Network Attached Storage

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sjm

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Looking to get myself a NAS device, I need something that's pretty fast & has easy backup, looking at roughly 3T+

Anything I should particularly look at or avoid? Has anybody had experience with anything?

Thanks
 
If you have an old, like pentium 3 pc lying around or something, you can buy a SATA PCI card for it and use it.
 
Business use, so was hoping to avoid having to build (& therefore support) something. I've got a home built NAS, but if I build something for work I end up supporting it, & have better things to do with my time which is why I want to purchase something.
 
Conradl said:
Budget??
Click to expand...

Anything reasonable (not looking at HP ProLiant Storage Server type prices). 5 - 10K would probably be acceptable, could stretch a little bit over that if necessary.
 
spiderz said:
PC + FreeNAS or PC + Linux - cheepest, best solution
Click to expand...

agreed! Best solution.

Every other NAS device I have ever tested was slow and painful. Save your money and set up your own server using FreeNAS.

Whatever you do stay away from Western Digitial MyBook World Edition. They are not only slow, they are glacial.

Edit: and buy some good quality hubs and network cable that can properly support Gigabit speeds.
 
sjm said:
Anything reasonable (not looking at HP ProLiant Storage Server type prices). 5 - 10K would probably be acceptable, could stretch a little bit over that if necessary.
Click to expand...

"5 - 10K" USD or "5 - 10K" ZAR?

If you're talking ZAR then you're not going to get anything remotely close to enterprise quality for that price range.

If you set up your own RAID 6 array using 5 x 1TB desktop SATA disks you're looking at about R3500 for the HDDs alone, never mind the server, rack, etc.
However desktop drives are a BAD idea for a NAS that does a lot of throughput - that's just asking for trouble.

Ideally you'd need to use SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and you're going to have to fork out about R2000 for Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1TB SAS hard drives.
So that makes the hard drives for your 3TB RAID 6 NAS R10000.
Add a decent hardware RAID controller and you're looking at, at least R15K for the controller and drives. Add the NAS case, etc and you're well over R20K.

On top of it I wouldn't recommend RAID5 or 6 to my enemies.
Rather go RAID 1+0. Much better throughput and a lot less risk when rebuilding a failed RAID array since the controller only needs to copy the data from one disk to another (no parity calculations required so it happens fast).
 
+1 for a PC + FreeNAS - running mine like this with a Gigabit connection to my main PC - works great! Going this route you also have plenty of room for additional drives - I'm currently on 6x 1TB, with 6 more available HDD slots in the tower case...

And with 1TB/1.5TB drives being very reasonable at the moment, I think 12-18TB for home use should be more than enough for the next few years! :D
 
Last edited:
sjm said:
Looking to get myself a NAS device, I need something that's pretty fast & has easy backup, looking at roughly 3T+

Anything I should particularly look at or avoid? Has anybody had experience with anything?

Thanks
Click to expand...
The Drobo might be a good solution. No hassle.
 
Paul_S said:
"5 - 10K" USD or "5 - 10K" ZAR?

If you're talking ZAR then you're not going to get anything remotely close to enterprise quality for that price range.

If you set up your own RAID 6 array using 5 x 1TB desktop SATA disks you're looking at about R3500 for the HDDs alone, never mind the server, rack, etc.
However desktop drives are a BAD idea for a NAS that does a lot of throughput - that's just asking for trouble.

Ideally you'd need to use SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and you're going to have to fork out about R2000 for Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1TB SAS hard drives.
So that makes the hard drives for your 3TB RAID 6 NAS R10000.
Add a decent hardware RAID controller and you're looking at, at least R15K for the controller and drives. Add the NAS case, etc and you're well over R20K.

On top of it I wouldn't recommend RAID5 or 6 to my enemies.
Rather go RAID 1+0. Much better throughput and a lot less risk when rebuilding a failed RAID array since the controller only needs to copy the data from one disk to another (no parity calculations required so it happens fast).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, throughput isn't really that crucial, I've already got a SAN for the critical servers etc. This is more like secondary storage almost, something slow & big were people can dump the less essential items. Reliability & easy of use are way more important than speed.
 
howardb said:
+1 for a PC + FreeNAS - running mine like this with a Gigabit connection to my main PC - works great! Going this route you also have plenty of room for additional drives - I'm currently on 6x 1TB, with 6 more available HDD slots in the tower case...

And with 1TB/1.5TB drives being very reasonable at the moment, I think 12-18TB for home use should be more than enough for the next few years! :D
Click to expand...

Have a similar system at home (only 4TB storage though). This is for work, so I don't need too much space (at present). Speed is also not critical. Priorities at the moment are reliability and ease of setup / use / backup.
 
sjm said:
Thanks for the info, throughput isn't really that crucial, I've already got a SAN for the critical servers etc. This is more like secondary storage almost, something slow & big were people can dump the less essential items. Reliability & easy of use are way more important than speed.
Click to expand...

If throughput is not essential then go for a clone with 1 or 1.5 TB disks in RAID 5, and OpenFiler, or FreeNAS (I use OpenFiler mostly). Do not be overly concerned with SAS, SATA will do, and also be careful of the Enterprise/Consumer label on SATA disks. Some research shows that there is no difference in reliability.

Also, what SAN have you got? Will it not maybe be easier to add another tier of SATA disks to your current SAN?
 
This should work rather nicely. You prolly in for around R6k ex. VAT from Asbis, populated with 4TB of drives.
 
Conradl said:
If throughput is not essential then go for a clone with 1 or 1.5 TB disks in RAID 5, and OpenFiler, or FreeNAS (I use OpenFiler mostly). Do not be overly concerned with SAS, SATA will do, and also be careful of the Enterprise/Consumer label on SATA disks. Some research shows that there is no difference in reliability.

Also, what SAN have you got? Will it not maybe be easier to add another tier of SATA disks to your current SAN?
Click to expand...

SAS 2.5" disks only, bl**dy expensive. That's why I want cheaper storage for the stuff that doesn't require super fast, high throughput storage, but only requires masses of reliable inexpensive storage
 
My opinion: Get a Drobo. It's so much easier if a drive fails compared to restoring from a RAID array.
 
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