Building a very large NAS for video....

[Methodical]

So I've got as much money as I need, first of all, but I am a penny pincher.

I need a multi-terabyte NAS or NAS-like system to integrate with our windows domain and serve as a central point to keep large amounts of video. I'm thinking like 8TB to start out. In the future I'll be upgrading this.

I was thinking of promise VTRAK's stuff, but I have questions about storing.

I don't want to carve it up into multiple 2TB partitions. How do I accomplish that while maintaining total compatibility with our windows and mac computers?

[fluke420]

NTFS GPT

[axan]

linux x64, xfs, samba, f partions run xfs right on the storage device.

[swatbat]

Best way to get it to integrate with a windows domain would be a windows storage server based system. Pretty much a server running a gimped version of 2003 r2. It doesn't need cals like other server editions and pretty much does file and print services. You have a few different versions of it although I've only messed with standard 64bit.

[Ockie]

Is this for business or personal use? Sounds like business but I am not 100% sure.

[Methodical]

business

[swatbat]

I know you say you are a "penny pincher" but do you have a budget in mind? Also are we talking rack mount or self standing? Last question which is the hard one is how fast do you think you will need to expand? Ie 8tb should last a year or 2 or do you see youself needing to double or triple the space in the next 2 years?

[Methodical]

I think I'm aiming for 20 grand.

I intend on buying a tape autoloader to backup the system

rackmount preferred.

and I think 8TB+ would last two or three years. In two years at the latest, the rate of consumption will increase as we'll be working with high definition footage.

I've got a dell quote for a MD3000, which can expand by adding md1000s to it, but it seems like old tech and just doesn't jive right with me for some reason, so i wanted to see what the [h] has to say.

It's not used for realtime editing, but rather a place to put all our stuff and have it all handy.... which is a lot.

[calikool]

EMC SAN. They might be able quote you some numbers. Here (http://www.emc.com/products/detail/hardware/clariion-cx4-model-960.htm) is what we have at work. Of course you would have to scale back your needs with a different product with EMC.

[djBon2112]

linux x64, xfs, samba, f partions run xfs right on the storage device.

This is what I use. It's for my home network (not business) but it works great. Get a good server motherboard with a couple PCIe 8x ports, a RAID controller or a couple, and load up on the 1 TB drives. A 2U or 3U rackmount case will give you plenty of room for hard drives and cooling. Most RAID controllers are 8-16 ports which with 1 TB hard drives and RAID 5 or 6 would be perfect.

EDIT: If your budget is $20 000, Get a couple GbE controllers for the thing too and team them.

[Ockie]

I think I'm aiming for 20 grand.

I intend on buying a tape autoloader to backup the system

rackmount preferred.

and I think 8TB+ would last two or three years. In two years at the latest, the rate of consumption will increase as we'll be working with high definition footage.

I've got a dell quote for a MD3000, which can expand by adding md1000s to it, but it seems like old tech and just doesn't jive right with me for some reason, so i wanted to see what the [h] has to say.

It's not used for realtime editing, but rather a place to put all our stuff and have it all handy.... which is a lot.

old tech? This is new technology. We use dozens of the MD1000's and 3000's in our production enviroment for some of the worlds largest customers (GM, Ford, etc) and it's a great system.

I would highly recommend going that route for cost/performance approach.


EMC SAN. They might be able quote you some numbers. Here (http://www.emc.com/products/detail/hardware/clariion-cx4-model-960.htm) is what we have at work. Of course you would have to scale back your needs with a different product with EMC.

EMC is great, they teamed up with Dell to provide a lot of SAN solutions, however, they are shit expensive. I'd be surprised if you can get an EMC san with san switch and 8tb of starting storage for under 20k.

[axan]

SAN is way of an overkill for his needs and they are super expensive.

If you want out of the box OEM solution then Dell MD1000 and MD3000 are pretty good, I use them at work. 15 drives per box, can mix sas and sata and you can daisy chain them to expand the storage.

[jimmy the gent]

The primary benefit of SAN storage is that it can be attached to a switch and you can use parallel file systems so that multiple machines access the same discs as a block device. However, there are still benefits to SAN based equipment since they are optimized well for high bandwidth and IOPs and it is a proven technology. With SAN based solution you do not have to worry about having a good ethernet switch or optimizing the network configuration to get the full benefit.

