Storage recommendation

[bodminman]

Good morning all,

 

we currently have an old RM NASBOX (Server 2003) which has 6tb capacity, of which 3.5tb is being used. It stores A level work for Art, Photography and music and is also used as a dump for general school photos and drama performance DVDs etc.

 

The NASBOX is becoming increasingly unreliable so I'm after recommendations for replacing it.

 

Can anyone give me some suggestions please.

 

Thanks

 

PS: we don't have money to burn

[Joanne]

could you re-use the HDDs out of it? If so, why not get a refurb server box and stick the drives in it? Upgrade server 2013 to 2008 R2 (for ease)... perhaps?

[pcstru]

PS: we don't have money to burn

So approximately what is the budget?

[ForgotMyPassword]

How does FREE sound?

 

Get yourself a Google Apps for Education domain and enjoy all the free storage you like.

 

In all seriousness, this is what we've done and it's been brilliant but it does require a fair being of education for the teachers. Worth it though.

[bodminman]

could you re-use the HDDs out of it? If so, why not get a refurb server box and stick the drives in it? Upgrade server 2013 to 2008 R2 (for ease)... perhaps?

 

Disks are probably as old as the device so that'll make them around 6 to 7 years old. Nice idea though.

 

So approximately what is the budget?

 

The powers that be didn't give me a number, they just said "get it as cheap as you can with a good warranty".

 

Get yourself a Google Apps for Education domain and enjoy all the free storage you like.

 

Thanks for the suggestion but we won't be going down that route, certainly not in the near future anyway.

[Chris_]

Good morning all,

 

we currently have an old RM NASBOX (Server 2003) which has 6tb capacity, of which 3.5tb is being used. It stores A level work for Art, Photography and music and is also used as a dump for general school photos and drama performance DVDs etc.

 

The NASBOX is becoming increasingly unreliable so I'm after recommendations for replacing it.

 

Can anyone give me some suggestions please.

 

Thanks

 

PS: we don't have money to burn

 

Which part of it is becoming unreliable? If the hardware is all ok, could you just back it up and install a fresh modern OS on it?

[localzuk]

How does FREE sound?

 

Get yourself a Google Apps for Education domain and enjoy all the free storage you like.

 

In all seriousness, this is what we've done and it's been brilliant but it does require a fair being of education for the teachers. Worth it though.

 

Not really practical for photography, art and music storage! Unless you've got a superb internet connection (1GBps+). Students would go from instant access to their 250Mb photoshop files to having to wait for it to download, then having to wait for it to upload.

 

If you just want a standard sort of storage device - ie. a server with a bunch of hard disks, you could go for a couple of different options:

 

1. QNAP SS-EC1279U-SAS-RP

2. HP proliant Gen8 - http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/proliant-servers/product-detail.html?oid=6458536

[ForgotMyPassword]

Not really practical for photography, art and music storage! Unless you've got a superb internet connection (1GBps+). Students would go from instant access to their 250Mb photoshop files to having to wait for it to download, then having to wait for it to upload.

 

Fair point, but not necessarily reflective of my experience, although we are a small school - our entire art and media departments work on GAfE and are very happy. I'm not saying there are no changes to workflow, but they manage well and constantly evangelise about how much easier it makes things that they can access from home on any device.

 

All that being said, for the sake of balance, they don't run any high-end courses that would generate insane amounts of data, our shares on GAfE for Media are still in the GBs not TBs.

 

Cheers,

James

[bodminman]

Which part of it is becoming unreliable? If the hardware is all ok, could you just back it up and install a fresh modern OS on it?

 

It's the hardware that's becoming unreliable. Also, the spec is crap so I can't upgrade it any further than it is.

[pcstru]

We have good experience with Thecus devices as iSCSI back ends to windows boxes (VM's). They offer a good compromise between price and the hardware feature set (dual power supplies, NIC's, DOM etc) and price. They can also act directly as a NAS plugging into AD. QNAP seems to be the other choice favoured by EduGeekers.

 

If money is a real object though, a separate back end probably doesn't make terribly much sense. I think Thecus now supply a line of windows based boxes, based on windows server 2012 R2. They might be worth a look.

[bodminman]

Also, I forgot to mention that the NAS isn't hammered at all.

 

At a busy part of the day there may only be approx 10-15 people wanting access to the files etc that are stored on it.

 

Don't bite my head off (just in case someone is having a stressed day and needs some EduGin) but would a Business class desktop NAS do the job for us given the lite load etc?

[bossman]

@bodminman

 

We use Synology NAS here https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/RS3614xs+ this particular model is the one we use with full complement of 4TB drives gives us 34TB formatted storage carved up into 3 x 11TB Luns for Data Storage plus VM storage plus 1 x 1TB Lun for other stuff.

 

All for £4k with 5 year warranty as standard excellent value me thinks.

 

We are looking to invest in 2 more of the newer version of this model as they now support 8TB drives, you can also mix SSD's and SATA together which is super cool for those VM's requiring fast caching and IOP's.

 

Worth looking at

[thebatman]

We have good experience with Thecus devices as iSCSI back ends to windows boxes (VM's). They offer a good compromise between price and the hardware feature set (dual power supplies, NIC's, DOM etc) and price. They can also act directly as a NAS plugging into AD. QNAP seems to be the other choice favoured by EduGeekers.

 

If money is a real object though, a separate back end probably doesn't make terribly much sense. I think Thecus now supply a line of windows based boxes, based on windows server 2012 R2. They might be worth a look.

 

We have used Thecus for years and we love them, currently have 4 of them on site doing difrent things. We did use Netgear Ready NAS but they was rubbish. I can confirm that Thecus do window based boxes now but there New Thecus OS works well with AD and windows security.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

why not get a refurb server box and stick the drives in it? Upgrade server 2013 to 2008 R2 (for ease)... perhaps?

 

I've got the perfect server box for you. And I can provide you with drives.

 

A 25-bay 2U Server with say 12 x 1TB 2.5" HDDs for now, giving you the freedom to add another 13 drives in the future.

 

It'll have a 2 year warranty also.

 

Drop me a message if you fancy a quick chat about it?