Synology DS412+ Review – Speed Test

August 12, 2012 Andy

Synology DS412+ with four WD Red 3 TB in Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR)

So how well will the Synology DS412+ perform? Lets find out through some network performance testing. This performance testing involves copying large files to and fro the DS412+ via CIFS (Windows File Service).

The equipments involved

Synology DS412+ with 4 x WD Red WD30EFRX 3.0 TB hard drives
iMac 27″ mid-2011
ASUS RT-AC66U

Both the iMac 27″ and Synology DS412+ are hooked up to the LAN ports of ASUS RT-AC66U. All of these equipments are running on 1 Gigabit connection with no Jumbo Frames (default MTU 1500). Port trunking (or LACP) is not used. Do note that the theoretical limit of 1 Gigabit connection is 1000 megabits (1000 Mb/s) or 125 megabytes (125 MB/s).

A free tool call NAS Performance Tester will be used to test the read and write performance of the Synology DS412+.

The results of DS412+ speed tests

I have performed two tests:

the first one using a 4000MB file; and
the second one using a 2000MB file

For both tests, a network share on DS412+ is mapped as S:.

In the 4000MB file test, the Synology DS412+ managed to achieve an average of 110.33 MB/s write and 106.48MB/s read.

Synology DS412+ - 110.33MB/s (write) and 106.48 (read) when using a 4000MB file — Synology DS412+ managed 110.33 MB/s (write) and 106.48 MB/s (read) when using a 4000MB file

While for the 2000MB file test, the Synology DS412+ managed to achieve an average of 110.71 MB/s write and 113.55 MB/s read.

Synology DS412+ - 110.71MB/s (write) and 113.55 (read) when using a 2000MB file — Synology DS412+ managed 110.71 MB/s (write) and 113.55 MB/s (read) when using a 2000MB file

Summary

Taking into account that the max theoretical speed for a 1 Gigabit connection is 125 MB/s. The speed test results are not too far off from this. Perhaps the CIFS operation have too much overhead or the equipments used (iMac and ASUS RT-AC66U) are the bottlenecks. It appears that I will not be able to find out with the current set up.

Nonetheless, the speed test results are excellent. According to data specifications, the Synology DS412+ can achieve up to 205.68MBps and 182.66MBps with port trunking (LACP). Let me try to do some speed test with the Synology DS412+ as a iSCSI target.