NAS / Personal Web Server Performance

[tegguN]

I'm planning on using the pi as a Network Attached HDD (usb HDD, ethernet/wifi network), with the option for logging in remotely via some sort of dynamic DNS (I have a dynamic IP) setup.

Is streaming movies (up to 1080p) and music locally and potentially over the internet when I'm away from home going to be possible? What do you think is going to be the best distro for doing this sort of thing?

I'm concerned about the shared USB/Ethernet bus...

[tegguN]

forgot to add, a LAMP install would be useful for developing web stuff while away from home and to keep everything in sync...

and backups, apple time machine-esque would be good too...

[hayesey]

What do you think is going to be the best distro for doing this sort of thing?


Basically any Linux distribution that exists will do what you want.  You are probably best off going for Fedora since that seems to be the main one the foundation are supporting.  I'd assume there is going to be more information available for Fedora on the Pi than anything else.

1080p video should be fine over your local network.  You'll need a very good Internet connection to have a chance of streaming it upstream though!  I'd have thought you'd need at least 10Mbps upstream for that, maybe more.  Some high end ADSL connections offer that but it's probably going to require FTTC or similar really.

[alexandru.cucu]

Any GNU/Linux distribution should do the job.

For backups I prefer using duplicity (a command line tool). You could also use deja-dup that is a GUI for duplicity.

On your local network everything should work just fine.

You might want to replace the A from LAMP with nginx or lighttpd

Apache uses more CPU and memory and you can't do much to improve performance on such a device as the Raspberry Pi.

[nick.mccloud]

tegguN said:


and backups, apple time machine-esque would be good too...


That will be a challenge, aside from needing a hard disk to store the data, the volume will need to be shared just right for the Mac client to accept it as a TimeMachine destination.

[timgiles]

Yes, as others have said, you shouldnt have any problem. But - dont expect stellar performance. It is highly likely that the chip chosen can make just about full use of the USB connected, Ethernet port. USB connected in the sense that the on board ethernet is sharing the USB bandwidth to the CPU.

So streaming a large file, Bluray rip, wont be an issue over 100Mb LAN. However, wireless will add the same problems all wireless solutions currently add.

In terms of LAMP - there are other threads. Again, for a few home websites or blogs, the RPi will be a super, low power, server. It wont ever be as quick as a 'PC' based Linux or windows server, but with a decent internet connection, you should be AOK. Final thing, please remember that your internet connection must have a good strong UP bandwidth. Over here in Sweden we are used to 100Mb or even 1Gb in both down and up. Back in the UK there are good Download based packaged, but the UP doesnt tend to be so good.

[Robert_M]

100 MB down *and* up?

I think I'm gonna go in the other room and cry just a little bit.  ;-(

[RaTTuS]

Robert_M said:


100 MB down *and* up?

I think I'm gonna go in the other room and cry just a little bit.  ;-(


Why - 100Mb network is just fine ,,,, unless you are serving 100's of users - really - how much performance do you get over a 1Gbps link do you know ?

[frying_fish]

RaTTuS said:


Robert_M said:


100 MB down *and* up?

I think I'm gonna go in the other room and cry just a little bit.  ;-(


Why - 100Mb network is just fine ,,,, unless you are serving 100's of users - really - how much performance do you get over a 1Gbps link do you know ?


I think the crying is because they have that kind of internet connection, and are lucky to do so, given the state of the broadband connections in a lot of places.

The idea of streaming material up on a UK ADSL connection is not a nice one.

[RaTTuS]

aha right I see that now ..

yeah UK adsl is not good... even virgin 150Mb cable has not good up ....

1+11=100 - top that

[hayesey]

I think he's referring to the fact that in Sweden you can get an 100Mbps symmetrical internet connection!

[hayesey]

ahh, some people beat me to it!

[Robert_M]

Yeah, still cryin'. Just ran a speed test and got the best results I've ever seen:

25 down, 3.4 up.  

11 + 1 = 111, right?

[error404]

For a file server I'd say 1Gbps these days is a virtual necessity. I don't know about you, but I'm far too impatient to be happy with 10+ minutes to copy a 1080p rip to my file server. Set up correctly with decent hardware you can get about 110MB/s out of GigE, which brings that down to just over a minute.

And I for one really doubt that the Pi will even be able to reach it's theoretical performance limit of ~100mbit while doing data transfer from USB. I think the USB NIC itself can just about do that, but with contention on the bus for the hard drive, I think it will come down considerably, and who knows how the SoC itself will cope, it's not designed for high throughput.

I'd expect it to work fine for 1080p streaming and generic file serving duties, but I also suspect it will be slower than the dedicated boxes for this that you can buy for around the same price.

[Jessie]

error404 said:


For a file server I'd say 1Gbps these days is a virtual necessity. I don't know about you, but I'm far too impatient to be happy with 10+ minutes to copy a 1080p rip to my file server. Set up correctly with decent hardware you can get about 110MB/s out of GigE, which brings that down to just over a minute.

