NAS Recommendations

[alexsanger]

Hi All,

 

Currently planning the new virtualised server structure and intend to implement WDS to image and manage the desktop estate. Quickly realised storage for this and things like backups of software are going to push the limits of our SAN rather too soon, so wondered if anyone had any experience or knowledge of good NAS solutions?

 

Ideally looking for rackmount, about 4Tb to start with, and needs to play nice with AD (Vanilla W2k8) and needs good transfer speeds.

 

Look forward to your thoughts

[CyberNerd]

QNAP !

[alexsanger]

Short and sweet! Interesting if a little pricey. Transfer speeds good enough for large scale multicasting?

 

Edit:

Actually, found QNAP TS-410U 4TB NAS Server with iSCSI, which seems pretty reasonable.

 

Any opinions?

 

Thanks

Edited May 9, 2011 by alexsanger

[sted]

till the end of may (was april and march so i expect it until they run out) hp microservers have £100 cash back so they work out about £150 will it full of 2tb drives and use the os of your choice (though ive found freenas dosent like the drives "hardware" raid controller enabled but mine runs server 2008r2 ok (granted ive shoved an extra 2gb in) and as a workstation its fine cant gurantee its up to being a dc in a live network but as a file dump its fine

[alexsanger]

Got all the server roles covered, just need the storage, so might see how that stacks up cost wise compared to a self contained NAS box. Thanks.

[plexer]

That's 4TB as standard 4 x 1TB drives or 3TB RAID5

 

I'd personally be looking at the larger 8 bay units which you can get bare and say half fill it with 2TB drives giving you 6TB RAID5

 

Ben

[sparker]

I have a Qnap 410U and its been fine as a backup - just awaiting delivery of a 12 bay Dlink 6110 SAN. I bought it as part of a switch order so cannot tell you how much it was exactly but it was a DEAL and the whole order was 13.5K which was nearly 11k off the list price. Ill let you know how it is when it arrives but DLink have invited me for a free days training and have been great generally

[tech_guy]

Short and sweet! Interesting if a little pricey. Transfer speeds good enough for large scale multicasting?

 

Edit:

Actually, found QNAP TS-410U 4TB NAS Server with iSCSI, which seems pretty reasonable.

 

Any opinions?

 

Thanks

 

We purchased a QNAP NAS earlier in the year on the recommendation of a fellow edugeeker and we've been very please with it. Nice, reliable bit of kit.

[pcstru]

I've used 2 Thecus i4500's for hosting VM's and as a quick and dirty 'backup' for the main SAN. I've also deployed a Thecus 8800 Pro as the storage back end for our 2500 students and 400ish staff (the i4500's did this temporarily when our previous SAN suffered a failure of the disc array). The i4500's are two years old, haven't skipped a beat and are reasonably nippy. The workload the 8800 is doing speaks for itself. All are used serving out iSCSI LUNS rather than samba types shares. All in all I've have more problems from the new datacore SAN which cost 20x more than I have from any of those devices.

[alexsanger]

Thanks for the feedback. Might see if we can squeeze an 8tb QNAP out of the meagre budgets, but not before checking out Thecus. Cheers guys.

[m25man]

ReadyNAS 2100/3200/4200's will give anything a run for it's money.

 

Last year we switched last minute from a £25k Equallogic purchase to a £7k ReadyNAS last summer with 10GBe connectivity.

 

The money saved equiupped an entire suite and the 3 node Hyper-V cluster doesnt ever break into a sweat...

 

As a result this year there is plenty of cash left over for other projects. The Head is very happy

 

Give me a PM and if you can get to Enfield we can show you it in action.

[dhicks]

Ideally looking for rackmount, about 4Tb to start with, and needs to play nice with AD (Vanilla W2k8) and needs good transfer speeds.

 

We've had a couple of threads recently about building your own:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/68446-server-chasis-homemade-nas.html

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/68440-nas-server-ideas.html

[alexsanger]

@sparker

 

Been doing some more reading and people are reporting pretty slow throughput with the 410U. Are you using it iSCSI? If so, how are the transfer speeds for you?

 

Thanks in advance.

[sparker]

Hi Alex

 

I did reply to this but doesnt seem to have gone in.

Afraid I cannot tell you any performance figures at the moment as our servers are failing and until the new ones come on lince hey are uanable to send data fast enough to test the nas!

[alexsanger]

No worries! Good luck with the new servers