File Server Reccomendations

[NathanH99]

Hi,

 

We are looking at buy 1 or 2 new servers which will be used for file shares. The school I work at has around 2000 members. We are wanting to put all of our files onto these 2 servers.

 

Can anyone give me suggestions on the best way to do this and how do you guys/girls do it?

 

The ideas I have so far;

 

 

• All file shares on one server that replicates to the other
  
• Split the file shares between the two servers
  
• Use two rackmount NAS drives
  

 

I am leaning towards the NAS drive route with something like these https://www.box.co.uk/RS1619XS-Synology-RS1619XS-4-Bay-Rackmount-NAS-(_2437761.html however I am concerned they wont be able to handle the amount of people accessing them at once. Anyone got any experiences with using NAS as a file server instead of your bog standard server with windows server os on.

 

TIA

[mikkydoos]

A look at MS Storage Spaces Direct may be worth it if you're on a smaller budget.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-spaces/storage-spaces-direct-overview

 

 

 

I don't think the NICs or the disks on that particular NAS would cut it. I'd be looking at at least 10G's and a ton of SSD's for 2000+ users.

[Jcx500]

One way you could do it is , Buy a nas and load it with ssd’s or 15k drives.

 

Setup a Server 2019 VM and connect to the nas’s via iscsi.

 

Second way is to setup just standard virtual machines and have fast storage on your hosts or your san

[djm968]

I would try to move file storage to the cloud - Microsoft 365 SharePoint and OneDrive.

[NathanH99]

Thanks ill have a look into this

[NathanH99]

One way you could do it is , Buy a nas and load it with ssd’s or 15k drives.

 

Setup a Server 2019 VM and connect to the nas’s via iscsi.

 

Second way is to setup just standard virtual machines and have fast storage on your hosts or your san

 

Yeah this is somewhat what I was going for but instead of using iscsi some NAS's allow domain join so it would just be a straight mapped drive to the NAS instead

[the_quick]

You can setup a shared folder on a NAS and direct in the AD this as user storage folder. The NAS you mentioned will not cut it imo. It all depends how many users will be accessing this at one time, if something like half of that, you will need 10gig network and really fast drives like enterprise SSDs. I would as well make sure it has redundant PSU and raid controller. This data needs to be available all the time during school day, so you will need to beef it up.

 

We have similar amount of people in my school, around 800 people connected - last years we replaced our dedicated SAN with Dell VRTX (SSD drives in storage) - it works really well. We use vmware, file server VM disk is on SAN.

 

Cloud storage is another option, as long as you have stable and fast connection.

[Oaktech]

I'm still very wary of exclusively hosting stuff in the cloud, when your users are almost exclusively on site... If you need the mobility, sure, why not, but unless you have a monumental internet connection you are artificially limiting your file performance.

[djm968]

unless you have a monumental internet connection you are artificially limiting your file performance.

The OneDrive client app is pretty good now and you can limit the bandwidth by changing the upload and download rates https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-the-onedrive-sync-app-upload-or-download-rate-71cc69da-2371-4981-8cc8-b4558bdda56e

 

Cloud hosting has made a massive leap forward in recent years, MS, Google, AWS etc have all invested huge sums of money in their cloud infrastructures. I cannot understand why anyone would continue to invest in local infrastructure for document storage when MS are offering unlimited storage, free of charge for education!

[free780]

The OneDrive client app is pretty good now and you can limit the bandwidth by changing the upload and download rates https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-the-onedrive-sync-app-upload-or-download-rate-71cc69da-2371-4981-8cc8-b4558bdda56e

 

Cloud hosting has made a massive leap forward in recent years, MS, Google, AWS etc have all invested huge sums of money in their cloud infrastructures. I cannot understand why anyone would continue to invest in local infrastructure for document storage when MS are offering unlimited storage, free of charge for education!

Two words shared devices.

People logging off and not letting sync complete is the issue, some sort of local server cache would solve the issue. It looks like 1:1 devices will be the norm at some point.

