Orange Pi Zero NAS Expansion Board with SATA & mSATA

manuti · January 19, 2017

Orange Pi Zero NAS Expansion Board with SATA, mSATA using internal ~~HUB USB with~~ UASP capable chip, 2x USB and AV Port
more info in this cnx-software post: http://www.cnx-software.com/2017/01/19/orange-pi-zero-nas-expansion-board-with-sata-usb-and-av-port-sells-for-10-shipped/

I want to share this new expansion board to read some interesting feedback here.

tkaiser · January 19, 2017

I fail to spot an USB hub there.

manuti · January 19, 2017

I fail to spot an USB hub there.

I add two images from the other side of the board. I don't know if the JMICRON chip is an USB HUB or only the SATA and mSATA converter.

tkaiser · January 19, 2017

I add two images from the other side of the board. I don't know if the JMICRON chip is an USB HUB or only the SATA and mSATA converter.

The JMS578 is only an USB-to-SATA bridge making use of some SPI flash and containing voltage regulators (1.2V and 3.3V -- the latter necessary for mSATA). But there's no hub. Steven mentioned USB would be multiplexed (so maybe if you use only a mSATA SSD you get USB on the left USB jack and when using only the SATA port the right USB jack exposes the respective signals?)

BTW: There's is also some information/speculation in the other thread: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2808-orange-pi-zero-went-to-the-market/?p=23532

manuti · January 19, 2017

The JMS578 is only an USB-to-SATA bridge making use of some SPI flash and containing voltage regulators (1.2V and 3.3V -- the latter necessary for mSATA). But there's no hub. Steven mentioned USB would be multiplexed (so maybe if you use only a mSATA SSD you get USB on the left USB jack and when using only the SATA port the right USB jack exposes the respective signals?)

BTW: There's is also some information/speculation in the other thread: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2808-orange-pi-zero-went-to-the-market/?p=23532

OK, thanks. You discover to me in other post the boards using USB to SATA converter and the bad decision of buying this cheat way of having SATA connections.

jimandroidpc · January 19, 2017

Interesting idea, but not all that excited by the Fast Ethernet 10/100 only for NAS type applications. I think the minimum at this point should be 1000mbps for a NAS type device. For me - I dont think Id go to the trouble and $$ of putting an mSATA on there...

jimandroidpc · January 23, 2017

I did some benchmarking with my Orange Pi Zero connected to my gigabit router. To my Windows Server PC I can get transfers around 85-100MB/ Sec, Banana Pi server ~30-35MB/sec. Same 1.3gb file to the Orange Pi Zero - 5MB/Sec. Pretty disappointing for a NAS device..Still will probably use it to run an offsite syncthing node for a few gb of family pics.

tkaiser · January 23, 2017

Why benchmarks with a Fast Ethernet only device? Everything is bottlenecked by slow network (and cpufreq governor in this case -- switching to performance should give a few MB/s more). Here are numbers what to expect with an external USB3 GbE dongle: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1440-h3-devices-as-nas/ but I really hope we see new Zero boards with Gigabit Ethernet soon (and maybe H5 instead of H3) and I also hope that the people who currently order this NAS Expansion board are aware that it makes nearly no sense combined with actual OPi Zero (especially not for NAS use cases -- for SPI flash boot scenarios and system on fast USB storage it's a different story).

msev · January 23, 2017

Would 10/10 internet be fast enough? What about 10/1? (I need to check what kind of speeds i have). So this USB3 GbE dongle creates a USB3 port and intefaces with gigabit port on SBC? So what is the point of this addon?

Will we be able to reach the speed of Odroid XU4 with the use of H5 boards?

tkaiser · January 23, 2017

Hmm... wonders do not happen, H3 and H5 are not USB3 capable and boards with only Fast Ethernet and crappy WiFi aren't that suitable as NAS. In other words: expect performance to be low as hell with actual OPi Zero since network is the bottleneck. So you either add GbE (the link above is there for a reason. To get throughput numbers with this setup!) or wait for a newer Zero that might be made by Xunlong (no idea though, I'm not into their plans and no product manager).

