Performance of iSCSI devices

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I am toying around with the idea to use my 2009 Mac Mini as a server. For performance and reliability reasons, I guess I would want to replace its HDD with a SSD. In order to have some disk space available on it, I think about getting a SAN device since this Minis fastest I/O port is Ethernet. Update: The first devices that came to my mind were NAS boxes implementing iSCSI.

So my question is: How good is the performance of these iSCSI SAN devices? Their performance regarding "file system protocols" seems to scale with the processing power, i.e. an ARM processor with a frequency of more then 2 GHz or Atoms/Power PCs with two cores guarantee satisfying transfer speeds. With iSCSI, is an ARM with 1 GHz sufficient for good transfer speeds?

Percival Ulysses

Posted 2012-09-21T12:04:34.937

Reputation: 461

Compared to SATA a SCSI device is going to have horrible performance. – Ramhound – 2012-09-21T12:14:52.783

Answers

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I think about getting a SAN device since this Minis fastest I/O port is Ethernet.

An early Mac Mini has the following ports

 FireWire (IEEE 1394)            400 Mbit/s max
 10/100/1000 Ethernet           1000 Mbit/s max
 USB 2.0                         480 Mbit/s max

I'm not sure the difference in speed should be the primary purchasing criterion.

Perhaps, for the cost of a SAN device, you can buy a NAS device that provides better IO.

How good is the performance of iSCSI SAN devices?

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http://www.rainiersolutions.com/RainierLibrary/iSCSI%20SAN%20Performance.pdf

RedGrittyBrick

Posted 2012-09-21T12:04:34.937

Reputation: 70 632

I saw these graphs while googleing for an answer. Maybe my question was not sufficiently precise, I will elaborate on it. P.S. My Mini has an FW800 port. – Percival Ulysses – 2012-09-21T14:54:49.277

Asked: 2012-09-21T12:04:34.937

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Active: 2012-09-21T14:59:19.003