Reliable NAS build

[boca]

Hi everyone!

I’m after an educated opinion for a reliable and fast NAS build. The NAS box will host all of my VM’s. Around 10 in total. All Windows based. 1 AD 2k8 R2, 1 SharePoint and 50-60 users hitting it on a daily basis and a number of other servers for file sharing, accounting, etc. Traffic flow is not going to be high but I would like to have capacity to grow if required.

What I would like to create is HA storage for my servers so that I can do live migration and other DR related tasks. My primary goal with this build is to have a high speed transfer rate from the NAS to the servers through a dedicated switch. Needs to be reliable if at all possible!

My budget is around $2000 (or more!)

If this project is successful another such device will be put in place for more flexibility

In short, I’m after a list of quality, tested and reliable parts that will provide great transfer speeds (both network and disk). No software raid! Suggestions as to what I should use to manage this device would be great too I’m not sure If I should go with ZFS and Open Solaris or just use FreeNAS? Stability and speed is what I’m after. Easier VM disk management is also important, but don’t want to bore you with that.

Any input would be highly appreciated and I thank you in advance! If I’m not clear or you need more info please let me know!

 

[danswartz]

I do recommend some flavor of opensolaris + napp-it. Xeon E31230 + Supermicro X9SCL mobo. 16GB ECC crucial RAM. No suggestions for disks, since I'm not aware enough of options that might affect you. The parts I quoted (core of the box) ran me about $700 on newegg.

 

[tangoseal]

Wow you are going to want to go with VMware operating system such as ESX and you might want to look into an actual SAN not a NAS. That is going to be a hell of a lot of load on even bonded gig nics. I cant imagine that you are going to be able to have servers that actually work fast at all with out a dedicated iSCSI SAN with 10gbe or Fiberchanel on the backend.

You might be able to do it with a hand build server using quad Intel gig nic and some real SAS disk with an enterprise raid controller to handle the immense random IO from all the VMs and 60+ users hitting it.
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A QNAP TS 859 Pro might do good on the replicatoion HA side but then again you only get 2 bonded Gig nics. Openfiler does HA/DRBD and is free software. I tried to get HA to work using VMs for testing but couldnt get it to work right.

Also remember when you get into bonding with 802.3ad you need to have a switch that will have the 802.3ad support as well. So 2000 dollars will be easily consumed.

 

[_Gea]

Best in town hypervisor is ESXi but it has lousy storage features, so you need a SAN
for your VM's. This is also needed for Vmotion.

If you build a traditional system with a VMserver and a separate SAN, you need two boxes
and a lot of high-end equipment if you want to have fast links between them - and you have to
care about a SAN failure.

For my own I prefer all in one solutions based on a ESXi-server and a virtualized SAN.
To do this, you need a server-class mainboard + CPU that supports vt-d (pass-through
Disks and disk controller to a SAN like OpenIndiana) with enterprise level high end SAN features
and virtual nics to provide 10 Gb links between SAN and VM's.

To have redundancy, vmotion or a redundant SAN, you should use two of these boxes.
Calculate for Mainboard + CPU + RAM about 600 Euro+ (without disks and case)

see my configs at
http://www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/all-in-one.pdf


Gea

 

[boca]

Hi all and thanks for your input. I would like to just clarify a few things When I say 50-60 users hitting it, it doesn't mean that they'll be hitting it at the same time and regularly Most simultaneous connections I can foresee would be 15 users. And this is either to a. upload a 2-3mb document or b. download a 2-3mb document. All of this will be through the VPN connection and our upload speeds are not that great. Also, virtualization of my OS's is done through KVM (Linux) so VMWare is out of the question.

Keeping all of that in mind I think building a NAS box myself and running NAS through either FreeNAS or Linux distro + GlusterFS would be suitable. Link between my server(s) and NAS will be done through a dedicated Gb switch with bonded Ethernet.

Do you recon this would suffice my needs or am i just putting myself at risk? Backups will be conducted from the main NAS to other NAS boxes in my environment along with backups made through the OS and Tape.

 

[Vengance_01]

Are you sure you want to go open source? If this fails, is it your ass on the line?

 

[boca]

Yes I’m sure. I’ve done extensive tests with KVM and it performs beautifully. If ESXi crashes or KVM host crashes it’s my ass either way. I’m already running 3 ESXi hosts which will be converted to KVM cluster for live migration, etc. We don’t pay for any VMWare licenses or support so blaming them for a failure wouldn’t save me anyway, or am I expecting that.

 

[ondmagi]

.. All of this will be through the VPN connection and our upload speeds are not that great. Also, virtualization of my OS's is done through KVM (Linux) so VMWare is out of the question...

This might be an old thread that I'm bumping, but with KVM+GlusterFS you could easily let the hypervisor machines act as storage for the VM's (thus, provide redundant storage via replicas, failover will also work neat since the KVM hosts can utilize the native GlusterFS client). This is actually already built in into oVirt mgmt console and coming to RHEV from what I've understood.