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    Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc

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    • gjacobseG
      gjacobse @scottalanmiller
      last edited by

      @scottalanmiller said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

      @gjacobse said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

      has anyone used Free RAID Calculator before?

      Problems with it include....

      The parts that it gets right are insanely simple and can be done in your head faster than you can type the details in. The other parts are just wrong. The performance part is wrong, as is the risk part. The only part it gets right is the capacity.

      good thing I am ignoring that aspect. for any type of performance, I would go with a full hybrid system.

      scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • scottalanmillerS
        scottalanmiller @gjacobse
        last edited by

        @gjacobse said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

        @scottalanmiller said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

        @gjacobse said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

        has anyone used Free RAID Calculator before?

        Problems with it include....

        The parts that it gets right are insanely simple and can be done in your head faster than you can type the details in. The other parts are just wrong. The performance part is wrong, as is the risk part. The only part it gets right is the capacity.

        good thing I am ignoring that aspect. for any type of performance, I would go with a full hybrid system.

        Hybrid isn't going to fix the fundamental issue of RAID but being viable at even a fraction of this size.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • scottalanmillerS
          scottalanmiller
          last edited by

          As RAID arrays get large, you have to move more and more towards RAID 10. Using roughly the largest drives available broadly on the market (12TB), a single petabyte would be 180 drives in a single RAID array. This is way, way larger than is practical to have in a single array from both a spindle count, and a storage volume number.

          gjacobseG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • gjacobseG
            gjacobse @scottalanmiller
            last edited by

            @scottalanmiller said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

            As RAID arrays get large, you have to move more and more towards RAID 10. Using roughly the largest drives available broadly on the market (12TB), a single petabyte would be 180 drives in a single RAID array. This is way, way larger than is practical to have in a single array from both a spindle count, and a storage volume number.

            Considering the 16TB is so new - I wouldn't recommend them.

            I need to go back and re-re-read the IPOD of yours.....

            scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • scottalanmillerS
              scottalanmiller @gjacobse
              last edited by

              @gjacobse said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

              Considering the 16TB is so new - I wouldn't recommend them.

              16TB is an SSD.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • scottalanmillerS
                scottalanmiller @gjacobse
                last edited by

                @gjacobse said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                I need to go back and re-re-read the IPOD of yours.....

                That's a separate issue, but also huge. But as this is purely a storage question, we need to focus there. RAID essentially stops being viable around 100TB - 200TB. If you are dealing with really slow, low priority archival storage maybe slightly larger.

                For a large petabyte scale storage system, RAIN is really your only option.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • scottalanmillerS
                  scottalanmiller
                  last edited by

                  To get into petabyte range you are into "specialty everything" no matter how you slice it. If you are going to build it yourself you are pretty much stuck with CEPH or Gluster. And those aren't fast and you'll expect a storage expert to be managing them. It's not like buying a hardware RAID controller and just letting it handle everything for you. This is a significant engineering effort.

                  Realistically, even if you are looking for 100TB of production storage, you are going to want to be bringing in vendors like EMC or Nimble where they build and manage systems like this specifically.

                  travisdh1T 1 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • travisdh1T
                    travisdh1 @scottalanmiller
                    last edited by

                    @scottalanmiller said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                    To get into petabyte range you are into "specialty everything" no matter how you slice it. If you are going to build it yourself you are pretty much stuck with CEPH or Gluster. And those aren't fast and you'll expect a storage expert to be managing them. It's not like buying a hardware RAID controller and just letting it handle everything for you. This is a significant engineering effort.

                    Realistically, even if you are looking for 100TB of production storage, you are going to want to be bringing in vendors like EMC or Nimble where they build and manage systems like this specifically.

                    Is this sort of scale something @scale could deal with? (Had to drop the pun.)

                    scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • scottalanmillerS
                      scottalanmiller @travisdh1
                      last edited by

                      @travisdh1 said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                      Is this sort of scale something @scale could deal with? (Had to drop the pun.)

                      They don't make storage systems for a long time.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • IRJI
                        IRJ
                        last edited by

                        It sounds like they probably don't know how much space they need. Somebody probably told them storage is cheap and they threw out some insane number. They are likely doing something very wrong to need that much storage.

                        Can you get some clarity of why they think they need that much storage? How much storage are they currently using?

                        scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • 1
                          1337 @scottalanmiller
                          last edited by 1337

                          @scottalanmiller said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                          To get into petabyte range you are into "specialty everything" no matter how you slice it. If you are going to build it yourself you are pretty much stuck with CEPH or Gluster. And those aren't fast and you'll expect a storage expert to be managing them. It's not like buying a hardware RAID controller and just letting it handle everything for you. This is a significant engineering effort.