[psydii]

We have sync issues with OneDrive about as often as we have with the CSC (which is a cache on the local machine that sit between the 'save' button and the fileserver in all versions of windows since Vista).

 

OneDrive for us worked fine when we had a 500Mb/sec line.

 

Fileserver performance these days is only critical if you have either thousands of clients to a server, or hundreds of devices with roaming profiles and/or appdata redirection, or workflow with HUGE files. (FWIW the students do a lot of video work with the bins stored in OneDrive)

 

That said - our legacy fileservers were spread over three 8-disk volumes in a SAN. At the time we needed capacity over performance - however we *never* had complaints about performance related to the storage. If you are going to go local it might still be worth running the numbers on a large array of spinning plates of rust. SSD performance may paint you into a corner of disappointment when you eventually do go cloud based - nothing will come close to the responsiveness of a SSD based array for a long long time.

[NathanH99]

Hi All,

 

Thanks for all your advice everyone we are most likely going to stick with what we have for now and possibly move towards a cloud based solution.

[Oaktech]

The OneDrive client app is pretty good now and you can limit the bandwidth by changing the upload and download rates https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-the-onedrive-sync-app-upload-or-download-rate-71cc69da-2371-4981-8cc8-b4558bdda56e

 

Cloud hosting has made a massive leap forward in recent years, MS, Google, AWS etc have all invested huge sums of money in their cloud infrastructures. I cannot understand why anyone would continue to invest in local infrastructure for document storage when MS are offering unlimited storage, free of charge for education!

 

Because every experience I've had with cloud exclusive storage has been massively negative - slow clunky, awkward to manage and with poor granular controls. Until I'm happy to recomend it, I won't.

[NathanH99]

Because every experience I've had with cloud exclusive storage has been massively negative - slow clunky, awkward to manage and with poor granular controls. Until I'm happy to recomend it, I won't.

 

We are planning on testing it with one or two shares we have. We have a gigabit line into the building so hoping we should experience a some what fast experience.

[djm968]

Because every experience I've had with cloud exclusive storage has been massively negative - slow clunky, awkward to manage and with poor granular controls. Until I'm happy to recomend it, I won't.

I would have agreed with this a few years ago but there a has been rapid and significant improvement in cloud storage and reliability of the client connectivity to the cloud via sync clients/apps.

 

I agree that a fast, reliable connectivity is required, but this is now almost as essential as a good power/water supply into a School, so it should have a similar priority and I also agree that files used by multi-media applications where editing/manipulation is required are still best stored locally.

[Oaktech]

I would have agreed with this a few years ago but there a has been rapid and significant improvement in cloud storage and reliability of the client connectivity to the cloud via sync clients/apps.

 

I agree that a fast, reliable connectivity is required, but this is now almost as essential as a good power/water supply into a School, so it should have a similar priority and I also agree that files used by multi-media applications where editing/manipulation is required are still best stored locally.

 

 

Don't get me wrong, It's certainly getting better, and I did move a small company (30 people, of which 10 are regular users) from a terrible on prem SBS2008(!) setup to Azure hosted desktops with Office 365, but they only have 2 layers of access control: Finance/HR and everything else, that went OK, and it helps that they no longer even attempt use anything locally. I still cannot see a slick way of it working hybrid in schools who are reliant on mapped drives and redirected folders.

[djm968]

OneDrive KFM

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/redirect-known-folders

 

and

 

Cloud Drive Mapper

https://www.iamcloud.com/cloud-drive-mapper/

[Oaktech]

OneDrive KFM

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/redirect-known-folders

 

and

 

Cloud Drive Mapper

https://www.iamcloud.com/cloud-drive-mapper/

 

Thanks I wasn't aware of the Redirect Known Folders facility, I'll test that in the summer.

 

Has cloud drive mapper changed recently? I tried it about 6 months ago as a trial on 2 different sites and I just couldn't make it reliable enough to justify moving to it - it was failing to map probably 1 out of 5 logins and when it did work it took significantly longer than people were happy to wait. Our current on prem setups fails to map about once every 6 months!