Deduplication and snapshots
The integral ZFS block level deduplication is a valuable feature but don't expect to see massive space savings. Using the Binary Testing data deduplication test suite, we applied measureable changes to a 4GB data set over a simulated one month backup period and saw a reduction ratio of around 3:1 very similar to other ZFS-based appliances we've tested.
Snapshots can be scheduled for selected volumes and LUNs to run at hourly, daily or weekly intervals. Snapshots can be cloned and exposed as new volumes or LUNs and rollback is a simple, two-click process.
The replication features are easy to use as well. We created tasks that replicated selected volumes and LUNs to another local storage pool and the same procedures are used to create tasks to replicate to a remote appliance.
Full controller failover occurred within 20 seconds when we tested it
Speedy failover
NAS performance is good with Iometer reporting raw read and write speeds of 113MB/sec and 112MB/sec. Running Iometer on four E5-2600 v3 servers connected over dedicated Gigabit links to separate shares on the RAID5 pool saw cumulative read and write speeds of 440MB/sec and 410MB/sec
IP SAN speeds were in the same ball park with one target returning 113MB/sec read and write speeds while an MPIO link across both controllers upped read throughout to 180MB/sec. To test failover, we pulled the master controller out while the MPIO test was running.
The appliance completed the task of promoting the remaining controller to master role in less than 20 seconds. The Iometer test continued unabated, albeit at the speed of single connection, and when we pushed the failed controller back in, it took under 20 seconds for full redundancy to be restored and Iometer to return to full speed.
Conclusion
The U400HA-D424 combines end-to-end redundancy with an impressive range of storage features. Some features won't appear until the next firmware update but it delivers a respectable performance and combines this with a huge expansion potential.
Verdict
The U400HA-D424 ticks all the right boxes for high availability storage. Along with fast controller failover and a high capacity, it offers an excellent range of features at a price the blue chips won’t be able to match
Chassis: 4U rack Storage: 24 x hot-swap LFF/SFF SAS/SATA drive bays Power: 3 x 550W hot-plug PSUs Cooling: 2 x hot-plug fan modules Dual active/active RAID controllers each with: CPU: 1.73GHz dual-core LC3528 Xeon Memory: 16GB ECC UDIMM DDR3 Array support: RAID0, 1, 10, 5, 6, 50, 60 Network: 6 x Gigabit, 1 x Gigabit management Other ports: SAS expansion port Management: Web browser, QCentral
