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New To Data Storage systems

E

efexone

n00b
Joined
Jan 15, 2011
Messages
31
Hi Guys,

I've been messing around with raid arrays for some time, but now im about to get into the 40TB + territory and would like to begin selecting components for the new system.

My needs are a system that can be expandable on the fly (not a big priority, but it would be nice), be able to work with both macs and pc's on the network, and be fairly reliable - Hardware thats compatible without too much setup/troubleshooting hassle. The goal of this array is for archive'd storage.

I've built dual socket workstations and worked with small raid5 (SAS and SATA) arrays in the past, but im unfamiliar with the hardware I need to connect 20+ drives. I've decide to start with a Norco 24 bay enclosure - any help with selecting the right mobo (Im thinking basic xeon proc), the right wattage PSU (I currently have a 1200w selected but i feel it might be overkill) and the right raid controller cards would be greatly appreciated.. I want as much density as possible, so I'll prob start with 15x hitachi 5400 3tb drives + a hot spare, and maybe add a 2nd array in another few months.

I'd like to spend within $10k
 
I assume this is for home rather than business usage. How much bandwidth do you need?

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I think a 15 drive RAID might not be the best way to set this up.

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2 8 drive SATA PCIe cards are around $200. (4-6 more ports on the motherboard.)

$600 for misc computer parts.

$3000 for drives.

Send me a check for $6000 and we are at $10K.

I would be happy with that system. Except for the cost.
 
On the contrary, this is for business use, and we do need 40tb + ... 112tb is ideal, but we'd like to start small. Bandwidth to the network isn't an issue right now, since we will be using this system as a dump for all our existing arrays, some of which are very fast, but should be used as working/temp storage for our projects vs half back-up/half-working since we are low on storage capacity right now. We have one drobo already, but I rather not deal with adding more of them on.
 
10K is a pretty big budget. You can easily build a high performance and scalable solution with that.
What OS and file system are you looking at running?
 
You need to know what bandwidth you need.

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I gave you a solution that will accomodate 100 hard drives - 400TB.

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If this is for business use, buy the machine from someone with experience in large data systems.
 
Hey George,

Thank you for you advice, but we have received a few quotes that were way above our budget. We are more then capable of building a system ourselves to save some money, considering the price of harddrives right now. I've parted some systems already and it came out to a total of $6k-$7k including the price of the drives.

High-performance isn't the priority for this array - 70 - 120 MB/s write should be fine. We just want dense storage with double parity. OS would be preferably linux but I'm open to all OS/filesystem/raid controller solutions. I know this gets complicated with multiple OS's trying to work with the system, but overall, It should be at least compatible with OS-X.
 
spankit said:
10K is a pretty big budget. You can easily build a high performance and scalable solution with that.
What OS and file system are you looking at running?
Click to expand...

$10k is NOT a large budget for an enterprise level san with ~50TB. Especially given the current cost of Hard Disk storage.


OP I would look at a ZFS based server. Thats what I ended up going with for our backup server at work with is 32TB. Look at Openindiana, Nexenta, or the new Solaris based OS with Debian based package management (can't recall the name). You also need to look at support needs, IE do you have time to tinker or do you need an out of the box solution that includes support so you can call someone if you can't figure something out.
 
Krazypoloc said:
$10k is NOT a large budget for an enterprise level san with ~50TB. Especially given the current cost of Hard Disk storage.


OP I would look at a ZFS based server. Thats what I ended up going with for our backup server at work with is 32TB. Look at Openindiana, Nexenta, or the new Solaris based OS with Debian based package management (can't recall the name). You also need to look at support needs, IE do you have time to tinker or do you need an out of the box solution that includes support so you can call someone if you can't figure something out.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. We are our own IT department and i figure if we build a decent system, we wouldn't need to mess with it too much other then replace drives every now and again and the basic troubleshooting that arises with any computer system. Its not something that needs to be online 24/7. ZFS looks great for this. Im also concerned about picking the right RAID controllers. I've had some bad luck with dell perc's and a few 3ware controllers, though the cards have seen their time - I rather spend more then $300 per controller to get something thats more feature-rich. Since this is our first major investment in a storage system, minus 8 bay drobo's, we'er open to experimentation and learning as we go along. its not the end-all solution. we still keep hard back-ups of all our data, but having everything in one place is what we'd like to accomplish with this. eventually, we would invest in solution that would allow us to work off our network, but for now, we simply need mass storage to dump all our existing data on plus some.
 
efexone said:
Thanks for the info. We are our own IT department and i figure if we build a decent system, we wouldn't need to mess with it too much other then replace drives every now and again and the basic troubleshooting that arises with any computer system. Its not something that needs to be online 24/7. ZFS looks great for this. Im also concerned about picking the right RAID controllers. I've had some bad luck with dell perc's and a few 3ware controllers, though the cards have seen their time - I rather spend more then $300 per controller to get something thats more feature-rich. Since this is our first major investment in a storage system, minus 8 bay drobo's, we'er open to experimentation and learning as we go along. its not the end-all solution. we still keep hard back-ups of all our data, but having everything in one place is what we'd like to accomplish with this. eventually, we would invest in solution that would allow us to work off our network, but for now, we simply need mass storage to dump all our existing data on plus some.
Click to expand...

Yup I built a server a few months back with Openindiana and its really nice. Supports AFS and the Napp-it interface makes things really easy.
 
Hey Krazypoloc,

Thanks for the good word. I'll start working with that OS on one of my test machines. Any word on a good controller (or two) that would integrate well with ZFS?
 
SuperMicro makes probably the best server boards for this application, definitely look into those. The socket 1156 X9SCL+-F seems to be a good board. If you ever need to go beyond single Xeon and 32GB RAM, you can go to the 1366 socket boards which are a big step up but might not fit the case.

If you've got a Norco then you likely have a SAS backplane already (yes?) so you just need a decent SAS controller. If you're going ZFS you don't need h/w RAID so a SAS card with at least 4 SFF-8087's will do the trick. I like the Areca cards for h/w RAID myself, but I think LSI makes excellent non-RAID HBA's and are a popular choice. This one looks decent:

http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagecomponents/Pages/LSISAS9201-16i.aspx

Looks to be OpenIndiana and Solaris 11 supported as well, and I don't think you need low profile with that case.

I am using a RAID card for ZFS now in JBOD mode. It works fine, but it's interesting, I can't see drive SMART data. I never really cared until I used ZFS but now I like being able to see this data in the web GUI (napp-it), so I sort of wish I had a regular HBA... the LSI is like $400 too. A decent RAID card is twice that.

Side note, the Norco cases look excellent! I have an iStarUSA right now, not too happy with it overall (the drive trays and rack rails SUCK). I might have to pick up a Norco.

-J
 
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The OS you are going to run is something you should decide on early. It will have an effect on the parts that you pick. If you are going to go with ZFS for example you don't need or want RAID cards but simpler HBAs. Also you may want to look at Supermicro server cases. After pricing out a good quality PS, never mind a redundant setup, its not that much more to get a much better case. And if you really are looking for scalability you can get a case with way more bays, I think as many as 96.
 
efexone said:
Hey Krazypoloc,

Thanks for the good word. I'll start working with that OS on one of my test machines. Any word on a good controller (or two) that would integrate well with ZFS?
Click to expand...

Here is the parts list I used for my build. No compatibility issues at all and it works very well. extremely fast system. I wouldn't suggest buying those drives as the current price is more than double what I paid at the time.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136579
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182235
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118142
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811152090
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139578
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106034
 
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