File Server Size

[newpersn]

Just would like to know the setup of your file server?

 

Currently using

 

5x 750GB-1Tb (Dell have sent us the 1TB drives instead of the 750GB when we call in a replacement) Still only using the 750GB space

Raid 5 down to 3 Partitions

 

50GB OS (server 2003)

1.5TB User Areas

1TB "Data" Drive

 

Whats yours?

[dhicks]

Just would like to know the setup of your file server?

 

We have two main virtual machines hosts, each with a 1.5TB array of fast SAS storage for VM OS disks and a 12TB array of SATA storage. The first 12TB array is passed directly through to the main file server, which has various shares and holds user home folders and so on. The second 12TB array is passed through to the backup server, which duplicates the first file server and does snapshots for versioning (currently every 3 hours, trimmed down to once a day after a wekk's storage). Files, with snapshot versions, are then duplicated offsite to another 12TB storage server. I'm also part-way through setting up a Dell C6100 with 12 2TB harddrives as a Ceph storage cluster.

[abillybob]

I don't ever think a FileServer needs to be necessarily powerful. We have a small simple HP MicroServer n54l with 6TB worth of storage space and running Windows Server 2008 R2. I did upgrade the RAM to 4GB though!

It's all backed up to a 9TB NAS Box which runs Windows Backup Server.

 

Despite what you guys may say in regards to the hardware being carp, it's actually very fast and serves around 500 users accessing shared areas and Home Drives No problems with it at all cost the school £80 after the HP cashback (obviously the hard drives where a bit more)

Edited May 8, 2014 by abillybob

[newpersn]

Despite what you guys may say in regards to the hardware being carp, it's actually very fast and serves around 500 users accessing shared areas and Home Drives No problems with it at all cost the school £80 after the HP cashback (obviously the hard drives where a bit more)

 

 

All depends on your needs.. We got an Dell Poweredge with Quad Core Xeon (E5405 2GHz) With 4GB of Ram. Teamed the Nics and its happy. Not been touched for years (unless it throws a paddy with a disk. (Once a year maybe)

[3s-gtech]

We have two virtual hosts, each running Hyper-V, with a separate file server VM on each sharing the same shares through DFS-R. The OSs of the VMs are stored on a virtual disk stored on a DAS RAID 10 array on 300GB 10k SAS disks, the file shares are on a separate virtual disk on a separate DAS RAID array of 7.2k SAS disks. We don't have that much space (roughly 2TB for file shares on each VM file server) but OS and shares are totally separate, and they're quick. They were also built to be easy to expand with more disks in the future.

 

Will not be touching RAID 5 again on any file servers, too slow and unreliable.

[localzuk]

We've got our storage servers set up as follows:

 

8 x 100GB SSDs - for ultra fast storage (remote desktop server virtual disk images - we have 3 RDS servers running at any one time, and for our SIMS server)

17 x 300GB 10kRPM SAS disks - split into 2 arrays, one with 8 disks - for the rest of our virtual machine hard disks, and the remaining 9 disks for OS and data storage.

 

So, we end up with 1 x 200GB partition for OS, 1 x 651GB SSD partition, 1 x 1.9TB SAS partition and 1 x 1.8TB SAS partition.

 

The server itself is a HP DL380 Gen8 with an E5-2420 CPU and 20GB RAM (should be 16GB but we had a spare pair of 2GB sticks).

 

We then have it connected up via 10GbE.

 

This was an upgrade from our old non-virtualised network, where data storage was on a 4x500GB SATA NAS unit. Everything absolutely crawled. Much faster now.

 

We actually have 2 of those, 1 which replicates the other (DFSr for the data, nightly backups of virtual images for the VM storage).

 

We then back everything up to a 8 x 2TB SATA NAS box (nightly incremental for data and full SIMS data, weekly full data and VMs).

 

And then finally, we also do off-site backups to 3 x 4TB USB3 external drives. 1 is done yearly for audit purposes. The other 2 are rotated every couple of weeks. We should probably increase the regularity of the off-site backups to be honest.

[zag]

We've got 500GB SSD as our main file server. No RAID.

 

We also have a 1TB SSD for movies and audio files which is separate.

 

We keep the size down doing this

 

Managing Total Storage in Schools - Blogs - EduGeek.net

Edited May 8, 2014 by zag

[mdench]

Two fibre channels hosts running ubuntu 12.04 with samba4 each host is

 

2 x 12 core CPU

64Gb ram

2 x 140GB OS Disks

1 x Fibre channel card

 

Both hosts are connected up to a 32TB HP P2000 MSA the samba config is pushed out via puppet meaning that each share can be accessed via either host and in the event of a host failure we can migrate the IPs over onto the other host

[cpjitservices]

4x NetApp 3020C https://www.ndm.net/netappstore/NetApp-FAS-Storage/netapp-fas3020c

25 TB of Space at main Site, De-Duped in use space 16-17TB... for the entire network we have approximately 150+TB of space.

 

We also used DotHill assured SANS, all our data is replicated between sites and de-duped.

AssuredSAN 4000 SAN Storage Array | Dot Hill

[psydii]

Two fibre channels hosts running ubuntu 12.04 with samba4 each host is

 

2 x 12 core CPU

64Gb ram

2 x 140GB OS Disks

1 x Fibre channel card

 

Both hosts are connected up to a 32TB HP P2000 MSA the samba config is pushed out via puppet meaning that each share can be accessed via either host and in the event of a host failure we can migrate the IPs over onto the other host

 

Woah. How many clients?

[mdench]

Woah. How many clients?

 

1500 students and 270 staff tho we are expecting to jump to 2000 students and 350 staff currently have 14.8TB of just docs and shared areas on site

[mrbios]

File server is a VM, 8GB ram, 2 cores from 2 cpus assigned. Generally that's far more than it needs though.

 

Storage is an Eonstor A16E-G2140 iSCSI SAN. Two iSCSI connections to the storage using multipath. Presented to the VM using Microsoft iSCSI initiator rather than RDMs. (Unsure if the latter would give any benefits over what i have now really, it's an idea we've thrown around though for switching to) Disks within the SAN are 16 x 2TB SATA drives in RAID10, split on the VM into two 5.4TB partitions.

 

Surprised by how much hardware some people here have thrown at their file servers, even opting for massive hardware on a sole server rather than VMs?

[forkies]

We have 14TB SAN for user docs. 950ish students 150ish staff using a total of 4TB docs. lots of media work uncompressed videos

 

Other data drive is 500gb using less then 200gb.

 

All raid 5... SAN is 8x2TB drives... Other data server is 4x300gb. A few other servers with 2tb but running vmware machines. Exchange running 800gb using less then 250gb.

[psydii]

1500 students and 270 staff tho we are expecting to jump to 2000 students and 350 staff currently have 14.8TB of just docs and shared areas on site

 

So how many end user devices simultaneously? Do users hot desk? Do you redirect AppData to it? Are roaming profiles loaded off it? What connectivity does it have and what is peak and average througput during a period?