NAS File Server for a small business help

[Chucu]

I for whatever reason am in charge of the network at our office since the IT guy was let go due to down sizing and while I know my way around the individual machines and the basics of networking I am at a loss for recommendations for a new NAS file server.

What we are is approximately 20 users on a gigabit network attached to a very aged Buffalo Terastation with 4 250GB drives in a raid 5 configuration. We use this as a file server, all of our job files are on this machine and they are accessed by all users all day long.

The Terastation has been painfully slow since the beginning and we are now reaching the capacity of the 750 GB and the unit requires reboots on a fairly regular basis to keep it from being absolutely uselessly slow.

What I would like to see is something in the 1.5-2tb disk range that is mirrored possibly stripped, not entirely sure we need a RAID 5 configuration but welcome your opinions. What would be nice is for it to also has a hotswap bay for our monthly hard disk offsite backups.

What I DO NOT WANT - I do NOT want a file server computer, I just want a plug and play box (I am happy to install hard drives) that its sole function is life is to be a file server.

Budget: under 2k, if we can get something under 1k that would be fantastic.

What I have looked at. DroboFS or a ReadyNAS pro 4 and 6.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be great and if you need any more information to help I will be happy to provide.

Thank you in advance.

 

[DnetMHZ]

The Synology DS1511+ should do everything you are looking for and much more. The diskless version is on Amazon for about $900.

http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS1511+/index.php

 

[ViviTheMage]

netapp ... oh wait, probably out of your price range/knowledgebase

synology/drobo should be fine.

 

[Chucu]

netapp ... oh wait, probably out of your price range/knowledgebase

Yes simple please and that requires very little to no attention. I have a million other things that I am actually supposed to be doing.

 

[alkemyst]

We are a major partner to almost all technologies out there. When our guys want a good home NAS they choose Synology.

If you are not familiar with the website: www.smallnetbuilder.com you should be...it would be a great resource for you.

Here is their NAS reviews http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews

 

[Ratman6161]

And you are backing that up somehow aren't you? Backup and disaster recovery are the most frequently ignored areas for SMB's.

 

[Goosemaster]

Drobo, Synology, ReadyNAS, Qnap, Iomgea, Cisco CSS etc

I wouldn't expect miracles out of these little guys but they do a decent job in certain roles. Some of them support backup to locally attached media or an offsite hosted backup service.

 

[Chucu]

And you are backing that up somehow aren't you? Backup and disaster recovery are the most frequently ignored areas for SMB's.

Yes indeed we have an automated system in place for that as well, we do daily backups on a different system, may not be the most efficient but it works and has been tested, and at least that system is scaleable up to a 2TB drive without a headache. We also do offsite backups every month via a similar method.

Thanks again for the suggestions, it would appear that I am headed in the correct direction.

 

[bobdole369]

I for whatever reason am in charge of the network at our office since the IT guy was let go due to down sizing and while I know my way around the individual machines and the basics of networking I am at a loss for recommendations for a new NAS file server.

What we are is approximately 20 users on a gigabit network attached to a very aged Buffalo Terastation with 4 250GB drives in a raid 5 configuration. We use this as a file server, all of our job files are on this machine and they are accessed by all users all day long.

The Terastation has been painfully slow since the beginning and we are now reaching the capacity of the 750 GB and the unit requires reboots on a fairly regular basis to keep it from being absolutely uselessly slow.

What I would like to see is something in the 1.5-2tb disk range that is mirrored possibly stripped, not entirely sure we need a RAID 5 configuration but welcome your opinions. What would be nice is for it to also has a hotswap bay for our monthly hard disk offsite backups.

What I DO NOT WANT - I do NOT want a file server computer, I just want a plug and play box (I am happy to install hard drives) that its sole function is life is to be a file server.

Budget: under 2k, if we can get something under 1k that would be fantastic.

What I have looked at. DroboFS or a ReadyNAS pro 4 and 6.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be great and if you need any more information to help I will be happy to provide.

Thank you in advance.

Sigh... not to get off topic - this is the sort of thing that makes IT folk shiver. The response I'd like to hear (as an IT pro) is "Why don't you hire someone who knows what he is doing?"

