IOMeter tests
Sequential reading performance tests demonstrate that the maximum throughput of TS-109 Pro is similar to that of the DS107+ (and higher than that of the first gigabit storage drive Synology DS-101g+) both in 1000 Mbit and 100 Mbit modes. About 25 MB/s for reading - this is a maximum level for such devices, it's 2.5 times as high as with Fast Ethernet.
Sequential writing is slower here than reading, although QNAP TS-109 Pro becomes a leader with medium blocks, apparently outperforming Synology devices and reaching 20 MB/s with 64-KB blocks. It's interesting to note that our product under review also leads in 100 Mbit mode in sequential writing speed, reaching 11 MB/s.
However, sequential read/write rate is not the most important characteristic of a storage drive. What's more important is file operation rates - reading, writing, copying, and other everyday operations. They are affected by algorithms of controllers in the entire signal path and performance of network processors of storage drives. We shall imitate these loads in Intel IOMeter with special patterns for large and small files separately. In this case we use random access for the entire hard drive.
Just like sequential reading, the speed of reading large files (about 0.5 MB) at random addresses in the TS-109 Pro is approximately on the same level as in Synology DS-107+. For queue depth of four and longer it almost does not depend on the speed of a given network interface. It's determined by the speed of the integrated Marvell processor (hence the graph similarity). However, the QNAP device outperforms its competitor by several percents, and they are both noticeably faster than the other contenders.
The speed of our devices in the test of random reading with large files is limited to 4.5 MB/s. But what concerns random writing of large files, their speed does not reach even 3.5 MB/s. QNAP again looks a tad better than its competitor. They apparently have similar processors. Perhaps, the one in QNAP operates at a tad higher frequency.
However, the relatively favorable situation for the TS-109 Pro changes, as we proceed to tests with small files: the product under review still preserves its advantage over the DS107+ (25-30%), but there is practically no performance difference between 100 Mbit and 1000 Mbit modes - performance is just limited by the speed of a processor in a network storage drive. Moreover, Floston Lan Disk proves that a faster processor (and/or a better optimized firmware) can raise performance with small files even in 100 Mbit mode, much higher than TS-109 Pro demonstrates now.
The random write pattern with small files is another illustrative example, where the Fast-Ethernet Floston drive is much faster than its gigabit competitors.
Let's have a look at results of the test imitating large file copy at random addresses.
Copying large files within the storage drive demonstrates apparently higher performance of QNAP TS-109 Pro versus Synology devices, although with the queue depth of four and higher, performance is limited by a processor.
What concerns the small file copy test, it again shows high latency of the solution and average performance versus Floston Lan Disk regardless of the interface.
The latter is also proved by the archiving test working with files withing the network storage drive.
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