Western Digital My Cloud DL4100 Business NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on March 4, 2015 5:30 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Storage
- Western Digital
- Enterprise
Miscellaneous Aspects and Final Words
In order to keep testing consistent across all 4-bay units, we performed all our expansion / rebuild testing as well as power consumption evaluation with the unit configured in RAID-5. The disks used for benchmarking (Western Digital WD4000FYYZ) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the unit as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities.
| WD My Cloud DL4100 RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration (HH:MM:SS) | Avg. Power (W) |
| Single Disk Init | 00:09:06 | 22.63 W |
| JBOD to RAID-1 Migration | 08:37:27 | 35.34 W |
| RAID-1 (2D) to RAID-5 (3D) Migration | 04:43:33 | 45.31 W |
| RAID-5 (3D) to RAID-5 (4D) Expansion | 18:01:04 | 55.1 W |
| RAID-5 (4D) Rebuild | 08:50:33 | 57.41 W |
The graphs below show the power consumption and rebuild duration when repairing a RAID-5 volume for the various 4-bay NAS units that have been evaluated before.
Even though the power consumption during the rebuild process is high, the time taken is the lowest amongst all the 4-bay NAS units that we have seen so far. That said, the time take for expanding a 3-disk RAID-5 volume to a 4-disk RAID-5 volume is more than double the RAID-5 rebuild time. Usually, we see NAS units have approximately same duration and power consumption for these two activities. The My Cloud OS does have some scope for optimizing the expansion process.
Concluding Remarks
The My Cloud DL4100 fills an important slot in Western Digital's NAS lineup for the SMB / SOHO market. The choice of an Intel Rangeley platform enables very good performance numbers while keeping power consumption numbers reasonable. On the OS side, getting the unit up and running with relay access to the unit / mobile apps support was quite easy.
On the other side, the user experience with the My Cloud OS needs a lot of improvement. For example, navigating the log messages from the dashboard is very cumbersome. The UI and UX are acceptable for a 'My Passport Wireless'-type device, but, for something more complicated like the My Cloud Business Series NAS units, there is scope for improvement. The number of third-party apps available for the My Cloud OS is minimal right now. However, this will definitely improve as the days go by. From WD's side, the firmware needs more QA. In addition, some of the features that were touted at release (such as the daisy-chaining of units using the LAN port) find no mention in the user manual.
At $530 for a diskless unit, the pricing is definitely better than the Synology DS415+ or the QNAP TS-453 Pro. However, for the performance that is on offer, the $480 QNAP TS-451 and the $500 Seagate NAS Pro 4-bay also enter the list of units to be considered. Considered purely on performance or price, the WD My Cloud DL4100 is not an obvious choice. Similar to the Seagate NAS Pro units, the channel support as well as the bundling of hard drives / pre-configured nature of the units can make the My Cloud DL4100 worth considering.
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kepstin - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Hmm, you say "the board must definitely be sporting a PCIe - USB 3.0 bridge", but then don't bother to look up the PCI ids from the lspci output. The device "1b21" "1142" is an ASMedia ASM1042A USB 3.0 Host Controller.pwr4wrd - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Building a custom FreeNas or Nas4Free box depending on your needs is a much better solution than any one of these anemic underpowered and overpriced solutions. Presence of ZFS on FreeNas is by far the most critically important aspect. If data loss prevention and integrity top priority, which should be, there are two great articles by Robin Harris. These articles are titled "Has Raid5 Stopped working?" and "Why Raid5 stops working in 2009" can be found with a quick search. Mr. Harris clearly explains the inadequacy of Raid5 and 6 as viable storage solutions. As far as I am concerned, most of these off the shelf units are not good options for data safety. Considering the rock solid encryption option ZFS offers its value becomes even more important.Black Obsidian - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
People considering COTS NAS boxes are doing so either because they're a business that needs real support, or a consumer who needs ease-of-use and hand-holding, all of which being areas that a custom FreeNAS/Nas4Free box utterly fails to deliver. While both are great products, their target market doesn't have much overlap with the target market of these COTS boxes.The articles by Robin Harris are unimpressive. He assumes that the advertised BER is a maximum, where in fact it appears to be a minimum (and several consumer lines advertise higher than 10^14 anyway). He also over-dramatizes an array rebuild failure due to read error; in that event, you simply create a new array from scratch and restore data from backups, since unlike Harris, you remember that RAID is a solution for AVAILABILITY, not backup.
pwr4wrd - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
I see your points. Our data is very important to us at our business. So we have to approach things as worst case scenario possibility. And some arguments made here make no sense. For businesses that NEED serious support this is NOT that SERIOUS of a product. And yes FreeNas does offer home/soho version of the product that was very well reviewed. For the individual that needs "hand-holding" availability of RAID means next to nothing. A simple back up drive from costco would do fine.Spoogie - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
This has been debunked, which is why ZFS adoption has not taken hold.http://www.high-rely.com/blog/why-raid-5-stops-wor...
pbrutsche - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Sorry, that link doesn't explain why ZFS hasn't taken hold.Spoogie - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
The fact that IT pros haven't adopted it in in spite of this sort of debunked fear mongering makes it pretty clear. Don't believe it? Fine, then use ZFS if it makes you feel better.pwr4wrd - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
How can you fear monger in order to capitalize on a free product?dave_the_nerd - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
It's not free if you have to buy a support contract and consulting services from iXSystems.dave_the_nerd - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Are you running your business without support agreements/maintenance contracts on your servers? *horror*