BassTech Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 Our head wants to look at increasing everyone's disk space, I think a SAN would be the best option but she's asked me to look at other on-site solutions (cheaper if there is such a thing?) We are an RM CC4 school, which may or may not make a difference... If it was up to me I'd just throw a SAN in - but it's not!. ideas?
pantscat Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 What sort of file-server do you have at present? A SAN is probably overkill if it's only going to be used for home drives...
Primax98 Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 (edited) We had a similar problem here running old cc3. Brought Qnap mini nas. moved the shared drives to qnap. u can either use iscsi or just remap drives. Then you have the gained space to increase user areas. Be warned RM will not support this at all and will get very much in a knot about it and could cause you problems with support. Qnap plus drives not all that expensive. HTH Paul Got an old box ?? buy some cheap drives and use freenas if its still about Edited June 13, 2013 by Primax98
3s-gtech Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 Increase the size of the disks in your current storage server(s)? For instance, we use 500GB SATA drives for the shares, easy enough to just swap these out with 3TB if necessary, relatively cheap upgrade.
pantscat Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 Don't forget to plan for extra capacity in your backup solution too...
pcstru Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 We run network shares for around 3000(ish) users from a Theucs 8800 Pro acting as an iSCSI lump on a virtualised windows server. Seems perfectly adequate and good value.
pantscat Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 That's interesting @pcstru, I was thinking about getting one of these and using it as a remote backup target and for a VMware test rig. Does it perform fairly well?
pcstru Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 (edited) That's interesting @pcstru, I was thinking about getting one of these and using it as a remote backup target and for a VMware test rig. Does it perform fairly well? We use a smaller 4 bay unit (i4200) as a staging area for our VM guests. If you don't need the space, there's little advantage in the 8 bay unit as a backup target. I think those units perform remarkably well. In our environment they support network file storage for many hundreds of concurrent users. Edited June 13, 2013 by pcstru 1
MicrodigitUK Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 Our head wants to look at increasing everyone's disk space, I think a SAN would be the best option but she's asked me to look at other on-site solutions (cheaper if there is such a thing?) We are an RM CC4 school, which may or may not make a difference... If it was up to me I'd just throw a SAN in - but it's not!. ideas? RM are currently are reselling HP or EMC SANs. Personally I would go for the EMC VNXe SANs. Nice bits of kit and very fast. Perfect for a Secondary school and very expandable. But they are a bit more of an expenses compared to the HP range on offer from RM. Get RM to come out and advise if you have a CC4 contract. Cutter Project is where I got my 2 VNXe 3100s from. Cutter Project are on here somewhere and have given me relay good advice on SANs in the past.
howartp Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 We had a similar problem here running old cc3. Brought Qnap mini nas. moved the shared drives to qnap. u can either use iscsi or just remap drives. Then you have the gained space to increase user areas. Be warned RM will not support this at all and will get very much in a knot about it and could cause you problems with support. Actually, RM recommended this to us last year. You can't move the home drives as they're hardcoded to d:\RMUsers\..\..\etc\ but you can move pretty much anything else. Our RMShared is currently on E: and RMPublic was somewhere else at one point. Peter
Guest Guest Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 Actually, RM recommended this to us last year. You can't move the home drives as they're hardcoded to d:\RMUsers\..\..\etc\ but you can move pretty much anything else. Our RMShared is currently on E: and RMPublic was somewhere else at one point. Peter Can you not back up the files, unmount d: and mound the iscsi target as d: and restore?
apeman Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 If you just need the storage for file shares ie Home directories and Shared areas then a NAS is the best option, there do seem to be a number of people using a SAN purely for file share access but i do have to wonder why.
FishCustard Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 You can't move the home drives as they're hardcoded to d:\RMUsers\..\..\etc\ but you can move pretty much anything else. Our CC3 server has the RMUsers structure on the H:\ drive, so it can be changed. I have no idea how you would do this though, as the CC3 installation was set up (long!) before I started here.
howartp Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 True, I've seen those now you mention it - I suspect they can't be moved post-install though.
FishCustard Posted June 13, 2013 Posted June 13, 2013 That would make sense. I would go fishing to find out properly, but I'm trying to clear out CC3 stuff from my head, not get more of it in there!
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