Recommend me a NAS box

[MkII]

We're in a critical position in that all 3 of our file servers are low on space, 2 seriously.

 

I want some advice on the options for expansion please.

 

We have 950 users, including staff. At any one time, 60 staff and 100 students could be logged in. Currently we have one server for kids home folders, one for staff home folders and staff shares, and one shared file server.

 

I'm thinking we could add some kind of NAS to the mix. What would you recommend would be up to the job? We did think of a vanilla PC with some big SATA drives, but I'm worried it just isn't up to the job.

 

Setup is W2003 DC, all file servers W2K. Gbit fibre backbone, servers connected with Cat5 Gbit.

[Ex-MGSTech]

I've just installed a HP Proliant 320s Storage server with 3Tb and running Windows Storage server 2003 cost was about £1,500

You can also get a 6Tb version

 

 

Steve

[MkII]

Thanks very much MGSTech. Looks a bargain! Is that using SATA drives at that price? And how did you set it up?

 

Our Staff users are on a child domain, the kids on the main domain, would I be ok locating all these home folders on there?

[Geoff]

I think long term, you need to be thinking about a SAN rather than a NAS solution. Don't get me wrong, a NAS box is a good stop gap measure for the current emergency, but you need to solve your underlying storage problem.

[MkII]

That box has 12 drive bays to grow into. I know this has been mentioned before, but how will SAN help. Any actual kit I could look at?

 

It would be good to suggest a long term solution as well. I did bring this up 2 years ago as something to plan for, but SMT struck it off the list in their wisdom.

 

Must go look at second hand gear too.

[MkII]

I've just installed a HP Proliant 320s Storage server with 3Tb and running Windows Storage server 2003 cost was about £1,500

You can also get a 6Tb version

 

 

Steve

 

Just got a quote for £2824.58 for that MGSTech - including 3Tb SATA disks

[altecsole]

We bought a Server case and motherboard, got a SATA RAID controller and put in four 500GB drives running Raid 5. We put on Windows 2003 R2 and , touch wood, it's working great. With 2GB RAM it cost us just under £1500. For a file server you'll find the additional feature in 2003 R2 a real bonus.

 

We also bought a couple of Bufallo TeraStations. These cost about £600 for 1.5TB RAID 5, but you don't have the flexibility with them as you do with a Windows box. We use them for network backup.

 

By the way, have you only got one DC? If so, I'd definitely want a second one for backup.

[CyberNerd]

With 2GB RAM

 

Feck ! is that what a fileserver requires these days 8O

[webman]

SAN:

 

SAN vs Traditional Server Based Storage

 

In a typical large LAN-installation, each of a number of servers (and perhaps mainframes) may have its own dedicated storage devices. If a client needs access to a particular storage device, it must go through the server that controls the device. In a SAN, no server sits between the storage devices and the network; instead, the storage devices and servers are each linked directly to the network. The SAN arrangement improves client-to-storage access efficiency, as well as direct storage-to-storage communications for backup and replication functions.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_area_network

 

 

With 2GB RAM

 

Feck ! is that what a fileserver requires these days 8O

 

Only using Windows

[MkII]

We bought a Server case and motherboard, got a SATA RAID controller and put in four 500GB drives running Raid 5. We put on Windows 2003 R2 and , touch wood, it's working great. With 2GB RAM it cost us just under £1500. For a file server you'll find the additional feature in 2003 R2 a real bonus.

 

We also bought a couple of Bufallo TeraStations. These cost about £600 for 1.5TB RAID 5, but you don't have the flexibility with them as you do with a Windows box. We use them for network backup.

 

By the way, have you only got one DC? If so, I'd definitely want a second one for backup.

 

Well that's the other side of the argument altecsole. Should we be doing it a lot cheaper as we're a school with a limited budget. We have an old server case and have populated it with 3 500Gb SATA drives on a vanilla motherboard. What SATA controller did you get? That seems to be the critical component.

 

Not knowing quite enough about it I can't put the argument fairly I think. I'm going to get soem 3rd party companies to quote just to lend a little weight I think.