                          Realistically, even if you are looking for 100TB of production storage, you are going to want to be bringing in vendors like EMC or Nimble where they build and manage systems like this specifically.

                          It seems like many use Lustre with ZFS for huge high performance storage (tens of GB/s).
                          Supermicro, Dell EMC, HPE and others have reference solutions for it.

                          "... is ideal for organizations that are able to self-support such as universities, National Labs, and others with such capabilities."

                          Supermicro solution allows you to expand with 0.5PB or 1PB at a time.
                          From what I can see you need 18U rack space for a 1 PB solution.
                          If you fill up an entire rack you have 3PB usable storage.
                          https://supermicro.com/en/solutions/lustre

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • scottalanmillerS
                            scottalanmiller @IRJ
                            last edited by

                            @IRJ said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                            It sounds like they probably don't know how much space they need. Somebody probably told them storage is cheap and they threw out some insane number. They are likely doing something very wrong to need that much storage.

                            That matches all the rest of the setup.... all needs, vendors, etc. that don't make much sense and sound like a non-technical person throwing out words overhead in an airport.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • scottalanmillerS
                              scottalanmiller @IRJ
                              last edited by

                              @IRJ said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                              Can you get some clarity of why they think they need that much storage? How much storage are they currently using?

                              The background is that the system design is all politically motivated and not rooted in business or technical needs. We spent some time on that. There's not even a known use case for the storage (it's unclear if it will be object, block/SAN, file/NAS, etc.) The need is to have "petabyte storage" without any other specification.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • F
                                Francesco Provino
                                last edited by

                                Hi @gjacobse , consider something like a tiered approach to the problem. 1Pb are a lot of data.
                                Maybe 5-10Tb of fast SSD for caching, 50-100Tb of spinning disks for caching/capacity and the rest will go to the cloud.
                                For instance, a single AWS Storage Gateway appliance could be the solution if you have good internet uplink.
                                Another solution could be Azure Stack.
                                Feel free to contact me if need advices about that kind of setup.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • ObsolesceO
                                  Obsolesce
                                  last edited by

                                  If this is something that just has to happen for whatever reason, political, technical, whatever, then the only real way to do it is as Scott mentioned... RAIN. It's the only way to do it that is truly scalable and manageable to sizes like that, even if starting out with much lower storage capacity. You can start with a few nodes of several hundred TBs, and add more nodes to scale as required.

                                  Maybe look at something like DataOn.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • gjacobseG
                                    gjacobse
                                    last edited by

                                    RAIN over RAID

                                    This is likely the answer. I found this: Drath of RAID and am reading it.

                                    I don’t see many diagrams on it, or much on it really- maybe I’m not searching the right term(s).

                                    DustinB3403D scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • DustinB3403D
                                      DustinB3403 @gjacobse
                                      last edited by

                                      @gjacobse said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                                      RAIN over RAID

                                      This is likely the answer. I found this: Drath of RAID and am reading it.

                                      I don’t see many diagrams on it, or much on it really- maybe I’m not searching the right term(s).

                                      Of course there are no diagrams, ML is to discuss, not a hand book on how to setup an exact system. Everything you're being asked to do is going to require RAIN, but the specifics of how it's setup is going to be completely unique to this environment.

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
                                      • DustinB3403D
                                        DustinB3403
                                        last edited by DustinB3403

                                        Reading the documentation for gluster, there is nothing particularly difficult to understand here. Since RAIN is what you're going to be using, might be worth reading. https://docs.gluster.org/en/latest/Quick-Start-Guide/Quickstart/

                                        gjacobseG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • gjacobseG
                                          gjacobse @DustinB3403
                                          last edited by

                                          @DustinB3403 said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                                          Reading the documentation for gluster, there is nothing particularly difficult to understand here. Since RAIN is what you're going to be using, might be worth reading. https://docs.gluster.org/en/latest/Quick-Start-Guide/Quickstart/

                                          Doesn’t meet the requested OS-
                                          They only want Windows.

                                          DustinB3403D 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • DustinB3403D
                                            DustinB3403 @gjacobse
                                            last edited by

                                            @gjacobse said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                                            @DustinB3403 said in Designing for tech startup: Network, AD, Backup etc:

                                            Reading the documentation for gluster, there is nothing particularly difficult to understand here. Since RAIN is what you're going to be using, might be worth reading. https://docs.gluster.org/en/latest/Quick-Start-Guide/Quickstart/

                                            Doesn’t meet the requested OS-
                                            They only want Windows.

                                            Well they clearly don't know what they want and how it works.

                                            My assumption is they want a Windows File Server, they shouldn't care how the underlying environment is setup so long as they are presented with the interface to "manage the files" that they are used to.

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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