NAS Solutions

B

BugginOuT

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
463
Looking to obtain some information on a NAS setup.

Scenario:

Building 2 Windows 2003 servers, with MS-SQL 2000/2005. Would want to place the SQL DB on a NAS product which both servers can share, not simultaneously, unless clustered.

I was looking into the HP StorageWorks X510, has anyone had any experiences with this box?

Any other solutions to look into?
 
You want to use a SAN with a shared disk. Preferably using a fibre channel HBA but you could also do iSCSI over the network.
 
Forgot to mentioned, that there is a $$ budget set for this project. Going towards SAN solution would definitely break the bank here.
 
I'm also looking at NAS, has anyone had any experience with it? I'm thinking about ordering a device with 2 SATA drive spaces and putting in 2 SSD in RAID for our design team.

They all use macs and throw around 50mb+ images like they're 1k gifs and our current shared storage space just can't cope. Is there any pitfalls with NAS, I think the macs can access the PC shares without an issue so that shouldn't be a problem, are NAS units usualy OK with SSDs, or is there any performance bottlenecks that make it worth avoiding?
 
What is your storage requirements?

I think putting SSD for storage would be a complete waste of money, but if you're looking for performance > storage, by all means, go for it.
 
Performance, we'll have like 6+ Macs all reading/writing over a gigabit network to it, all fairly large files and quite frequently during the day as they swap between the files.

Old files are archived away once they're no longer needed so space isn't a huge priority. right now we have a signle SBS2003 box doing filesharing for the entire office (50 users) and it's really nailing performance for everyone having these large files thrown about.
 
Keeping in mind that I know -nothing- about the performance of this product... Have you looked at the Synology 409Slim (http://www.synology.com/enu/products/DS409slim/index.php)? 4x2.5". Only has a single Ethernet link, so you may very well saturate it...

Just throwing it out there :)

You could also try a standard 4 or 5 bay NAS with WD blacks (they are still the fastest, yes?), or even raptors.
 
Last edited:
PrincessFrosty said:
Performance, we'll have like 6+ Macs all reading/writing over a gigabit network to it, all fairly large files and quite frequently during the day as they swap between the files.

Old files are archived away once they're no longer needed so space isn't a huge priority. right now we have a signle SBS2003 box doing filesharing for the entire office (50 users) and it's really nailing performance for everyone having these large files thrown about.
Click to expand...

Sounds like SAN is more ideal for you.

more disk the merrier and you can strip across for better R/W performance.

I was thinking if you would have to perform the TRIM operation frequently to keep your SSD optimal if you were to go that route, anyone?
 
Yes we could RAID some raptors up, I used to have RAID 0 on 2 36Gb raptors in my gaming rig back in the day :)

Or even some larger disks I suppose, I had better do some research with data bottlenecks over a gigabit network, there's no point in going too fast on the drives if the network can't cope.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top