 

We do exactly the same for backup as it happens!

 

2 DCs - blimey yeah - another one!

 

(+Thanks for that Webman)

[MkII]

Someone else has suggested an entry level SAN plus a SAN switch possibly. I've made enquiries about 2nd user kit as it looks like it might be expensive.

[FN-GM]

Were i work they have just got a couple of Dell NAS Boxes they seem pretty good

[altecsole]

Well that's the other side of the argument altecsole. Should we be doing it a lot cheaper as we're a school with a limited budget. We have an old server case and have populated it with 3 500Gb SATA drives on a vanilla motherboard. What SATA controller did you get? That seems to be the critical component.

 

We got an Intel motherboard which with an onboard raid controller. It came setup for raid 0 and 1, but we paid about £50 to add a chip to upgrade it to raid 5.

 

We got an extra GB of RAM because it was only about an extra £50 which, considering the total price was probably worth it. Also, I completely forgot to mention; it's also a DC (one of three).

[robknowles]

@Mark

 

SAN's can differ greatly on pricing, I've recently got quotes in from many companies (about 24 in total) and varied from about £3.5K to £42K. If you have about 160 users at any one time I think an iSCSI Version would suffice with SATA Disks (what i've gone for here). I went for a product called InfoTrend A16E-G2130-4, which was about £4K with 8 x 750GB SATA Disks (running as RAID 6). Granted it was only a single controller version but it seem to do the job (awaiting delivery for install during the summer holiday) and has space for an additional 8 hdds as well. Rather than a SAN Switch (which in an iSCSI case would be a normal gbits/s switch) I'm going to directly connect our two file servers (clustered) directly to the SAN Device (it has 4 gbe ports).

 

Rob

[Lee_K_81]

I've just installed a HP Proliant 320s Storage server with 3Tb and running Windows Storage server 2003 cost was about �1,500

You can also get a 6Tb version

 

 

Steve

 

Where from?

[MkII]

I've just installed a HP Proliant 320s Storage server with 3Tb and running Windows Storage server 2003 cost was about �1,500

You can also get a 6Tb version

 

I was told that configuration would be more suited to a DC MGSTech, If I was looking at the right thing.

 

This is one set up as a NAS device that'd cost about £5185 (WS2003 Storage Server) 1.5 TB (12 x 146g SAS drives)

 

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF06b/25279-25891-25891-12325420-12325420-13074364-78164217.html

[MkII]

@Mark

 

SAN's can differ greatly on pricing, I've recently got quotes in from many companies (about 24 in total) and varied from about £3.5K to £42K. If you have about 160 users at any one time I think an iSCSI Version would suffice with SATA Disks (what i've gone for here). I went for a product called InfoTrend A16E-G2130-4, which was about £4K with 8 x 750GB SATA Disks (running as RAID 6). Granted it was only a single controller version but it seem to do the job (awaiting delivery for install during the summer holiday) and has space for an additional 8 hdds as well. Rather than a SAN Switch (which in an iSCSI case would be a normal gbits/s switch) I'm going to directly connect our two file servers (clustered) directly to the SAN Device (it has 4 gbe ports).

 

Rob

 

Thanks Rob. Sounds like a good solution. We do have spare gbe ports to do the same. I'll mention that option to our suppliers to see what we can do.

 

Just realised there are some spare drive bays in the file servers so looking at that short term. I was really unhappy about rushing this so hopefully that will buy us some time to get this sorted for next summer.

[altecsole]

Just realised there are some spare drive bays in the file servers so looking at that short term. I was really unhappy about rushing this so hopefully that will buy us some time to get this sorted for next summer.

 

Make sure that your power supply is up to it. We had intermittent drive problems with one of our servers that had six drives installed, it turned out that the psu wasn't up to the job despite the fact that it came with the big server case with eight drive bays.

[Ex-MGSTech]

Sorry for the long delay in replying, have't been getting notification of the replies?

 

3Tb SATA £1500 Datapact London PM for more info

 

Steve