Enterprise SSD selection
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For what gain though?
Why mix and match drives, where is the benefit?
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@BBigford said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@BBigford said in Enterprise SSD selection:
I know it really depends on how valuable the data is and how much performance you want out of it. Let's say it's going in a relatively inexpensive NAS like a Synology RS815+, is going to support 80 users, and it is being used for a variety of at-rest storage. Importance of data: 7/10
Use LFF 2-4TB drives in RAID10.
Performance obviously isn't an issue if it's at rest.
I should have specified further, most of the data is at rest. 1/5 of the shares will be accessed on a daily basis.
Accessed is not the same as say an SQL Database server serving 1500 people concurrently. You wouldn't even come close to hitting the capacity limit of a RAID10 array with decent spinning drives.
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How much storage space do you need on this hypothetical NAS you're looking at?
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@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
For what gain though?
Why mix and match drives, where is the benefit?
I've been reading on some of the benefits of SSDs being used for caching. Some of the most used data would get stored there, hence the reason for wanting better protection when they fail. But I haven't read very many real world benchmarks vs. synthetic.
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Well for cache that makes sense. It is faster. (that's why it's there right?
)But without the specifics of what kind of performance you need, I don't know that using SSD's for cache is even worth it.
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@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
How much storage space do you need on this hypothetical NAS you're looking at?
I'm budgeting for about 8-12TB, not terribly large. We currently are restricted on budgeting for new boxes because our Windows based file servers (dedicated as file servers and cost way more than a NAS), have direct attached consumer drives because we need storage but can't justify the cost of a new server being used for only file services.
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@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
Well for cache that makes sense. It is faster. (that's why it's there right?
)But without the specifics of what kind of performance you need, I don't know that using SSD's for cache is even worth it.
I haven't read about the real world benchmarks or testimony's from customers to see if it is justified or just a marketing tactic.
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@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
Well for cache that makes sense. It is faster. (that's why it's there right?
)But without the specifics of what kind of performance you need, I don't know that using SSD's for cache is even worth it.
The type of storage would be stuff like:
*Software repository (at rest)
*IT-only (at rest), Wikis and such
*Users (folder redirected, accessed a lot every day)
*Department shares (collaborative... accessed a lot every day)Any other storage is at rest.
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@BBigford said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
How much storage space do you need on this hypothetical NAS you're looking at?
I'm budgeting for about 8-12TB, not terribly large. We currently are restricted on budgeting for new boxes because our Windows based file servers (dedicated as file servers and cost way more than a NAS), have direct attached consumer drives because we need storage but can't justify the cost of a new server being used for only file services.
8-12TB of usable space on that NAS very soundly lands you in the "Enterprice SSD's" that cost a fortune or Winchester drives. You'd need 26 (480GB SSD) to meet that 12 TB range. (RAID5)
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@BBigford said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
Well for cache that makes sense. It is faster. (that's why it's there right?
)But without the specifics of what kind of performance you need, I don't know that using SSD's for cache is even worth it.
The type of storage would be stuff like:
*Software repository (at rest)
*IT-only (at rest), Wikis and such
*Users (folder redirected, accessed a lot every day)
*Department shares (collaborative... accessed a lot every day)More storage at rest.
So no VMs, databases or application hosting. Just file storage.... yeah just use classic Winchester Drives there is a ton of financial savings up front, with plenty of performance for the specified need.
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@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@BBigford said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
How much storage space do you need on this hypothetical NAS you're looking at?
I'm budgeting for about 8-12TB, not terribly large. We currently are restricted on budgeting for new boxes because our Windows based file servers (dedicated as file servers and cost way more than a NAS), have direct attached consumer drives because we need storage but can't justify the cost of a new server being used for only file services.
8-12TB of usable space on that NAS very soundly lands you in the "Enterprice SSD's" that cost a fortune or Winchester drives. You'd need 26 (480GB SSD) to meet that 12 TB range.
That's why I was thinking of a hybrid setup.. 1-2 SSDs (240-480GB) and the rest are Winchester for volume setup in OBR10.
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@BBigford for this, I wouldn't invest in the SSD's at all for it.
Seems to me like wasted money. Unless you are moving GB or TB files to and from this unit constantly why do you need a SSD array at all?
Nothing about your setup appears to be intensive at all.
