New storage... what about file server
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@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
Hi Guys,
We just changed our old Qnap NAS server to brand new High-performance storage.
what file server do you guys use?
I can just use Windows server and share folder but I like to hear your voice before taking action
Thx
We never roll out Windows for file serving. If customers already have it, whatever. But that's a great spot where Windows is adding no benefit over something faster, safer, easier to manage, and cheaper.
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@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
In the past, all our servers had local storage and connected with a 1GB \2GBLDAP connection.
As it should always be. Storage should all but never be remote to the servers. Even a decade ago when doing that was popular it was the "by the book" worst thing to do. Today, it's still a worst practice, but isn't popular anymore as the trend to ignore the best practices has neded.
Local storage is always the fastest and the safest (and the cheapest.)
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@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
Today, we are working with Main storage (SC5020) connected to Servers with a 25GB bandwidth.
SC5020 is a SAN. High performance and SAN are opposing concepts. One of the most important things you have to decide when accepting the idea of a SAN is that you are adding a new, extra layer of latency between your server(s) and the storage that slows it down. Remember that the SC5020 uses the same disks as your server, and is just a server itself with all of the overhead that any other server has. So anything the 5020 can do, local storage could do even better.
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@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
Everything plays amazing!
Not because the new setup is good, but because you are comparing it to a QNAP. It's all still really expensive, fragile, and slow compared to a baseline file server.
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@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
The only aspect I left with is the file server. When we purchased the equipment, our solution to share files was a windows server, but I like to discuss other options before I'm taking this step.
You should have engaged people at the architecture step. You've already bought everything except the license and NOW you are asking for guidance? All of the really, really important parts are already done (and literally I just wrote this chapter in the textbook on this last week and used this exact setup as an example of the stock worst design that people do - so you literally just rolled out the actual textbook example of what never to do) and the part you are asking about (Windows or non-Windows) really makes essentially no difference.
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@dashrender said in New storage... what about file server:
@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
SC5020
Why is the file server not part of your SAN solution?
How many hosts do you have connected to your SAN?
SAN, by definition, cannot be a file server.
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@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
have to say, QNAP has never been a good match for our company, but overall I have nothing but a good thing to say about it
It's not a good match for anyone. That's why it isn't considered IT equipment, it's just a toy. High cost, low performance, little to no support. The danger in things like a QNAP is that it sets a low expectation for IT performance that is so dramatically off the mark, that it makes it easy to get lost and to think that "doing better than what you did before" is a guideline, rather than "doing well compared to industry standards."
The approach you have now is what's called an Inverted Pyramid of Doom, or a 3-2-1 Design, one commonly knows as a scam run by vendors (Dell especially is famous for pulling this trick on their customers who let salesman design systems instead of IT folks) to sell tons of high cost gear where far, far less would perform better and be safer. What you had before was just a worse Inverted Pyramid of Doom. So because this is so much better than how bad that was before, it hides the fact that this likely cost 400-500% more than an even faster, even more reliable system that would be simpler to manage.
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Some IPOD articles...
https://blog.storagecraft.com/making-the-best-of-your-inverted-pyramid-of-doom/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/inverted-pyramid-doom-tom-larson/
https://shawnsbrain.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/the-inverted-pyramid-of-doom-ipod/
https://smbitjournal.com/2013/06/the-inverted-pyramid-of-doom
https://smbitjournal.com/2016/06/the-emperors-new-storage/
https://smbitjournal.com/2013/06/when-to-consider-a-san/
https://smbitjournal.com/2013/07/replicated-local-storage/
https://smbitjournal.com/2012/05/when-no-redundancy-is-more-reliable/
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@scottalanmiller said in New storage... what about file server:
@dashrender said in New storage... what about file server:
@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
SC5020
Why is the file server not part of your SAN solution?
How many hosts do you have connected to your SAN?
SAN, by definition, cannot be a file server.
Not what I meant -
Why is a VM that's part of the hosts that use the SAN not acting as your file server? -
@dashrender said in New storage... what about file server:
@scottalanmiller said in New storage... what about file server:
@dashrender said in New storage... what about file server:
@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
SC5020
Why is the file server not part of your SAN solution?
How many hosts do you have connected to your SAN?
SAN, by definition, cannot be a file server.
Not what I meant -
Why is a VM that's part of the hosts that use the SAN not acting as your file server?Isn't it? I didn't see him suggest that it wasn't.
