NAS for Live Data

[danselvey]

Hi,

 

I thought i'd throw an idea out there regarding using NAS devices as apposed to Windows 2012 Servers.

 

We currently have 2 rock solid Synology RS814+ (8tb) NAS boxes working in a HA cluster (hosting iSCSI storage currently for a few VMs)

We also have a Synology RS815+ (24tb) for backups only.

 

Our existing file servers are a pair of Windows 2012 servers with DFS.

 

I'm considering using the 2 HA Synology boxes to also host live files, well actually, all the live files.

 

So far i can only see benefits, easy provisioning and scaling, all the DSM OS features, such as remote file access, cloud station, time backups, webdav and ftp can be made available to end users easily.

 

I can't help feeling i'm being blindsided by the idea, so am throwing it open for discussion!

 

PS. We're a small School Years 7-11 only, 700 users all in. Anywhere up to 200 concurrent users on a good day.

 

Thanks in advance.

[richbrowncardiff]

what sort of disks are in the units ? and also are you teaming the nics? its a good idea as synology kit is really good (i have 2 large rackstations used for a few test vm's live data in the form of "Not backed up" to give multiple TB to staff for non essential resources. it works well and i use a 60tb RS for Backups. BUT I have enterprise class disks in there. And in the past have had the iscsi LUN crash and not be able to get any data back. When the LUN crashed i was using Raid edition disks which may have not been the best idea although were listed as compatible. My personal feeling is give it a go but maybe for some data to start... I'm always dubious about moving away from "The norm" but if configured correctly i don't see why not.

[danselvey]

We got WD Reds in all our Synology's running Raid 5. I am thinking of teaming the NICs, i have one spare port currently on each of the clustered RS's (1 for network traffic, 2 for backup and iscsi traffic - seperate LAN, 3 for heartbeat+replication, 4 unused)

 

Yeah i think thats whats got me, its not normal. I guess i'd like to hear some experiences with this, even with other brands of NAS.

[richbrowncardiff]

WD Reds were the ones i had origionally. Although I'm now using the RE Enterprise drives and they are solid for us (Touch wood) also got SSD cache setup to improve performance too. I think it would be a good idea to team the nics as it will help with the traffic and also allow resilience incase of a failure. I am basically looking to do the move and trash off the physical boxes in future but i haven't been able to prove to myself its the right thing to do. Don't forget (sorry if you know this already) that in a traditional server say an R610 or similar you have a tried and tested enterprise class raid controller which is replaceable etc i know that i sound like a server sales rep ( and I'm not I work in a very large High school) but i am fairly cautious. On the other hand their really is no technical reason not to do this as you have HA, Nic resilience, Replication, Good Disks (would recommend changing to the RE Range from experience) and the support of a very large firm. (Synology) i use the RS3614xs+ and find it very fast and reliable. i appreciate its not cheap but for me if i were going to do this (and i may in the not too distant future) i would buy the "Pro" Models you have more expandability and also can have spare disks sat in the unit configured as hotspares or enable a raid 6 array. Whenever i do anything like this i buy the 1or 2 TB disks not the larger 3tb+ as they tend to be more reliable (from experience) and also don't take too long to re-build.

[danselvey]

Theres some really good points there that i need to consider. Another thing that is worrying me is using the Synology for iSCSI LUNs for HV servers whilst it is using for SMB sharing, but saying that there is very little draw on the resources of the Synology boxes whilst the network is busy. They seem to me under utilised. The LUNs contains everything from Print Servers, Web Servers to ADFS and AV servers all running across 4 nodes in a failover cluster.

 

Whats really got me considering this is i am just not a fan of DFS, it all seems a bit "old fashioned" i guess, plus the total storage available to all users is 1TB and thats only made possible by dedup and its vastly becoming a squeeze (88gb remaining!). The alternative is to look at Virtualising storage.

[drewp]

I'm looking at using a Synology RS815+ for our general file shares. I was thinking about creating iSCSI LUNS so I can still use FSRM.

 

Not sure how much of a performance drop users would see between SAS 15K disks and SATA WD Red disks - storage space could be more of a priority for us...

[richbrowncardiff]

@danselvey i think your right on the old fashioned front and with only having 200 concurrent users i think you should be fine going down the synology route. Ive also played around with storage spaces and its works really well. i guess it comes down to personal choice and what your most comfortable with and what space is available on your servers etc. From a technical point of view the synology units should handle what your looking to do. i would also give them a call and see what they say. the synology site also has some good info on drive support, device selector etc. and has a great FAQ section which may help you decide.