24 Disk NAS Windows Server - need suggestions

[SHaFT7]

I've been doing some heavy reading on the Norco scene for the past couple of days and I've learned quite a bit. Most of my clients live in the single server, <1TB storage needs arena, so I'm not into this stuff every day.

That said, I have a client that currently has a IBM server with a Perc5e and a MD1000 loaded with 750GB drives that serves as a dump share for their engineering simulation runs that occupy several hundred gig each. I have the array setup with RAID6 and 2 hotspares, so they have about ~7.5TB available at the moment, and they are getting close to full.

So they want me to look at new options. One of their employees has a friend that did the Norco 24 bay setup and it runs great, but I'm a bit leery of putting a homebrew solution in a business setting simply because when it comes time to warranty that HP SAS expander that I got off ebay, I'm going to be eating that, or I'll just have buy an extra for if/when that happens.

I'm not closed off to the Norco idea, but I'm putting reliability over cost as a priority (within reason of course.)

To that end, I'm starting to look at few supermicro entries such as the SC846 and am open to other suggestions.

My requirements are:

- 24 bays, filled with 2TB drives at least. (I try to stay away from the newest sizes as in my experience, these have the most failures, and I'd rather let someone else's data be a guinea pig)
- Hardware RAID and the Expanders and such to drive it all in RAID6 (probably split it into 2 arrays of 11 drives with 1 hotspare for each array. (possibly 2))
- It will be running Windows Server 2008 that the client already has
- 10GBe -not- required, as nothing else in the network has it
- Noise is not a big deal, this thing is off by itself in it's own room with the other server stuff.

Don't really need anything else I don't think. Suggestions? I will continue to read through as many threads as I can find, but would like some input here as well. Thanks!

 

[mwroobel]

For a commercial operation, purchase a Supermicro chassis (with redundant power) and motherboard instead of a Norco and some consumer board. How are you planning on sharing it? SMB, NFS, iSCSI etc? What is your budget for the box fully populated? How much throughput do you need to the engineering workstations? How are you planning on backing it up?

 

[SHaFT7]

Sharing will be windows only to windows only computers.
budget is the 5-8k area roughly. i have to leave room for markup to the customer. (if this is completely off base then I will adjust as needed)
throughput is not a big deal as runs are put there one at a time. their current gigabit connection is plenty, so as long as we can do the same speeds that the current array does, which is in the 100-130MB/s range, we'll be fine.
Backups are already handled by other devices that the customer has, and the engineering runs have a short lifespan, so backups for them are not top priority. this may change in the future and I will spec out hardware to meet the needs.

 

[ND40oz]

What about the HPs? X1000 G2 and X5000 G2 both run Windows Storage Server and should be able to be configured how you want it.

 

[mwroobel]

Chassis $949
Motherboard $189.99
CPU $236
RAM $69x4=276
SSD BOOT RAID1 Samsung 830 128GB $99x2=198
RAID CARD $650
Expander $299
Drives Consumer-SATA $130x24=3120
or
Drives Enterprise-SAS $250x24=6000
Cables & Fans - ~$150
Windows OS of your Choice - Depends on the customer, whether they have a license already or if you need to provide a server license and CAL's

This is a build-it-yourself option. You could also go with an HP off-the-shelf option, but with 24 bays you will be well above the pricing of the supermicro. You also have the opportunity for 5-6 hundred dollars (or more) to go with a supermicro chassis with 36-72 3.5" slots which give you LOTS of expansion room.

 

[odditory]

^ Perfect. Or skip the expander and get the version of that 24-bay chassis that has the LSISAS2x36 chip built into the backplane.

 

[Fzdog2]

Figured I'd toss this in here since you were looking at the Supermicro 846.
Its the 846 off lease for $299.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1412640/are-you-looking-for-a-less-expensive-norco-4220-4224-alternative

 

[SHaFT7]

great! thanks guys for all the suggestions. I'll look into this and see if I need any more info.

edit:
The supermicro list (I'll probably do the case with the built in sas expander backplane) is probably the way I will suggest to go. If my client surprises me and wants the norco option for $$$ savings, then I have a few questions:

For the norco, I was thinking intel brand (or even super micro) motherboard. Pretty much the rest can stay the same. From my reading, the norcos don't support enclosure management right? At the same time I read somewhere here where they have lights that show disk present / activity. Do they show disk fail?

 

[SHaFT7]

bump

 

[mwroobel]

Unless they absolutely don't have the $$$ to spend, they will be much better served with the Supermicro/Supermicro than with Norco/Whatever, especially with the redundant power and higher quality backplanes.

 

[SHaFT7]

i agree 100%, but you know some clients.....

 

[mwroobel]

i agree 100%, but you know some clients.....

Yes, but some clients I have declined to sell a completed system to if I thought it would be more trouble to support than it would be worth based on the parts they specced out. I would sell them the parts separately that they could assemble themselves if that is what they wanted, but if it were a box I had to stand behind and support I would rather be pragmatic and lose a few bucks now than have it cost me 5x-10x in lost time later.

 

[SHaFT7]

oh yeah, I know. With those kinds of setups I inform them that I won't be responsible for issues. In other words, if they insist, those are the terms that come with it.