to Toshiba THNSNJ128GMCT SSD in http://www.amazon.com/USB-3-0-MSATA-II-ENCLOSURE/dp/B017O3NSKE?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage
results incomparable

##Reference Test #4 Server based, SMBMOUNT write to Lexar USB Thumbdrive installed on Pine64 using clean Xenial image from longsleep and standard samba install
[root@corgi ~]# rsync --progress /newmedia/torrents/12k\ Wallpaper\ dump.zip /mnt/testing1/
12k Wallpaper dump.zip
 5380123148 100%   16.60MB/s    0:05:09 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)

sent 5380779988 bytes  received 31 bytes  15943051.91 bytes/sec
total size is 5380123148  speedup is 1.00

##Reference Test #4 Server based, SMBMOUNT read from Lexar USB Thumbdrive installed on Pine64 using clean Xenial image from longsleep and standard samba install
[root@corgi ~]# rsync --progress /mnt/testing1/12k\ Wallpaper\ dump.zip /ms/
12k Wallpaper dump.zip
 5380123148 100%   27.85MB/s    0:03:04 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)

sent 5380779988 bytes  received 31 bytes  29164119.34 bytes/sec
total size is 5380123148  speedup is 1.00

All attempts on the pine with the usb3.0 device even with added power collapsed. So for the time being usb 2.0 it is.

Tests 1 through 3 were on my full blown file server not the pine, just given for reference of I/O speed of the usb device under test.

FYI this is as far as I will test this. I dont believe the Pine64 or virtually any SBC is a good viable NAS device. Other than being untested (literally in Pines case) I just see no benefit in the amount of additional money you have to throw at something like a pine to make it works like a decent NAS. Of course your time and money is your own. Enjoy!

[tkaiser]

I dont believe the Pine64 or virtually any SBC is a good viable NAS device.

It depends. For some special use cases A20 based devices (A20 has a real SATA implementation) are great. Last year rumours were spread that we'll see a quad core A20 successor this year. Interestingly in A64 BSP (both 1.2 and 2.0) nove, a linux-sunxi dev, found references for a not yet available A20E (dual core ARMv7 with higher CPU and DRAM clockspeeds but still pin compatible)

If A20E would show higher sequential SATA write speeds it gets interesting again. 

We use A20 and H3 devices at customers in a 'dual role'. They do their normal job (eg. authenticated scan/print server doing also some GPIO stuff) and serve also as NAS since they're able to. A64 is rather limited in this regard due to lack of bandwidth.

[rahlquist]

I dont believe the Pine64 or virtually any SBC is a good viable NAS device.

It depends. For some special use cases A20 based devices (A20 has a real SATA implementation) are great. Last year rumours were spread that we'll see a quad core A20 successor this year. Interestingly in A64 BSP (both 1.2 and 2.0) nove, a linux-sunxi dev, found references for a not yet available A20E (dual core ARMv7 with higher CPU and DRAM clockspeeds but still pin compatible)

If A20E would show higher sequential SATA write speeds it gets interesting again. 

We use A20 and H3 devices at customers in a 'dual role'. They do their normal job (eg. authenticated scan/print server doing also some GPIO stuff) and serve also as NAS since they're able to. A64 is rather limited in this regard due to lack of bandwidth.

Yeah I guess I should have qualified that a bit better. I've had a linux server of some sort under my roof since 2000. They never cost more than $450 to build and performance compared to a SBC... yeah no comparing. 

Making the argument that say I needed a small samba based NAS, say 4tb and say we use the same drive and headless config between an X86 and SBC, the savings, is likely going to be maybe $50-75 after you build comparably reliable systems. If a mature SBC was used it would be worth it, but with Pine64 its still wayyyy to immature for me to trust even with disposable data. 

Now if I needed gpio capability for additional pieces, well then SBC would have a shot.

[tkaiser]

Making the argument that say I needed a small samba based NAS, say 4tb and say we use the same drive and headless config between an X86 and SBC, the savings, is likely going to be maybe $50-75 after you build comparably reliable systems. 

To be honest: For valuable data you want to use filesystems that can ensure data integrity (btrfs or ZFS) and then you need also ECC RAM. So you end up with a HP Microserver as most affordable variant anyway since currently you won't find any ARM design with ECC support for a lower price.

I was talking about a small NAS for unimportant/redundant data and there choosing the right SBC might make a huge difference. See for example https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/...r-6-hours/

GBit capable small board with native SATA and a battery that is also able to work as an UPS for both board and disk powered by a simple 5V/2A PSU. As a local randomly used NAS with correctly configured disk spindown you end up with an idle consumption of just 1.5W and average consumption below 5W.

For anything larger I would already check whether one of the more modern NAS boxes that make use of btrfs and snapshots is the better alternative (AFAIK currently only available from Netgear).

BTW: One of the key criteria for me for NAS useage is the ability to query drive health data (S.M.A.R.T.) so if external USB disks and a cheap GbE capable SBC is already lying around and the disk enclosure's USB bridge is SAT capable and S.M.A.R.T. works then why not trying it to use as el cheapo NAS? With Pine64/A64 the count of real USB host ports is an issue but apart from that it will work with the aforementioned performance limitations (you currently won't exceed 30MB/s and will see a slight improvement when mainline kernel's ready and your USB enclosure is UASP capable).

SMART, SAT and UASP and all the other basics explained in detail here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi_devices_as_NAS

[rahlquist]

Making the argument that say I needed a small samba based NAS, say 4tb and say we use the same drive and headless config between an X86 and SBC, the savings, is likely going to be maybe $50-75 after you build comparably reliable systems. 

To be honest: For valuable data you want to use filesystems that can ensure data integrity (btrfs or ZFS) and then you need also ECC RAM. 

I've never had data valuable enough to bother with either ZFS or ECC just good backcups. Lets face it probably the majority that want to use pine for a NAS are looking for it to serve their movies they downloaded

[tkaiser]

To be honest: For valuable data you want to use filesystems that can ensure data integrity (btrfs or ZFS) and then you need also ECC RAM. 

I've never had data valuable enough to bother with either ZFS or ECC just good backcups.

Common misunderstanding. When bit rotting happens it not only corrupts your productive data but backups as well (most people never test their backups or do a verify -- but even that won't help since data is already corrupted so source and destination are identical since both damaged). Some background info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation

And of course you're right. The average Pine64 backer doesn't care about this, suffers from bit rotting on a regular basis but either don't take notice (since common media file formats compensate bit flips on their own -- dropped frames in movies for example) or blames his PC or Windows installation when a few bit flips corrupted his whole file system and he has to install Windows from scratch.

[nomadewolf]

Making the argument that say I needed a small samba based NAS, say 4tb and say we use the same drive and headless config between an X86 and SBC, the savings, is likely going to be maybe $50-75 after you build comparably reliable systems. 

To be honest: For valuable data you want to use filesystems that can ensure data integrity (btrfs or ZFS) and then you need also ECC RAM. 

I've never had data valuable enough to bother with either ZFS or ECC just good backcups. Lets face it probably the majority that want to use pine for a NAS are looking for it to serve their movies they downloaded

Someone gets me.
I was beginning to think i was the exception...