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NAS purchase for vSphere Lab

R

RiDDLeRThC

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Okay, finally ready to purchase a NAS for my vSphere lab. I really don't want to spend more than $600-$700 without drives on the NAS.

Would really like something with iSCSI support but could live without it.

Right now I'm eyeballing the QNAP TS-459 Pro+

Know I have seen a few threads with just this topic but wondering in this price range what people would recommend.

Not interested in building my own, my lab is taking up enough space as it is.

Not too sure how many VM's but its mostly windows stuff, with a Astaro firewall. Exchange is about the only big thing I would want to run in the lab. The servers are two T110's with 16gb of ram each so my cluster only has 32gb of ram and will remain that way for a while.
 
Huge Synology fan here. Just had someone get a TS-459 and had issues..kept dropping drives. QNAP wasn't real helpful except to say "Replace your drives with enterprise drives.". No one I know runs enterprise drives in their Synology boxes. I use a DS1010+ for vSphere and a DS1511+ for backup/media.
 
Yeah..but with the DS1511 you can go to 15 drives...solid software, especially with the new DSM 4.0. Guy I mentioned is returning his QNAP for one right now.
 
Your killing me :)

Guess I will save up a little more and just go for what I know I will be happy with. DSM 4.0 looks great in the demos I have seen.
 
Planning on going the Synology route myself when I get around to upgrading the storage in my VMware lab. Using Windows Server 2008/Starwind is a headache I'd like to do away with.
 
NetJunkie said:
Huge Synology fan here. Just had someone get a TS-459 and had issues..kept dropping drives. QNAP wasn't real helpful except to say "Replace your drives with enterprise drives.". No one I know runs enterprise drives in their Synology boxes. I use a DS1010+ for vSphere and a DS1511+ for backup/media.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I'm using WD Black drives which I don't believe are enterprise and I've had zero issues with my QNAP 459 Pro II. There is a supported drive list for the product. Probably should pick something on that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
 
QHalo said:
Interesting. I'm using WD Black drives which I don't believe are enterprise and I've had zero issues with my QNAP 459 Pro II. There is a supported drive list for the product. Probably should pick something on that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
Click to expand...

Can't remember what he was using but it may have been WD Blacks...but it was really the way support handled it. No help at all. I refuse to go by a HD list for a small NAS...they aren't kept updated enough or me. I don't use Synology's list either.
 
what's so good about synology and what's so bad about windows + starwind config?

shabazkilla said:
Planning on going the Synology route myself when I get around to upgrading the storage in my VMware lab. Using Windows Server 2008/Starwind is a headache I'd like to do away with.
Click to expand...
 
asking to go for other hard disk vendor / type is like blaming microsoft on every possible issue independent software vendor has

NetJunkie said:
Can't remember what he was using but it may have been WD Blacks...but it was really the way support handled it. No help at all. I refuse to go by a HD list for a small NAS...they aren't kept updated enough or me. I don't use Synology's list either.
Click to expand...
 
Olga-SAN said:
asking to go for other hard disk vendor / type is like blaming microsoft on every possible issue independent software vendor has
Click to expand...

Disagree. Any standard SATA drive should work with these..they are software RAID, not doing anything special. I'm not talking some obscure SATA device...I'm talking like WD Green drives that everyone uses (and work fine in my DS1511). Pretty sure that's what he had issue with.
 
Olga-SAN said:
what's so good about synology and what's so bad about windows + starwind config?
Click to expand...

Good hardware from Synology with nice software and great support. I can't speak to Starwind specifically as I don't use it..but I have 3 Synology NAS boxes.
 
NetJunkie said:
Disagree. Any standard SATA drive should work with these..they are software RAID, not doing anything special. I'm not talking some obscure SATA device...I'm talking like WD Green drives that everyone uses (and work fine in my DS1511). Pretty sure that's what he had issue with.
Click to expand...

Green drives (and some other consumer drives) have issues in true RAID arrays if they ever go into an error recovery (not all that uncommon). Probably what this is related to.
 
Grentz said:
Green drives (and some other consumer drives) have issues in true RAID arrays if they ever go into an error recovery (not all that uncommon). Probably what this is related to.
Click to expand...

Right..in TRUE arrays..these aren't. These are software arrays that should have no problem with them.
 
There's a couple of reasons I chose a NAS, the primary being not having to manage another OS.
 
QHalo said:
Interesting. I'm using WD Black drives which I don't believe are enterprise and I've had zero issues with my QNAP 459 Pro II. There is a supported drive list for the product. Probably should pick something on that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
Click to expand...

