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February 10, 2010
Xtreamer e-TRAYz NAS
Couple of weeks ago, I came by an interesting device - the Xtreamer e-TRAYz NAS.
This is a little device that looks like an UPS and can host up to two SATA HDDs inside. After checking the features list, I decided to get one and use it at home for backup and such.
The device sells without HDDs. Personally, I decided to use it with two WD 2TB Green HDDs.
A couple of nice things about the e-TRAYz NAS: first of all, it runs Linux.
~# uname -a Linux etrayz 2.6.24.4 #1 Thu Dec 10 11:35:17 KST 2009 armv5tejl ARM926EJ-S rev 5 (v5l) Oxsemi NAS GNU/Linux
It has ssh, apache with php support, smb, ftp and surprisingly, even mysql and unrar.
~# unrar | head -3 UNRAR 3.80 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2008 Alexander Roshal Usage: unrar command... ~# file /usr/bin/unrar /usr/bin/unrar: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.14, stripped
The hardware runs on an ARM926EJ-S CPU, which according to the description page is an "entry point processor capable of supporting a full Operating System such as Linux, Windows CE, and Symbian".
~# cat /proc/cpuinfo Processor : ARM926EJ-S rev 5 (v5l) BogoMIPS : 183.09 Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp java CPU implementer : 0x41 CPU architecture: 5TEJ CPU variant : 0x0 CPU part : 0x926 CPU revision : 5 Cache type : write-back Cache clean : cp15 c7 ops Cache lockdown : format C Cache format : Harvard I size : 32768 I assoc : 4 I line length : 32 I sets : 256 D size : 32768 D assoc : 4 D line length : 32 D sets : 256 Hardware : Oxsemi NAS Revision : 0000 Serial : 00000acbcaf52a80
As an interesting note, this is probably that first CPU that I see with native Java support.
The system also features 128MB of RAM and during installation, is configured with 500MB of swap space:
/var/log# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 126052 95108 30944 0 4956 46284
-/+ buffers/cache: 43868 82184
Swap: 499896 2036 497860
The CPU is not very fast, for instance, it does MD5 at about 12MB/s:
[11:~]$ dd if=/dev/zero bs=10240 count=10000 | md5sum -b 10000+0 records in 10000+0 records out 102400000 bytes (102 MB) copied, 7.94591 s, 12.9 MB/s
To compare, a MacMini with an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU at 2.0Ghz does about 200MB/s.
The 2TB WD Caviar Green disks are not fast, but in a NAS with 100Mb link, speed is not such a big issue.
[13:~]$ hdparm -tT /dev/sda /dev/sda: Timing cached reads: 228 MB in 2.00 seconds = 113.85 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 52 MB in 3.11 seconds = 16.71 MB/sec
Reading is around 16MB/s. Comparatively, on an Core 2 Duo machine, the same disk achieves around 97MB/s.
Now, for the smart stuff inside this device. Obviously, it has been designed by programmers, with programmers and heavy tech users in mind.
[20:/]$ mount /dev/md0 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime,nodiratime) /dev/md2 on /home type xfs (rw,noatime,nodiratime,prjquota)
While the root is formatted with ext3, it has noatime and nodiratime turned on - nice! Additionally, the storage partition (which is raid1 for me) is formatted not with ext3, but XFS! XFS is my preferred choice on Linux, glad to see the people designing it knew their ins and outs.
Additionally, there is a lot of fine tuning in /etc/rc.local to optimize power usage, temperature and fan control.
echo 1 > /sys/module/thermAndFan/parameters/output_flag echo 50 > /sys/module/thermAndFan/parameters/cold_limit echo 1 > /sys/module/thermAndFan/parameters/hot_limit echo "60" > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio echo "1" > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio echo "core.%e" > /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
Again, respect to the people who produced the configuration, they didn't just dump some Linux on it but knew how to properly finetune it for the device.
Now, for the eye candy and GUI:
A number of very nice features can be accessed through the web interface, for instance, the BitTorrent client and rapidshare direct download client. I found the BitTorrent to be particularly funny as it features a preinstalled searchable RSS feed to ISOHUNT and Mininova:
There are a couple of other nifty features in this device, but I'll let you discover them for yourself. The eTRAYz can be purchased in Romania from xtreamer.ro, for a promotional price of 549 RON (133 EUR).
Personally, I think it's worth!
Update (2010-02-11):
My friend Razvan Musaloiu-E asked about Gigabit support. Here's a "dmesg | grep eth0":
eth0: PHY is LSI ET1011C eth0: GMAC ver = 51, vendor ver = 17 at 0xe8000000, IRQ 8 eth0: Found PHY at address 1, type 0x0282f014 -> 10/100/1000 eth0: Ethernet addr: 00:1c:85:20:0f:dc eth0: PHY is LSI ET1011C eth0: LSI ET1011C PHY no Rx clk workaround start eth0: LSI ET1011C PHY no Rx clk workaround end eth0: PHY is LSI ET1011C
So it looks like Gigabit support is there too, but to be honest, I don't have a router and cables to test it.
Posted by Costin Raiu at February 10, 2010 12:53 PM
Comments
Salut! Foarte interesant device! Si foarte interesant pretul! Pacat ca nu se gasesc placi de baza + CPU ARM ca si produse de sine statatoare (ce sa contina si un PCIE 8X)... ar iesi niste storage servere (DIY) super :)
ethtool eth0 parca ar arata mai repede capabilitatile .. nu?
Sev
Posted by: Anonymous 
at February 15, 2010 11:51 PM