Fastest NAS drive possible HELP

R9mpo

R9mpo

R9mpo

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Hi all,

I am looking to invest in a nice Fast NAS drive.

I have been looking into whether its worth running SSD's over HDDs and have seen that I will need to invest in 10gbe? is This worth it?

What prices and part would I need for around 1-2tb SSD set up for 5 PC's?

Any help welcome thank you.
 
HoneyBadger said:
Before I answer, can I use what the use case is? I.e. what’s the scenario and what are you trying to achieve?
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Armageus said:
As above, need to understand the use case.

The cheapest 10Gb NAS is going to be something like:
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £538.69 (includes shipping: £8.70)
​
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Gimpymoo said:
Remember, a network is only as good as its slowest point.

What is your current setup?
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The use is to be able to move large files ( sometime over 100GB ) and projects between 5 different computers and also for short term storage before its eventually archived.


We currently have a NAS drive that runs to over 15 computers but obviously is massively effected depending on who or how many are using it.


I think it may run over internet connection sort of like an FTP?


we have 5 PC's that we would like to this drive but only 3 people use them on a daily basis. We need faster transfer speeds and storage away from other users.
 
I think we would look for around 1-2 TB if we are going for a SSD. But if its really not cost effective to run SSD and 10Gbe then we would like to go with around 4-6tb.
 
Unless all the PC's currently have 10Gb connectivity then you'd need to factor that in (Network cards and likely a Switch with 10Gb Ports).

100GB file is ~15 Minutes to copy with a NAS that can max Gigabit speeds.

Likely you could probably get away with a Gigabit NAS that has more than 1 network port (and then use teaming/bonding) in conjunction with an SSD (or a RAID10 hard drive setup), which would allow you to "serve" more than 1 client at Gigabit speed simultaneously.
 
Armageus said:
Unless all the PC's currently have 10Gb connectivity then you'd need to factor that in (Network cards and likely a Switch with 10Gb Ports).

100GB file is ~15 Minutes to copy with a NAS that can max Gigabit speeds.

Likely you could probably get away with a Gigabit NAS that has more than 1 network port (and then use teaming/bonding) in conjunction with an SSD (or a RAID10 hard drive setup), which would allow you to "serve" more than 1 client at Gigabit speed simultaneously.
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Thats the issue we have we only have a gigbit switch currently we also don't have 10gbe pcie card for our PC's.


Im really unsure of the drives that we have but they must be over 3 years old.


Sorry what is teaming or bonding?


That maybe the way to go if its really not cost effect to go with 10gbe. I was just thinking we could future proof if the price is not ridiculous.
 
R9mpo said:
Sorry what is teaming or bonding?
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Teaming/Bonding is essentially joining 2 or more network ports together to make a "bigger" link between the NAS and the network switch.

If your PCs remain on gigabit networking, this then enables your NAS to service 2 PCs at full Gigabit speed (or with 4 ports - 4 PCs and so on).


Where moving from Gigabit to 10 Gigabit across the whole of your network, would be the equivalent of "raising the National speed limit". Teaming is adding "extra lanes" between your NAS and your switch - "speed limit" stays the same but you are instantly allowing double the traffic on that road.


Obviously if you are teaming (or moving to 10gb), you need to ensure that the disks can keep up. Whilst a single gigabit transfer can normally be "maxxed out" by a single hard drive, transferring to 2 or more PCs at the same time requires more performance from the disks. If there will regularly be several people all accessing the NAS at once, then SSD is likely to be a good option (but at the expense or cost/capacity) as Hard Drive performance massively decreases as soon as the drive starts seeking between a couple of different files at the same time.
 
Armageus said:
Teaming/Bonding is essentially joining 2 or more network ports together to make a "bigger" link between the NAS and the network switch.

If your PCs remain on gigabit networking, this then enables your NAS to service 2 PCs at full Gigabit speed (or with 4 ports - 4 PCs and so on).


Where moving from Gigabit to 10 Gigabit across the whole of your network, would be the equivalent of "raising the National speed limit". Teaming is adding "extra lanes" between your NAS and your switch - "speed limit" stays the same but you are instantly allowing double the traffic on that road.


Obviously if you are teaming (or moving to 10gb), you need to ensure that the disks can keep up. Whilst a single gigabit transfer can normally be "maxxed out" by a single hard drive, transferring to 2 or more PCs at the same time requires more performance from the disks. If there will regularly be several people all accessing the NAS at once, then SSD is likely to be a good option (but at the expense or cost/capacity) as Hard Drive performance massively decreases as soon as the drive starts seeking between a couple of different files at the same time.
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if we could go for a NAS with 4 gigabyte ports and use teaming that would work best I think? or to service 4 pcs at higher speed would we need 8 ports from the nas to the switch? is this something that is available?

looking at the cost to go to 10gbe is just miles too much for us right now.



Is there NAS specific SSD we should be using?
 
What switch do you have? Depends on the age of the switch and whether it's just a consumer device and the nas model but generally it needs to conform to 802.3ad to work with teaming/link aggregation.

Check the requirements of the nas to be sure.
 
10gbe switch is around £500 minimum.

10gbe NIC, XG-C100C £100. (Per pc)


Ds918+ £500
Intel 10gb NIC £250

SSD x4 £xxx?

Cat6 cabling £xx?
 
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Look at replicating the files between the PCs, and only syncing changed blocks to the NAS.

Or don't move the files at all, mount the filesystems as an NFS share or something. Moving 100GB files around all the time seems inefficient.
 
As above, why move large files around when you can do the work on the files on the storage NAS.

We use netapp at work and it's brilliant storage but £££
 
We have decided to go with the fastest NAS drive enclosure possible at reasonable price. run dual 6tb drives and run link aggregation to help with speed.

Can someone recommend and products?

With regards to a switch will they all support link aggregation?
 
Armageus said:
Likely you could probably get away with a Gigabit NAS that has more than 1 network port (and then use teaming/bonding) in conjunction with an SSD (or a RAID10 hard drive setup), which would allow you to "serve" more than 1 client at Gigabit speed simultaneously.
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How effective is using an SSD as a "cache" in realworld use?
 
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