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2.5 Gigabit Ethernet NAS Performance Review
2.5 Gigabit Ethernet network cards and switches become widely available at reasonable process allowing users requiring fast access to large amounts of data to use 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet NAS storage devices in home networks and small offices. The purpose of this review is to compare the performance of a NAS server using the standard Gigabit Ethernet vs. 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet for a variety of different disk analysis, file search and file management operations. For this review, we have used a Windows 2022 server equipped with a 12-core Intel CPU, 16 GB of system memory and a fast NVMe SSD disk. The first time, all the tests were performed using Gigabit Ethernet network cards via a Gigabit Ethernet switch. The second time, all the tests were performed using 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet network cards via a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet switch. Both times the testes were performed in the same order using exactly the same data set containing 450,000 small files with the average file size 32 KB, 50,000 medium-sized files with the average file size 4 MB and 1,000 large files with the average file size 100 MB. The performance tests were performed using the DiskBoss file management solution, which is capable of performing many different types of disk space analysis, file classification, file search, file synchronization and file management operations using multiple, parallel threads fully utilizing modern multi-core CPUs. For this review, we have performed the following benchmarks:
According to the disk space analysis benchmark results, via 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet the performance of the NAS server reached up to 108,000 Files/Sec with 8 parallel disk space analysis threads, while via the standard Gigabit Ethernet the performance of the NAS server reached up to of 80,000 Files/Sec, which represents a significant 35% improvement for this specific operation. 
According to the file classification benchmark results, the performance of the NAS server via the standard Gigabit Ethernet reached up to 70,000 Files/Sec with 8 parallel file classification threads, while the performance of the NAS server via 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet reached up to of 77,000 Files/Sec, which represents a 10% improvement for this specific operation. 
The duplicate files detection operation is a very I/O intensive operation, which requires both fast directory parsing capabilities and scalable file read operations allowing to read data from multiple files at the same time. According to the duplicate files search benchmark results, the performance of the NAS server via the standard Gigabit Ethernet reached up to 2,254 Files/Sec with 8 parallel search threads, while the performance of the NAS server via 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet reached up to of 3,822 Files/Sec, which represents a very significant 69% improvement for this specific operation. 
The file search operations requires both fast directory parsing capabilities and scalable file read operations allowing to read data from multiple files at the same time. According to the file search benchmark results, the performance of the NAS server via the standard Gigabit Ethernet network reached up to 14,310 Files/Sec with 8 parallel file search threads, while the performance of the NAS server via 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet network reached up to of 20,821 Files/Sec, which again represents a very significant 45% improvement for this specific operation. 
The large files file synchronization operation is an I/O intensive operation, which requires scalable file read operations allowing to read data from multiple files at the same time. According to the large files file synchronization benchmark results, the performance of the NAS server via the standard Gigabit Ethernet network reached up to 108 MB/Sec with 4 parallel file synchronization threads, while the performance of the NAS server via 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet Network reached up to 278 MB/Sec, which represents a huge 250% improvement for this specific operation. 
The small files file synchronization operation is an I/O intensive operation, which requires both fast directory parsing capabilities and scalable file read operations allowing to read data from multiple files at the same time. According to the small files file synchronization benchmark results, the performance of the NAS server via the standard Gigabit Ethernet network reached up to 1,375 Files/Sec with 4 parallel file synchronization threads, while the performance of the NAS Server via the 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet network reached up to of 2,007 Files/Sec, which represents a significant 45% improvement for this specific operation. 
The file delete operation requires both fast directory parsing capabilities and scalable file delete operations allowing to delete multiple files at the same time. According to the file delete benchmark results, the performance of the NAS server via the standard Gigabit Ethernet network reached up to 4,027 Files/Sec with 4 processing threads, while the performance of the NAS server via the 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet network reached up to of 7,104 Files/Sec, which represents a very significant 76% performance improvement for this specific operation. 
In order to summarize the performance comparison review, we have averaged the performance differences between the standard Gigabit Ethernet network and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet network for all performed benchmarks and according to the average results the performance of the 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet NAS server is better by 46%. 
* This review was prepared for information purposes only and we strongly recommend to test the performance of DiskBoss file management operations on your specific hardware platform and with your specific data sets.
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