This NAS expansion board is interesting due to superior USB-to-SATA bridges used there, the combination with actual Zero isn't if it's about the NAS use case. But I think I'm repeating me for no reason.

msev · January 23, 2017

So Odroid XU4 is still best for that use case, would it make sense to use this addon board with it?

Igor · January 23, 2017

So Odroid XU4 is still best for that use case, would it make sense to use this addon board with it?

For this price tag it make sense. XU4 costs much more, consume more energy, it's loud, ... and also not the only choice left for this job.

tkaiser · January 23, 2017

So Odroid XU4 is still best for that use case, would it make sense to use this addon board with it?

Neither/nor. Why not reading through comments in link from 1st posting? Doing some research on your own? Define the meaning of 'best'? If Xunlong comes up with a new GbE equipped zero for $15 then this in combination with the NAS Expansion board can be great for many use cases. In other situations ARM boards with Marvell SoCs are 'best' and for other NAS situations x86 boxes. It depends and it's necessary to define use cases and get into technical details (this forum is full of BTW!)

msev · January 23, 2017

I did research and IMO XU4 is the best regarding price performance with OpenMediaVault (because its ARM and uses less power then x86, thats why is better, and tutorials are available, they state read and write speeds of 80mb's). Marvell boards are more expensive (110usd).

I don't understand how you circumvent the lack of USB3...in that case read and write speeds will never be as good as XU4.

Use case is home NAS for media + databases from homeautomation + security camera stuff.

tkaiser · January 23, 2017

Use case is home NAS for media + databases from homeautomation + security camera stuff.

So even boring OPi Zero could do the job in case your security cameras are able to encode in h.264 or better? It always depends on the use case. If I need a backup NAS for a few Macs for example I can use any A20 board since TM is slow when backing up and real performance is only needed when restoring: http://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi_devices_as_NAS#Influence_of_the_chosen_OS_image_on_NAS_performance

If I only want to watch movies, then most probably Fast Ethernet is enough since most media formats are encoded (for a reason!). If I want to impress others I combine a fast and expensive SSD with a fast device and produce useless benchmark numbers that look nice. If I want to setup redundant storage for a whole company then I choose x86 boxes with a couple of HDDs (then the 'system in question' doesn't matter at all since those boxes need redundant +1000W PSUs anyway), SSD caches and at least 10 GbE Ethernet. Again: use case.

Regarding 'Marvell boards' and your price tag: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/874883570/marvell-espressobin-board (it gets boring since all this information is already available, just click on the link in the first post above).

msev · January 23, 2017

So for my use cases, streaming 1080p video and stuff like that, would it work smooth without stuttering? Maybe even to multiple TVs at the same time? Even a Orange Pi zero or Orange Pi PC would be good enough?

Would i be able to set up RAID? So that data would stay safe if one disk died?

tkaiser · January 23, 2017

So for my use cases (streaming 1080p video and stuff like that, would it work smooth without stuttering?) even a Orange Pi zero or Orange Pi PC would be good enough?

Would i be able to set up RAID? So that data would stay safe if one disk died?

'1080p video' is resolution but doesn't tell anthing regarding bitrates (depends on encoding/codec used). So you have to check how high bitrate requirements of your media files are. Please note: most people confuse codecs with file/container formats. If you have files lying around with names ending on .mp4 that still doesn't tell anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14#Data_streams

The good news: bitrate requirements for most media formats are rather low so even Fast Ethernet should suffice (since this stuff is meant for streaming and the usual encoders are configured to not exceed a specific bitrate anyway -- in case 'the scene' needs higher bitrates than allowed the encoder partially decreases image quality to remain below the bitrate treshold).

Fast Ethernet means 8 MB/s at least. With current cpufreq settings in Armbian images actual values might be lower since cpufreq might remain at the lower 240 MHz most of the time. Switching to performance governor might help: http://linux-sunxi.org/Cpufreq#The_.22performance.22_governor

But even the 5 MB/s reported by @jimandroidpc should be sufficient for most media files (please remember that there are many Android TV boxes with only Fast Ethernet around and the bitrates that work reliably over crappy 2.4GHz Wi-Fi have to be even lower).