Drobo is perfect.

 

[kevnich2]

Sigh... not to get off topic - this is the sort of thing that makes IT folk shiver. The response I'd like to hear (as an IT pro) is "Why don't you hire someone who knows what he is doing?"

Drobo is perfect.

Yes well as an IT Pro myself, I'd recommend an actual computer for file sharing purposes as it's much better at scaling and upgrading. Plus you can use it for more than just file serving as well, such as backups, etc all in one system. If it's properly setup, you never really have to worry about it, it just sits there.

 

[Chucu]

EDIT - NEVER MIND - did not notice that this only took 2.5" drives.

I have come across the Synology DS411slim unit that is about 1/2 the price as the 1511 model previously mentioned. I can live with the 4 bays.

Does anyone have any opinions on this unit?

Thanks,

 

[jaise]

check this site, they do cool comparisons and filters for nas

http://www.nasreview.org/find

i bought my ds211j there

 

[Tbirdkid]

I dont believe being hooked up straight to a NAS would be the best bet especially for backup and DR reasons. I would at the very least, take a NAS and hook it up to a pc, and put two nics in the pc, and team them. Then hook that up to a gig switch, and share off of that. Then, you can install a backup agent or drop the data to a product such as Mozy pro, local tape, or hell, another nas.

The day you cant come back from a full on disaster, is the day your going to get fired, even if you arent the true IT guy. Also, as a veteran SE, my thoughts are that if you are going to be doing business, you need a solutions provider, even if its not someone on site, its someone you can call to help you get it setup, and if you have trouble, you can communicate with them, or pay them to come take care of it.

I am sitting here cringing at the fact that they are willing to put the stability and the future of their business on someone that admittedly doesnt know enough about DR or about setting this sort of thing up.

Going to get some gum...

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well, as an IT Pro myself, I suspect the reason your current solution is so slow is that you have outgrown the capabilities of it. That also in my eyes means a newer solution using 4 disks in a RAID 5 won't solve your problem if you are still using consumer class hard drives. You need to make the step-up to enterprise class drives, like 15k RPM SAS disks, as well as something that has multiple 1gb network connections that you can truncate/pair together so that it acts as though you have a 2gb or 4gb network connection to the NAS box. You also need to make sure that the network switch this connects into has a backplane that can actually push full gb to each device connected (Most of the cheaper ones do not. Hell, even some of the expensive ones do not either.)

That all said, there is no way you will be able to get something like that for under 2k. Hell, those disks alone will put you close to that mark.

 

[spikespiegal]

That also in my eyes means a newer solution using 4 disks in a RAID 5 won't solve your problem if you are still using consumer class hard drives. You need to make the step-up to enterprise class drives, like 15k RPM SAS disks,

His company has 20 something users and all he needs is basic file services. What the %^&* does this have to do with 15k drives (??) and the guy above mumbling about 'teaming NIC' cards??? Gee guys, should we go fiber channel or iSCSI? Maybe he also needs to host his own Exchange Server.

Next post will probably be about overclocking and RAM timing. No offense, but responses like this and the fact there are "IT professionals" out there billing small companies for this drivel is one reason businesses are running screaming to cloud based services.

The main problem with SoHo class NAS devices is once you start getting into good ones that run like a decent file server is they start costing more than a dedicated file server. My normal solution for this is to get a small business class server from HP or Dell, and jack it full of 500gb - 1tb drives in RAID 1 (anybody promoting RAID 5 in a small business is moron and needs to go back to delivering pizzas). Let Carbonite or somebody else handle the back-ups off site unless broadband upload speeds are terribly lousy.

Windows 2008 Foundation does this cheap and reliably, but a typical small office environment that's been running off a NAS for years is usually a mish-mosh of every version of Windows made, including home versions, which makes NTLM issues a problem along with licensing if it's pre-Vista. So, that's no good unless the office is running all pro or higher levels of Vista or Win 7. So, at that point I punt and load a NAS orientated Linux OS on the box.

Then the extra money for the NAS box Chucu is asking about starts to make sense because we're almost dealing with the same thing.