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@scottalanmiller said in New storage... what about file server:
@gros96 said in New storage... what about file server:
have to say, QNAP has never been a good match for our company, but overall I have nothing but a good thing to say about it
It's not a good match for anyone. That's why it isn't considered IT equipment, it's just a toy. High cost, low performance, little to no support. The danger in things like a QNAP is that it sets a low expectation for IT performance that is so dramatically off the mark, that it makes it easy to get lost and to think that "doing better than what you did before" is a guideline, rather than "doing well compared to industry standards."
The approach you have now is what's called an Inverted Pyramid of Doom, or a 3-2-1 Design, one commonly knows as a scam run by vendors (Dell especially is famous for pulling this trick on their customers who let salesman design systems instead of IT folks) to sell tons of high cost gear where far, far less would perform better and be safer. What you had before was just a worse Inverted Pyramid of Doom. So because this is so much better than how bad that was before, it hides the fact that this likely cost 400-500% more than an even faster, even more reliable system that would be simpler to manage.
Are you sure? He said he had servers with internal storage... and now as a SC5020 - so sure, now he has a IPOD, but it sounds like before he was probably OK - each host was separate. Then the QNAP was a NAS file server.. and least that's the way I read it.
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@dashrender said in New storage... what about file server:
Are you sure? He said he had servers with internal storage... and now as a SC5020 - so sure, now he has a IPOD, but it sounds like before he was probably OK - each host was separate. Then the QNAP was a NAS file server.. and least that's the way I read it.
Oh maybe. QNAP has both SAN and NAS components. All garbage, of course. But it can do either.
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@gros96 sorry for the information overload. But you literally hit on the number one most famous topic in this community. We've written about it, done the math, written the books, hosted the conferences, lol. This is THE community for IT architecture.
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@scottalanmiller said in New storage... what about file server:
@dashrender said in New storage... what about file server:
Are you sure? He said he had servers with internal storage... and now as a SC5020 - so sure, now he has a IPOD, but it sounds like before he was probably OK - each host was separate. Then the QNAP was a NAS file server.. and least that's the way I read it.
Oh maybe. QNAP has both SAN and NAS components. All garbage, of course. But it can do either.
Really we don't have enough information to know if he was using the QNAP for VM storage or not...
Since he mentioned the servers had local storage - I will admit I assumed the Servers (I also assumed they were using VMs) used the local storage for VMs and that the QNAP was solely to act as a file server for, you know - user files.. not VM files...
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@scottalanmiller just out of curiosity what file server do you recommend with local storage for your average medium-sized business?
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@eleceng said in New storage... what about file server:
@scottalanmiller just out of curiosity what file server do you recommend with local storage for your average medium-sized business?
On average, I recommend moving to something more modern like DropBox, Zoho WorkDrive, Sharepoint, etc. if hosted will work or something like NextCloud if you need to host your own. Avoiding file serving in general and moving to data-backed services is ideal, and then modern "cloud" storage for remaining files that cannot be modernized. Using files at all is a "failure mode" that we all have to deal with, but we want to minimize it.
Even if mapped drives are required, you can do that with the above. But we want to avoid that, that's a ransomware vector. Not that other things aren't. But it is THE ransomware vector.
If you absolutely must have a legacy mapped drive infrastructure then you have a lot of limitations and you basically have three options: Windows, Linux/BSD or a NAS (which is generally just someone else building option number two for you.)
When possible, I avoid Windows because it adds little to no benefit but takes more resources to manage and more to support and more to run. If I'm trying to modernize a business and not just get in and out quickly, then I want something more forward looking that's going to help them as much as possible move towards modernization even if it isn't immediate - basically I don't want to lock them into something unnecessary.
So unless given a solid reason to need Windows, Linux would be my first choice, with FreeBSD equally as good but with a lot less industry support. Linux has the broadest support of all - companies have no challenge all getting good Linux support anytime, Windows has just as many good support people out there but with millions of totally unqualified people in the pool as well making it all but impossible to find qualified people in the crowd.) So Ubuntu with Samba is generally what I deploy. It's easy to set up, easy to support, easy to get support, easy to support remotely, less costly through every part of the life cycle, no licensing overhead (which is 90% the human cost of managing the licenses) and more flexibility to do whatever needs to be done today or in the unforeseen future.