I won't comment on RAID used with SBC since I did it too often already. TL;DR: RAID has nothing to do with 'data safety', this is only about availability (business continuity) and people constantly fool themselves with RAID (if you're interested in my opinions a web search for 'tkaiser crap raid availability' or something like that should help).

Again: I really hope that Xunlong already prepared a new board with Gigabit Ethernet and Zero form factor since with current Zero the NAS Expansion board seems somewhat strange (the JSM578 is capable of SAT and therefore also SMART, supports TRIM/UNMAP and also UAS which is nice since Allwinner SoCs can make use of UAS even with USB 2.0 when running mainline kernel. Normally you find this feature only on USB3 capable devices). But JMS578's potential is wasted on a board with only Fast Ethernet and crappy Wi-Fi.

technik007_cz · January 23, 2017

This nas expansion is great idea when ssd drive lifetime and performance is much better than sd card. If it will be released with proper plastic case I will buy it.

(performance bottleneck of usb sata converter I am leaving without comment. This is cheap device area and I do not expect this item flying for this price.)

Sent from my Redmi Note 2 using Tapatalk

malvcr · January 23, 2017

This is my first post here ...

Recently I acquired some OPIZ, and I have been working with them for having cyphered storage. As my first attempt was using Raspberry Pi Zero machines, to jump to OPIZ machines was an improvement ( around 20 times the total speed ).

Of course that when using the Fast Ethernet we have a clear bottleneck, but it depends on the usage. Also, it is possible to use g_ether (Ethernet over USB and to move more to the USB 2.0 limit that it is clearly higher than the Fast Ethernet one).

In my case I have been linking two OPIZ with USB reprogramming the OTG to work as a client (mode 2), so one of them has a web server and the other a database and a cyphered database located in an USB hard disk. For that I am using Wester Digital PiDrives, that are native USB disks.

However, could be useful to have more storage options, and I think that the mentioned expansion board is a good solution because it opens possibilities. One obvious advantage is to eliminate many cables that can make your life complicated.

Not everything is about a lot of data in very short periods of time. There are plenty of cases where USB 2.0 based storage is more thank enough, and as the OPIZ H2+ inherits the separated channels for all its USB 2.0 ports from the H3 chip, it is really a very powerful contender in its league. Of course than to have USB 3.0 "separated" channels would be wonderful, but I think this moves the line to the next machine level we can work with if we need to do so.

Oh, I prefer not to have internal hubs or switches in these small machines (as the Raspberry do) ... to be confident on the total bandwidth. I think this is the main cause of the dramatic performance difference between the Raspberry Pi Zero and the Orange Pi Zero.

tkaiser · January 24, 2017

performance bottleneck of usb sata converter I am leaving without comment. This is cheap device area and I do not expect this item flying for this price.

Well, but Xunlong put on this $7 Expansion board two of the best USB-to-SATA bridges currently available: JMS578. Performance with USB2 devices should be comparable to JMS567 (see some results here -- please note the newly submitted results with A64 SoC since I would suspect the same would be possible with H5) and with USB3 hosts these beasts really rock. But I doubt we'll ever see an USB3 capable Zero variant and I also doubt that USB3 Superspeed works over a GPIO header (but I'm an electronics noob so might be wrong here)

Oh, I prefer not to have internal hubs or switches in these small machines (as the Raspberry do) ... to be confident on the total bandwidth. I think this is the main cause of the dramatic performance difference between the Raspberry Pi Zero and the Orange Pi Zero.

Well, RPi Zero has no internal USB hub and a rather inefficient ARMv6 CPU core. But it's true: with every Raspberry around both I/O and network bandwidth are limited due to network hanging off the USB bus and the SoC only capable of one single USB2 connection to the outside. H2+/H3/H5 provide 3 real USB2 host ports and 1 OTG port that can be used in host mode and then performs just a little bit lower.