And I for one really doubt that the Pi will even be able to reach it's theoretical performance limit of ~100mbit while doing data transfer from USB. I think the USB NIC itself can just about do that, but with contention on the bus for the hard drive, I think it will come down considerably, and who knows how the SoC itself will cope, it's not designed for high throughput.

I'd expect it to work fine for 1080p streaming and generic file serving duties, but I also suspect it will be slower than the dedicated boxes for this that you can buy for around the same price.



You are living in dream land... A low end NAS will never saturate a 1Gb ethernet connection.  The processors in them are too slow.  For some of us using a usb HDD attached to a router a R-Pi would be a healthy increase.  I have a Cisco e4200 and it has a MIPS processor running at 480MHZ and 64MB ram.  The most bandwidth I can get from that HDD is 48 Mbps (6 MBps) on a good day and around half that when there is more going on with the network.  That same HDD connected to a USB 3.0 port on my PC gets at worst 800 Mbps (100 MBps) and has done much better sometimes.  It takes me 2 to 4 hours to tansfer a ripped BluRay from my PC to that server, and if you do the math you will see that there isn't enough bandwidth to play all HD movies.  Why use it?  Because before it I had no idea how useful a NAS was.  I got the router and decided to try out its "Media Server" functions and soon after started ripping all my DVD and BluRay library to it.

So even if a R-Pi running as a NAS box doubles my performance to 96Mbps (12 MBps) I will be happy.  I don't think it is unreasonable to ask 200Mbps out of a USB 2.0 bus, however the processor may be the limiting factor but we won't know until the device comes out.

[error404]

Sorry I didn't mean to confuse the two ideas. Basically I don't find anything less than 1Gbps satisfactory, though I agree that you won't get it out of a cheap box. For serious use, I recommend an Atom-based server.

However I think performance of the Pi as a NAS will not be good compared to other low-end boxes that would be suitable for this. For example, Seagate Dockstar (discontinued, but you still might find one), was available for about $35 when it was in production, can do about 20MB/s, which is not even possible for the Pi hardware. Pogoplug is available cheap right now, cheaper than a Pi, and comes with a case and power supply – and this can do at least 10MB/s. Both devices run Linux so you can do other random server tasks with them if you like. YMMV, we'll have a better idea when people actually have boards, but I'd say expecting 100mbit is optimistic due to the USB contention, and that's still slow.

Point is that I wouldn't be optimistic about the Pi being any good at this. It'll work, but it's not really designed for it, and won't compete with devices that are.

Oh and as for streaming, if we take raw BluRay as the top possible content bitrate, as long as you can maintain an average of 40mbit or so you'll be fine. You might need a large-ish buffer on your playback device if the performance is inconsistent, but it doesn't require all that much average bandwidth.

[drgeoff]

Jessie said:

So even if a R-Pi running as a NAS box doubles my performance to 96Mbps (12 MBps) I will be happy.  I don't think it is unreasonable to ask 200Mbps out of a USB 2.0 bus, however the processor may be the limiting factor but we won't know until the device comes out.

The wiki says that the ethernet is 10/100.  You don't get 96 Mbit/s net through that even if there were no limitations elsewhere in the hardware.

[Kerblamm]

Timothy Giles said:


Over here in Sweden we are used to 100Mb or even 1Gb in both down and up. Back in the UK there are good Download based packaged, but the UP doesnt tend to be so good.


Why can't I have good internet?! D: The internet I have is 1.5 Mbps total thoroughput at a time! But, of course, I live in the U.S. :/

[Jessie]

error404 said:


However I think performance of the Pi as a NAS will not be good compared to other low-end boxes that would be suitable for this. For example, Seagate Dockstar (discontinued, but you still might find one), was available for about $35 when it was in production, can do about 20MB/s, which is not even possible for the Pi hardware. Pogoplug is available cheap right now, cheaper than a Pi, and comes with a case and power supply – and this can do at least 10MB/s. Both devices run Linux so you can do other random server tasks with them if you like. YMMV, we"ll have a better idea when people actually have boards, but I"d say expecting 100mbit is optimistic due to the USB contention, and that"s still slow.


I bet the R-Pi gets at least 10MB/s.  I would be willing to put a wager on it.

I'm going to look at the pogo plug.  I hadn't checked into them in a while and just doing a search shows that there are many for sale at $25, and one with a USB 3.0 port for sale as well in the $75 to $100 price range.

[jose1711_]

i did a very quick iperf benchmark on my lan and could not get past 40 Mbps.. so those 10 MB/s seem to be a too optimistic guess

[AndrewS]

i did a very quick iperf benchmark on my lan and could not get past 40 Mbps.. so those 10 MB/s seem to be a too optimistic guess

Yeah, that agrees with the comments on http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1655