Intel SS4200-E NAS Review - Performance

I ran a series of performance tests to see how the unit performs in various scenarios. The test system is as follows:

• Intel SS4200-E NAS
• 4 x Western Digital WD10EACS disks - 1.0TB, 5400RPM
• System connected to a Netgear 8 port Gb switch

One thing I noticed was that prior to a copy "getting started" there was a delay where no network traffic was seen in either direction - behaviour I have not seen from the test toolset previously. I confirmed by testing the same operations against another server running Windows Server 2003 x64, and the initial pauses were not present, so there appears to be something related to the NAS that causes operations on large files to take 5-10 seconds to begin. This delay occurred only with the internal disks and not with USB devices.

All the single-direction tests were conducted using both FTP and the SMB (Windows Networking) protocol. Results varied by a few percent - nothing significant varied between different runs of the test nor different protocols. The bi-directional tests were conducted using SMB only.

The following tests were all conducted with data flowing primarily in one direction - either to or from the NAS, not both at the same time:

The following tests were conducted using the NAS as both the origin and the destination. This means that the disks in the NAS will be seeking back and forth, so this is one possible "worst case" scenario.

Performance for this unit is definitely better than many of the NAS units I've used in the past. Every single number posted by the Intel NAS beat out a unit that cost 5 times as much just 2 years ago - in fact that particular device topped out at 5 megabytes per second in every single configuration I tried - and the Intel NAS was always more than triple that performance.

Interestingly, the best performance in the stress test was obtained using RAID 5 instead of RAID 10. This was quite surprising - more often than not, RAID 10 on the same number of disks is faster in the second series of tests because the system can alternate the disks used for reading and writing. Specifically, the RAID 10 set performed faster for reading data than the RAID 5; and should also have been faster in the stress test (NAS to NAS).

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Comments (2)

• |118.90.90.xxx |2009-05-03 09:39:38 Andrew Watson  - Thanks for the heads up on the firmware
  I have been using one at home for about 5 months and find it excellent (I mainly use it for media and downloads). Thanks for the informative review (I wouldn't have known about the new firrmware otherwise). I do wish it had a squeezebox compatible music server. Apart from that it has been faultless and fast enough to not notice as an external disk.
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• |71.252.47.xxx |2010-01-09 14:52:57 F32  - Killer with WHS
  These sell for as low as $170 on newegg and $140 on ebay and are absolutely KILLER with WHS. If you get one one ebay and add $100 WHS it is $210 and every one of your shortcomings is addressed and it makes the HP WHS line, even discounted models, look terrible.
  Google the ss4200 and WHS, installing it is easy you don't need a video card you just image a $5 2gb usb memory stick. You can even then use the ide port for a fifth ide drive!
  
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