QNAP TVS-871 my best option

[Vertigo]

Hi,

I'm looking to replace and upgrade our existing QNAP device as we need more performance and capacity. We're only a smallish company of circa 50 people so not looking at high level enterprise solutions. The device will only be used for iSCSI SAN duties.

I was originally looking to go the Synology route but it seems their latest DS1817(+) models are rather underwhelming.

I've thus been looking around and it seems the best bet would be a QNAP TVS-871. My plan would be to fill this with two RAID10 arrays, one set of 4 SM863 960GB SSDs for performance critical stuff like databases and one set of 4 8TB HDDs for general storage.

This seems to be a good bet for around the £5k mark, or are there alternatives I should be considering around this price point?

 

[pcfarrar]

I'd go for the QNAP, I use both at work. Whilst I prefer the Synology DSM OS I do tend to buy mostly QNAP as like you say you get a much better specification for the same price.

Also the latest QTS 4.3.4 that was recently released has some good new features.

 

[Conanius]

I've just had a read of the specs of these, it looks like you've got three different base hardware options:

• TVS-871-i7-16G:
  TVS-871 with Intel® Core™ i7-4790S 3.2 GHz quad-core processor and 16GB RAM
• TVS-871-i5-8G:
  TVS-871 with Intel® Core™i5-4590S 3.0 GHz quad-core processor and 8GB DDR3 RAM
• TVS-871-i3-4G:
  TVS-871 with Intel® Core™ i3-4150 3.5 GHz dual-core processor and 4GB DDR3 RAM

I'm assuming you're on about £5k fully populated? An ultra quick google suggests you can get the i3 unit empty for under £1500, and the i7 unit for about £2000. Based on the fact it offers external expansion in 4/8/10 bay modules, I'd be looking at the higher spec machine. 50 people trying to use this is quite a decent ask.

With this 50 user requirement in mind, I appreciate you'd take a performance hit on writes - however with the spec of the unit, I'm not sure it would be that big - but would you not be better doing two RAID 6 arrays opposed to two RAID 10?

That way you could lose _any_ two drives in each array opposed to 'up to two' which will only be 'the right two' opposed to 'any two' ?