TS509, Link Aggregation, 3COM 2916 = good

[zoodolly]

Do you still feel the same?

Hello Dennis,

We own several several Dell 2716 & 2724 switches. From what I was led to beleve the Dell PowerConnect 2716 and 2724 support 803.2ad after trying and trying with all failures I have given up on them.

The 3com switches sound like a good low cost purchase to give link aggregation a try. If I understand corectly the speed between the TS-509 and a PC even with a single NIC show much inproved speed when runing Windows Vista Sp1. We now own two TS-509 units. What would you think about adding two 3COM 2916 switches to inprove transfer speed between the two QNAP TS-509's?

One more question now that I am using the beta firmware on the two TS-509 would this setup also help with my iSCI connection speeds? Have you tryed it yet?

 

[Dennis Wood]

Two QNAP TS509's, both running load balancing, and both trunked to the same switch would likely work very well. With the older firmware, a single workstations network performance did indeed increase with a trunked NAS. Since then however (and I pushed pretty hard on this point with QNAP) SAMBA has been tuned for much better multi-workstation load performance. So in other words, it's now much, much better with two workstations hitting it simultaneously and you can run a backup from workstaion B, while still getting excellent read/write performance to other workstations.

Don't buy the 3COM switch unless it's in a sound isolated location. I've just ordered the HP Procurve 1800-24G because even in a closed cabinet, the 3COM's fan whine is a bit loud for my guy sitting 5 feet from it. Several folks have spoken very highly of the HP products here..and this one has 24 Gigabit ports, 802.3ad support, and is right around $400. It's also dead silent. If you're ok waiting a few weeks, I'll be in a position to test the TS509 trunked directly to a yet to be announced product from QNAP with similar features. In other words, exactly what you're looking for.

What would be interesting is to run a dual LAN workstation to two NAS units setting the scratch drive location in Premiere CS3 to NAS1, and the media drive location to NAS2. Under load, if one was servicing the NIC1, and the other NIC2, then we'd be looking at a large increase in bandwidth to the workstation.

I've got no need for iSCSI yet, so consequently won't be testing it until all the bugs are worked out

 

[zoodolly]

Thing are moving so fast at QNAP with the TS-509!

I thank you for the information and the ProCurve Switch 1800-24G
swithes. They look great on paper. I went ahead and ordered two tonight because of the price. I found them for 339.99 and on paper they looks great!

I did get simple Link Aggregation working between two old Dell PowerConnect 2724 switches. Just as you said about the 3COM switches the fans on the Dell 2724 whine At least the HP switches also fully support IEEE 803.2ad. I can get a real idea in the coming months between the new switches and firmware improvments plus your help I will be reading on.

I am trying to keep in mind I have pretty early beta software on both TS-509. They seem to be fairly stable so I am thinking the firmware has been going through a lot of inside testing at QNAP. From the QNAP forum I don't see anything to stop me from testing as long as everything is safe in the form of a backup.

I realy do want to thank you for your work with the QNAP TS-509. I know this sounds a bit silly but the only word that comes to mind when I think about my new TS-509's is love . I realy think QNAP has a big winner even with the new Thecus n7700 seven bay server on the way. After all the QNAP board already has room for eight discs with just an enclosure mod. I am more than happy with five!



Thanks again,
James King

 

[Dennis Wood]

James, thanks for saying thanks

I think what you were running into with your Dell switches is that they likely support manual link aggregation...and the TS509 won't load balance properly unless the switch supports the full 802.3ad feature set. We tried a Dlink switch that supports trunking...but this boils down to just manual link aggregation. If you run a copy from two workstations simultaneously to the NAS and then check your port stats on the switch, you'll see a more or less even distribution of packets if load balancing is working correctly. What we've found is that unless all the hardware matches, multiple trunks may in fact misbehave. Using two TS509s and two trunks means that both sets of hardware/drivers do indeed match.

These units just run a version of Linux so actually the code is very well tested. What does seem to take a lot of debugging is getting the nice web interface to play properly with the OS and I'm sure, come up with drivers that work correctly.

 

[ONero]

I just picked up a Linksys SLM2008 and it says it supports 802.3ad link aggregation...has anyone used this switch successfully with the TS509?

 

[dastrix]

How did the Linksys go with link aggregation?

 

[legomaniac]

ONero, have you had any luck with the Linksys SLM2008. I am also looking at the Procurve 1800-8G. I really enjoy my Qnap 509

 

[archivalbackup]

A quick note to add to the knowledge being shared here:

My experience with a Cisco 3750G switch (I am a Cisco engineer by trade) and the QNAP load balancing ... My first try since I had not discovered these forms and there really is not any detail on what the QNAP actually supports as far as load balancing was a static etherchannel configuration which does not work.

The switch that you use needs to support LACP etherchannel technology or the link will not come up.

The actual configuration for a Cisco switch:

interface GigabitEthernet2/0/21
description Etherchannel to Qnap509
switchport mode access
flowcontrol receive desired
channel-group 1 mode active
spanning-tree portfast
end
!
interface GigabitEthernet2/0/22
description Etherchannel to Qnap509
switchport mode access
flowcontrol receive desired
channel-group 1 mode active
spanning-tree portfast
end

Port-channels in the group:
---------------------------

Port-channel: Po1 (Primary Aggregator)

------------

Age of the Port-channel = 3d:10h:05m:10s
Logical slot/port = 10/1 Number of ports = 2
HotStandBy port = null
Port state = Port-channel Ag-Inuse
Protocol = LACP

Ports in the Port-channel:

Index Load Port EC state No of bits
------+------+------+------------------+-----------
0 00 Gi2/0/21 Active 0
0 00 Gi2/0/22 Active 0

Time since last port bundled: 3d:10h:05m:01s Gi2/0/22