I'm a bit curious regarding the PiDrive since when I did some research on it over a year ago it doesn't looked that promising. Could you run an iozone benchmark after switching the OPi Zero to performance governor with the 3 calls from here: http://linux-sunxi.org/USB/UAS#Testing_3_different_external_enclosures

And also query drive health using 'sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda' (requires an 'sudo apt install smartmontools' first of course).

msev · January 24, 2017

So what would be then the preffered way of keeping data safe on a "Opi NAS" with 2 disk for example. Just copying manually critical data on both disks and then if one disk dies I still have the other one?

tkaiser · January 24, 2017

So what would be then the preffered way of keeping data safe on a "Opi NAS" with 2 disk for example. Just copying manually critical data on both disks and then if one disk dies I still have the other one?

If your house burns down there is no other one. The only way to achieve 'data safety' is to become familiar with the concepts needed and then implement them based on the level of 'safety' needed.

Modern filesystems allow the creation of snapshots and sending them over to other disks or remote locations (then your house can burn down and at least your data survives that). With old and boring filesystem tools like rsync could be used.

But without wasting some time on basics/concepts you can neither implement anything nor gain any level of 'safety'. That's why RAID is so popular: easy to implement, doesn't protect from most reasons of data loss/corruption, good feeling ('at least I've done something and wasted a whole disk for this feeling').

msev · January 24, 2017

I don't understand why you are against RAID (haven't googled yet your opinon), but RAID 1 disk mirroring should save me if 1 disk dies...I don't get it..still better to have photos on laptop, and on raid 1 two disks on OPI Nas. And why would snapshots be better?

tkaiser · January 24, 2017

haven't googled yet your opinon

Great, so let's start repeating http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com stuff over and over again to get this forum flooded with useless posts? Data mirroring (RAID-1) without using recent filesystems that ensure data integrity is plain stupid. Reasons can be found on the net and on this forum eg. https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2921-software-raid-on-opi-pc/

Let's stop here. Everything is already said thousand times. Let's stop writing and start reading (do some Google-Fu before). And please try out the following to get the idea how a data mirror correlates with 'data safety'. Just do a 'sudo rm -rf /' on your SBC and then educate yourself what snapshots are and how they prevent from a situation where everything is lost when using stupid RAID modes.

msev · January 24, 2017

In the thread that you linked to the guy wanted to do Raid 1 on the flash storage (eMMC and SD card), while I would do it on a HDD, so I don't know how relevant that thread is to this situation?

Btw would it make any sense to use this Opi NAS hat with Odroid XU4?

bzfrp · January 24, 2017

Fast Ethernet means 8 MB/s at least. With current cpufreq settings in Armbian images actual values might be lower since cpufreq might remain at the lower 240 MHz most of the time. Switching to performance governor might help: http://linux-sunxi.org/Cpufreq#The_.22performance.22_governor

Sorry for my stupid question. Instead of switching to performance governor to fix the frequency, can we disable cpufreq in the kernel and set the desired frequency in uboot?

Is there a difference between these two methods?

Thanks.

malvcr · January 24, 2017

Hi tkaiser

To run these tests takes some time :-)

I was reading the previous post about the PiDrive ... 10 MB/s it is not real. I have two sets of numbers here taken from a fresh PiDrive on a recently installed Orange Pi Zero and an SSD (Kernel 3 series, so I can't check the UASP right now ... although I will do it these days because it is important).

According with my previous tests, these numbers (10 MB/s) are more for a Raspberry Pi with its inherent bottleneck, not for an Orange Pi, or because some network was in between. My guess is that the machine is the problem, not the disk neither its integrated circuits.

About the second set of tests ... they are interesting because they belong to a SanDisk Z400s SSD with LUKS on an INITIO INIC 1618 based USB 2.0 Seagate bridge (I need to retest this without LUKS, but it seems that the bridge I am using for that it is "terrible" ... I don't think the SSD is the responsible for the slow numbers). And, in this case, the integrated Orange Pi card looks to be a wonderful idea.

Also, while making the tests I was trying to replace the USB-SATA bridge with another one on the Z400s, but it reported a different geometry to Linux, making the LUKS to fail. In this case, to have USB hard disks it is nice, because the hardware combination it is married and that problem won't exist. For me both, the Xunlong and the WD solutions are good ones, maybe for different types of solutions (not all problems are nails neither the tools to resolve them are hammers).

Z400s Data:

iozone -a -g 4000m -s 4000m -i 0 -i 1 -r 4K

random random