Damn, ouch. $200 for 1TB. I really really hope the prices on HDD's drop soon, this is getting out of hand. I also looked at the QNAP TS-459 Pro+ but damn is it pricy but it is a 4 drive bay NAS. Though on my way home I stopped by the local B&M Compusa and noticed they had the Dlink DNS-320 for $89 dollars so I picked one up to play with. Heard some what decent reviews on them though it seems to be a bit underpowered by looking at the specs bt it does support up to a total of 4TB and Raid 0,1 and JBOD. Still for $89 dollars I can't complain and if it's decent I'll pick up another.

Just an FYI to look into if you really want cheap.
 
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Several guys at work got those cheap NAS boxes for their labs. Not sure how many are still using them. :) Not many.
 
HP Microserver NL-40 plus a ZFS solution. It will get you iscsi, plus NFS. Way cheaper the pre-built solutions and you can a dual Intel card so you have on-board for MTG, and then a dual 1GB intel nic for data. Get a nice little managed switch that can team nics which will be dedicated for only SAN traffic. Should make for a great home lab thats small but yet still powerful enough.
 
Shadowhaxor said:
Damn, ouch. $200 for 1TB. I really really hope the prices on HDD's drop soon, this is getting out of hand. I also looked at the QNAP TS-459 Pro+ but damn is it pricy but it is a 4 drive bay NAS. Though on my way home I stopped by the local B&M Compusa and noticed they had the Dlink DNS-320 for $89 dollars so I picked one up to play with. Heard some what decent reviews on them though it seems to be a bit underpowered by looking at the specs bt it does support up to a total of 4TB and Raid 0,1 and JBOD. Still for $89 dollars I can't complain and if it's decent I'll pick up another.

Just an FYI to look into if you really want cheap.
Click to expand...

I got my drives for $89 a piece before all this. If I didn't have this thing now and I was looking I'd probably just buy an SSD and build an all in one.
 
NetJunkie said:
Can't remember what he was using but it may have been WD Blacks...but it was really the way support handled it. No help at all. I refuse to go by a HD list for a small NAS...they aren't kept updated enough or me. I don't use Synology's list either.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's kind of shitty that support was like that. I think that one you did the review on might be a nice little NAS to throw in a couple SSDs for a secondary storage array. SSD's aren't that bad right now if you thin provision. Couple of 120 Agility 3's would be nice.
 
Olga-SAN said:
what's so good about synology and what's so bad about windows + starwind config?
Click to expand...

HCL compatibility, maybe? The synology boxen are on the HCL, last I checked, Starwind was not.

Oh, and: Not being windows underneath? :p
NetJunkie said:
Right..in TRUE arrays..these aren't. These are software arrays that should have no problem with them.
Click to expand...

Hate to disagree, but seen a shit load of problems with green drives in filers with a bunch of our guys running OI and Qnap boxes, and one on synology. They just don't do well. Die fast, easy, and often, and cause corruption too. Seems like they try to spin down when they shouldn't. Replace with blacks, no problem ever again :(

I wouldn't put a green in anymore.
 
did you check more then 2 years ago? i think they are since mid-2010 or so

http://www.vmware.com/resources/com..._interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

what problem with windows do you have? just interesteing why hacked and outdated linux used as a core for firmware is assumed to be stable and rock solid and updated and everyday tested by millions of people windows is not? what's the point?

at my old job we've used datacore in front of netapp filers and windows never have been an issue and ontap 7 was.

lopoetve said:
HCL compatibility, maybe? The synology boxen are on the HCL, last I checked, Starwind was not.

Oh, and: Not being windows underneath? :p


Hate to disagree, but seen a shit load of problems with green drives in filers with a bunch of our guys running OI and Qnap boxes, and one on synology. They just don't do well. Die fast, easy, and often, and cause corruption too. Seems like they try to spin down when they shouldn't. Replace with blacks, no problem ever again :(

I wouldn't put a green in anymore.
Click to expand...
 
not sure what you disagree with

i've been trying to say any drive should work and not only the one designed to run in raids

big guys use drives with different firmware and sector size but it's definitely not synology, qnap and netgear

but such a drives cost a fortune to get thru vendor

NetJunkie said:
Disagree. Any standard SATA drive should work with these..they are software RAID, not doing anything special. I'm not talking some obscure SATA device...I'm talking like WD Green drives that everyone uses (and work fine in my DS1511). Pretty sure that's what he had issue with.
Click to expand...
 
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