NAS or SAM-SD?
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Hi All,
I just got tasked with pricing out a NAS or storage server... The starting size is ~10TB and room for growth (how much / how fast the growth will be is not clear right now).
I'm currently pricing out a Synology Rackstation with 12 x 6TB Drives in RAID 10.
Are the Synology NAS systems good for a build that "big"?
I haven't looked at QNAP for one that large yet, but we have a 2Bay QNAP that runs pretty good, so they are next on my list to check.
After some thinking, I was wondering if it might not be more economical to build a SAM-SD for this...
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You can certainly use a Synology for this 10 - 196TB I think is what Synology scales up to.
The units are pretty cheaply priced as well.
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What do you need for recovery time for that box if there is a hardware fault.
Also, I bet you can get a better performing server chassis for that money.
The trade off is, time to build and configure a server, versus an out of the box Synology with a higher risk factor.
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if you don't pay for electricity from your own pocket just get R5xx from xByte and load FreeBSD on it (or Linux?) with ZFS
don't do syno or netgear if yo plan more than 4 spindles
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Synology vs. QNAP. These aren't the same category of devices and the QNAP issues are around support, not the hardware, so not amount of QNAP observation will showcase why they shouldn't be mentioned in a business setting. Synology and ReadyNAS are the players here in the business space, not QNAP.
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I think I started a #NeverQNAP hashtag somewhere. Really trying to get it to catch on.
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Once you get into rackmount, SAM-SD are faster, cheaper and more reliable than anything else on the market. Often by a wide margin.
A commercial NAS' advantages are purely around the reduction of your effort and integrated single point of contact support at the tradeoff of slower, less reliable and less reliable.
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How much throughput are you looking at? One of the advantages to a SAM-SD is that you can throw a few 10Gb modules into the chassis.
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Would something like Exablocks fit the bill? It would probably be a bit more expensive but this seems the exact use case for it.
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@coliver said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
How much throughput are you looking at? One of the advantages to a SAM-SD is that you can throw a few 10Gb modules into the chassis.
@coliver said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
How much throughput are you looking at? One of the advantages to a SAM-SD is that you can throw a few 10Gb modules into the chassis.
Synology and ReadyNAS will both do 10GigE as well. SAM-SD modules will be cheaper, of course, and could do 40GigE, Fibre Channel or Infiniband, too. But 10GigE is available on pretty much any business unit today.
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@coliver said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
Would something like Exablocks fit the bill? It would probably be a bit more expensive but this seems the exact use case for it.
Might. Heavy base price and design is built around having multiple units and a larger storage capacity size by rather a bit.
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Benefits of SAM-SD aside, and speaking directly to out of box, single point of contact vendors... if you're talking about Synology being able to handle a "big" setup as you called it, their products are great from top to bottom. I installed [one of these](link url) and it was great. I did 48TB at the time. Also Exablox as @coliver mentioned.
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Is a SAM-SD a Software Defined Network that is Scott Alan Miller compliant?
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@wirestyle22 said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
Is a SAM-SD a Software Defined Network that is Scott Alan Miller compliant?
You found the link
I don't like the term software defined in conjunction with the SAM-SD because it implies a weird association with NAS and hardware that does not exist. Basically NAS and SAN are just the same as SAM-SD but possibly without the "enterprise" requirement (even ReadyNAS and Synology aren't compliant there) and being appliances instead of set up by the IT department. All an enterprise NAS is is a SAM-SD that someone built as a black box for you, but it is no more or less "software defined", all NAS are servers in the same way. -
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@wirestyle22 said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
Is a SAM-SD a Software Defined Network that is Scott Alan Miller compliant?
All an enterprise NAS is is a SAM-SD that someone built as a black box for you
If someone were to build a white box, or maybe a green box, would that still be compliant?
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@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@wirestyle22 said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
Is a SAM-SD a Software Defined Network that is Scott Alan Miller compliant?
All an enterprise NAS is is a SAM-SD that someone built as a black box for you
If someone were to build a white box, or maybe a green box, would that still be compliant?
or these boxes...
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@Breffni-Potter said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
What do you need for recovery time for that box if there is a hardware fault.
Also, I bet you can get a better performing server chassis for that money.
The trade off is, time to build and configure a server, versus an out of the box Synology with a higher risk factor.
This is only going to be for a Photo Archive, so recovery time is not a huge concern as far as I am aware.
Building a server is easy.
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@KOOLER said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
if you don't pay for electricity from your own pocket just get R5xx from xByte and load FreeBSD on it (or Linux?) with ZFS
don't do syno or netgear if yo plan more than 4 spindles
That's one of the reasons I started this thread. I kinda figured that was going to be the way to go.
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@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@wirestyle22 said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
Is a SAM-SD a Software Defined Network that is Scott Alan Miller compliant?
All an enterprise NAS is is a SAM-SD that someone built as a black box for you
If someone were to build a white box, or maybe a green box, would that still be compliant?
A white box device cannot be a NAS. Blackbox is part of the definition of a NAS.
White boxes cannot be enterprise (no support) so doesn't qualify as SAM-SD. That would just be a hobby class file server.
SAM-SD still requires enterprise hardware and support, but does not allow for black boxing as that is what it replaces.
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@dafyre said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@Breffni-Potter said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
What do you need for recovery time for that box if there is a hardware fault.
Also, I bet you can get a better performing server chassis for that money.
The trade off is, time to build and configure a server, versus an out of the box Synology with a higher risk factor.
This is only going to be for a Photo Archive, so recovery time is not a huge concern as far as I am aware.
Building a server is easy.
Not for people who buy NAS. People buy NAS because they believe that building or managing a super generic file server is somehow super hard. That's why NAS exists. You would not believe how many people think that "right click and say 'share' is hard."