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@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@BBigford said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
Well for cache that makes sense. It is faster. (that's why it's there right?
)But without the specifics of what kind of performance you need, I don't know that using SSD's for cache is even worth it.
The type of storage would be stuff like:
*Software repository (at rest)
*IT-only (at rest), Wikis and such
*Users (folder redirected, accessed a lot every day)
*Department shares (collaborative... accessed a lot every day)More storage at rest.
So no VMs, databases or application hosting. Just file storage.... yeah just use classic Winchester Drives there is a ton of financial savings up front, with plenty of performance for the specified need.
Nope, VMs and databases are stored on our various SANs. My only concern was how heavily the Users and Departments shares are accessed. Especially accounting spreadsheets which can get pretty lengthy and complex.
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@BBigford said in Enterprise SSD selection:
Nope, VMs and databases are stored on our various SANs. My only concern was how heavily the Users and Departments shares are accessed. Especially accounting spreadsheets which can get pretty lengthy and complex.
But none of that screams "we need 10 millions times the performance, even for caching"
It just says " eh we'd be perfectly off with a lot of file storage in RAID10, 10K drives.
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@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@BBigford for this, I wouldn't invest in the SSD's at all for it.
Seems to me like wasted money. Unless you are moving GB or TB files to and from this unit constantly why do you need a SSD array at all?
Nothing about your setup appears to be intensive at all.
No single files are probably very large, I was more concerned with the accumulative file sizes... Like one user accessing 5GB worth of content each day, and then multiply that by 20 users or so... the rest being much less.
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@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@BBigford said in Enterprise SSD selection:
Nope, VMs and databases are stored on our various SANs. My only concern was how heavily the Users and Departments shares are accessed. Especially accounting spreadsheets which can get pretty lengthy and complex.
But none of that screams "we need 10 millions times the performance, even for caching"
It just says " eh we'd be perfectly off with a lot of file storage in RAID10, 10K drives.
Fair enough. Hence why I was merely considering it, versus heavily in favor of caching.
Now just to figure out how to protect a Synology NAS without using the Cloud protection, since we use System Center DPM (which requires an installed client..)
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@BBigford said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@DustinB3403 said in Enterprise SSD selection:
@BBigford for this, I wouldn't invest in the SSD's at all for it.
Seems to me like wasted money. Unless you are moving GB or TB files to and from this unit constantly why do you need a SSD array at all?
Nothing about your setup appears to be intensive at all.
No single files are probably very large, I was more concerned with the accumulative file sizes... Like one user accessing 5GB worth of content each day, and then multiply that by 20 users or so... the rest being much less.
Eventually someone else will jump in and confirm what I'm understanding as your needs.
Even if you were accessing the entire 12TB usable in a day (read access) It's not as if you're making that many changes to the data, it's still essentially at rest.
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This is something else I'm trying to figure out with this whole bit:
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I agree with Dustin. You're on Winchester drives today, right? Assuming you are ( you even mentioned being on some consumer drives (connected what, through USB?) to the server? You don't need performance, you simply need storage space.
As for your users accessing lots of data at the same time, you might need more network bandwidth before you need more drive bandwidth.
Before you fully settle on the NASs, ask xByte for a quote for an older Dell that can house the storage you need to see how the prices compare. Then you can run full on Linux on the box and get any backup option you want.
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@Dashrender said in Enterprise SSD selection:
I agree with Dustin. You're on Winchester drives today, right? Assuming you are ( you even mentioned being on some consumer drives (connected what, through USB?) to the server? You don't need performance, you simply need storage space.
As for your users accessing lots of data at the same time, you might need more network bandwidth before you need more drive bandwidth.
Before you fully settle on the NASs, ask xByte for a quote for an older Dell that can house the storage you need to see how the prices compare. Then you can run full on Linux on the box and get any backup option you want.
Our throughput is good. We've got 10G fiber between all switches, and we're the ISP so our fiber between sites is more than enough.
So taking Windows completely out of the equation, aside from backups... Linux vs. Synology, how would you put them under one namespace? I haven't tried it before. Something like this?
http://blog.scottlowe.org/2013/09/04/introducing-linux-network-namespaces/
I just found this on Spiceworks... Looks like you can just add the Synology box as a target for DFS and use DFS as normal... Can you do the same with a Linux box?
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/838604-dfs-with-a-synology-nas-unit