If I had the budget, reliability and speed important, I would get a Infortrend A24F/G-2430 with 2GB of cache, fully loaded with Hitachi Ultrastar 1TB drives, and a QLogic HBA 4Gbit HBA. You could easily do that for under $20K. Depending on how you configure your space (hot spares, luns) you can get ~18-20TB usable.

If you want to talk about more elaborate solutions for redundancy or speed I can suggest them as well. For example, the infortrend unit has (2) 4GB links per controller. You can get a dual 4GB QLogic HBA and load balance I/O across 2 4GB links.

http://www.infortrend.com/main/2_product/es_a24f-r(g)2430.asp

The 2430 can also be expanded with a JBOD.

[jimmy the gent]

Infortrend also has SATA to U320 or SATA to SAS if you did not want to use fiber channel. I have never used those before.

[xxan0xx]

I've used the Infotrend equipment pretty extensively and they have some amazing hardware. At work I have been recently looking for new storage equipment since storcase got bought out which is what the majority of our production storage is using currently and I have found these units made by Jetstor and they are very very fast compared to our storcase and infotrend equipment and much more budget friendly and allow the the same scaling options as the dell equipment with much better hardware. Here's the link to the website (http://www.raid.com) On another note, I would suggest call into their sales office and ask to talk to a guy named Gene and he'll shoot you a good price on what you need. He's the guy i worked with in getting some units in for proof of concept testing at the office.

[ND40oz]

Thought about a storevault? You can get a 12 TB raw for a little over 18k.

S550 (http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/s-family/s-550-tech-specs.html)

Dual gig access and a web interface for management. Does iSCSI as well.

http://media.netapp.com/documents/NetAppSFamilySoftwareDatasheet.pdf

[sabregen]

IBM DS3300 filled with 1TB SATA Seagate ES series drives running RAID-5. iSCSI solution, can be hit by anything that you VLAN into this portion of the network. Very robust solution, and fast. You can chain EXP310 enclosures (all of these are 12 drive, BTW) off of it. Please let me know if you're interested in this solution. We are a certified IBM Advanced partner, and I'm quite sure that I could hit your target price with the enclosure filled w/1TB SATA drives. You can chain up to 3x expansion cabinets off of it (in the future) for a total of 48disks. Do you need to be able to boot from it (SAN boot), or just need large shared storage?

[nitrobass24]

I'd go with the Dell Powervault MD3000, its fast, cost effective, reliable and easy to implement.

[fibroptikl]

We sell the Promise and Infortrend stuff at work - both great stuff. Put some Seagate Barracuda ES.2 (enterprise) into it and you'll be golden. And you're still under $20,000 by a lot.

[Methodical]

Thank you all for your recommendations, they are all extremely helpful and I am expanding my options.

I don't need ISCSI and actually prefer SAS so that I can hook it up to a server with an LTO4 tape drive and back up the array at maximum speed (120MB/sec).

[irrision]

Have you looked at something like the HP MSA2000fc? We run one for testing and it works great. Supports SAS and SATA in the same chassis and 1TB drives (I'm sure 1.5TB will be coming once the enterprise drives arrive in that range). Supports up to 4 drawers of drives and online expansion of volumes (along with Snapshot capabilities). It has a fully redundant controller setup (if you want to pay for it) and supports direct connect via fiber HBA of up to two machines (using dual path 4GB) or through a fiber switch.

We run ours with a drawer of 750GB Seagate SATA drives and 3 drawers of 146GB 15k Cheetahs directly connected to two ESX servers we use for test environments. The performance is excellent and its be solid and reliable in production for almost 6 months now. You could get out the door with a single drawer filled with 750GB SATA a fiber card and a server to connect it to for less than your budget.

[Thuleman]

I just want to point out the obvious, although it may not be obvious enough; A NAS is most often too slow for real time video editing.

[Methodical]

I just want to point out the obvious, although it may not be obvious enough; A NAS is most often too slow for real time video editing.

Yes, it's to be used for storage of projects that aren't currently being worked on.

[nitrobass24]

From the OP


I need a multi-terabyte NAS or NAS-like system to integrate with our windows domain and serve as a central point to keep large amounts of video.