 

[Fallen Kell]

If it is an engineering firm dealing with CAD files, 3D models, rendering, etc., 20 systems can completely hose a NAS, just like he is stating is happening with his current one. Without more info on data thru-put, files being worked on, size of individual files, types of applications which use this storage system, and the only data we have to go on is that the current 4 disk RAID 5 is "painfully slow", faster disks become a very viable solution.

 

[Emulex]

use raid-10 with some re4 drives - good to go. hell i've got 6 2tB re4's on an hp ml350 running esxi in raid-10 - slow as a turd (i'm used to 15K sas drives) but solid. can handle 2-3 storage vmotion to the box at once. great for veeam replication. very reliable no drive failures hiccups nada.

i use the same box in the cisco branded qnap - i just had to upgrade the ram to 2gb (atom 1gb originally) - has 60 machines mapped to it for backups and doesn't have an issue when both gigabit ports are maxxed out doing backups (in and out)

 

[Goosemaster]

I for whatever reason am in charge of the network at our office since the IT guy was let go due to down sizing and while I know my way around the individual machines and the basics of networking I am at a loss for recommendations for a new NAS file server.

....

What I DO NOT WANT - I do NOT want a file server computer, I just want a plug and play box (I am happy to install hard drives) that its sole function is life is to be a file server.

...

Budget: under 2k, if we can get something under 1k that would be fantastic.

Get a file server. Windows, Linux, etc.

File Server with some sort of disk redundancy + (Mozy/CrashPlan/Carbonite) = done.

elaboration:

While an all-in one device might seem like a perfect fit at first, you are severely limited in terms of growth, and worse, in terms of troubleshooting. A centos box will be cheap and the performance will be FANTASTIC compared to all of the all-in-one units. In addition, if anything goes wrong there are a wealth of online resources where someone has run into your latest problem and has posted a solution. A cheap Dell/HP box will also have extensive warranty options that include onsite support should you need it.

Example cause I care:

T310 from Dell
Server 2008 R2 Standard...CALs are $$ so format over it and install CENTOS)
4GB RAM
Perc 6i controller
4x1TB Sata drives in raid 10 (2.7TB usable space)
3 years NBD onsite service

$2800 ($2500 without the NBD support)

CentOS on that bad boy paired up with CrashPlan (online backup) will be a fantastic starter solution.

If your boss has any issues with this then you aren't selling it well enough.

 

[ChillyPenguin]

While I agree 100% with Goosemaster, I think you missed the first paragraph of the OP. I have set up CentOS boxes galore, many of which are single purpose file servers. While performance and power are great, I would not recommend the task for someone with the skill set described by the OP.

I caution the OP to read the performance reviews of each product you consider. Many of the SoHo products mentioned are only capable of 25-45MB/s in best case scenarios. If you are looking at filling up a 1gbit pipe, you would do well to consider a dedicated box for this purpose. Also consider the level of user access control you need to maintain. I found this to be an unacceptable limitation of many products in this price range. I recently needed to build a solution on a very tight budget that required at least 8TB available storage with high availability in a mixed Windows, Linux, OSX environment. CentOS has done quite well, but requires at least an intermediate knowledge of Linux to properly configure and administer.

 

[Emulex]

qnap and drobo are nice but damn they are slow. stick to DAS traditional raid. both hyper-v3 and esxi5 are making smb DAS solutions much better.

hyper-v3 supports das to das vmotion (live migration now)

esxi5 has ability to do a VSA and export a redundant nfs storage to each other machine (interesting but very expensive cost solution 25% useable space with support with raid-10 only)

 

[Spicedaddy]

20 users = get a server, not a nas.

2K should get you something alright, just do RAID-1 and an online backup service.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm no server expert, I'm using a "Gigabit NAS" (its real name), with an IDE drive inside, that pushes about 13-14MB/sec over gigabit. I built a WHS v1 box with several 2TB Hitachi 7200RPM HDs, and I can push nearly 80-90MB/sec to it.

For performance reasons alone, I strongly suggest that the OP go with a "real" filesystem, not some sort of NAS/all-in-one appliance box.

I'd suggest some flavor of Server 2008 R2, at this point. WHS v1 would be out of the picture, because it is limited to 10 machines or users or something like that.