Thecus N2310 with Firmware 743 File Transfer Performance Report

As I have mentioned in Why Promise SmartStor Zero is Slow, I have high expectation on AppliedMicro APM86491 which is the heart of Thecus N2310. It is much cheaper than any two-bay models from Synology, QNAP, and Asustor.

Last time in Thecus N2310 File Transfer Performance Report, I am impressed with performance but disappoint with its stability which crash 4 times in 16 tests. Now it get new firmware OS6.build_743. Let’s see if it becomes more stable and the performance difference.

Processor and RAM Difference

While QNAP TS-112 is based on Marvell 88F6282 SoC at 1.2GHz, QNAP TS-119PII and QNAP TS-212P are Marvell 88F6281 at 1.6GHz and 2.0GHz respectively, and QNAP TS-269L is Intel Atom D2701 at 2.13GHz, N2310 has a single core APM86491 running at the lowest 800MH.

APM86491 is based on Power465 with FPU and has 64KB L1 cache with 256KB L2 Cache. Atom D2701 has dual core with four threads and 4 times the cache (1MB vs 256KB). Each instruction set is 32-bit as Marvell 88F6282 SoC and Marvell 88F6281.

RAM is 512MB as well as TS-119PII and TS-212P. Although just half of the size of TS-269L, it is double to TS-112.

Test Method

I connect NAS to computer directly, use the same test sample in File Transmission with Different Sharing Solution on NAS, and use Linux command mount for better performance.

Two protocols are used in this test: Samba and NFS. You may learn more about how to setup the test with NFS and Samba to do your own test.

N2310 is configured with one Seagate Barracuda Desktop HDD only.

According to my MTU test, I keep it to use default 1500.

I also add test result from following as reference:

1. File Transmission with Different Sharing Solution on NAS
2. Performance Comparison on Backup Linux Files to QNAP TS-212P
3. QNAP TS-119PII File Transfer Performance Report
4. QNAP TS-269L File Transfer Performance Report

Performance

File transfer performance on Thecus N2310 with firmware OS6.build.743 via Samba with mount command.

File transfer performance on Thecus N2310 with firmware OS6.build.743 via NFS with mount command.

Analyze

N2310 is the fastest on reading with NFS, third  on writing with Samba, and second on others if we ignore the unstable firmware in previous test. For overall performance, it is easy to see N2310 is the best value winner, about 75% cheaper than TS-269L.

For NFS tests, I test with NFS 3 and 4 in sync and async mode separately. NFS in async mode is much faster than sync. There is very little different between NFS 3 and 4.

But there are more important things to performance: stability! It never crash in 11 test compared to 4 times in 16 tests last time.

More Thoughts

Like the design axiom, you cannot cover price, stability, and speed all together. Although N2310 is slower than TS-119PII on writing with Samba, I think it does performance very well on all the others. I can say N2310 is the clear winner of cheap, stable, and fast consumer NAS for file transfer tasks.

If you haven’t upgrade to OS6.build_743, you are missing a more stable firmware. Although it would be a little bit slower, a more stable system save your time to do everything in one time.

Reference

1. Why Promise SmartStor Zero is Slow
2. Thecus N2310
3. AppliedMicro APM86491
4. Synology
5. QNAP
6. Asustor
7. Thecus N2310 File Transfer Performance Report
8. QNAP TS-269L
9. Intel Atom Processor D2700
10. Marvell
11. QNAP TS-119PII
12. QNAP TS-212P
13. QNAP: TS-112
14. Marvell: Marvell 88F6282 SoC
15. Marvell: Marvell 88F6281 SoC with Sheeva Technology
16. Wiki: Instruction set
17. Connect NAS to your Computer Directly
18. File Transmission with Different Sharing Solution on NAS
19. Using Microsoft Networking via Samba with QNAP TS-112 and LevelOne GNS-1001
20. Wiki: Samba (software)
21. Wiki: Network File System
22. Using Network File System (NFS) Service with QNAP TS-112
23. Seagate Barracuda Desktop Datasheet
24. Maximum MTU doesn’t mean Best Performance
25. Performance Comparison on Backup Linux Files to QNAP TS-212P
26. QNAP TS-119PII File Transfer Performance Report
27. QNAP TS-269L File Transfer Performance Report
28. Wiki: ARM architecture
29. Intel Newsroom: Intel Launches System-on-Chip Storage Solution Designed for Simple Video Transcoding and Streaming
30. Wiki: List of Intel Atom microprocessors: CE SoCs: Dual-Core CE SoCs
31. Use BFNP Framework to Optimize your NAS File Transfer Performance
32. OpenSuSE: Portal: 13.1
33. CompassCreative: The design axiom