NAS for Mac environment
-
@Ambarishrh said:
And being majority of MAC machines, i think it makes more sense to have a MAC mini server, where logins can be centralised, for file sharing and time machine backup for some key mgmnt users. The OSX server also mentions about XSAN http://www.apple.com/ae/osx/server/features/#xsan
Yes, using a SAN means that there are no logins at all. The entire concept of a login doesn't exist on a SAN
A SAN is just a disk drive that is "far away", nothing more. You don't log into disk drives, you just read them.Any NAS will centralize accounts too. That you use a Mac won't add that functionality, but might make it easier to manage.
You can do Timemachine just as easily with other devices too. That's not Apple specific.
-
@Ambarishrh said:
The OSX server also mentions about XSAN http://www.apple.com/ae/osx/server/features/#xsan
XSAN is a competitor with SAN-MP. It's a clustered file system that Apple provides. It is very, very unlikely that you want anything to do with this. Especially as it requires fibre channel to the desktop!!
-
I basically just wrote the Wikipedia entry without having looked. Here is the Wikipedia wording of what I just said: "Xsan is Apple Inc.'s storage area network (SAN) or clustered file system for Mac OS X. Xsan enables multiple Mac desktop and Xserve systems to access shared block storage over a Fibre Channel network."
-
@scottalanmiller said:
If you have the overflowing pockets, a good thing to do is to buy these three devices:
- Drobo B800i
So if I go with a B800i and a MAC mini, that would be a good option for this setup. On the Drobo site, it says "The Drobo B800i changes that by introducing zero-click iSCSI configuration for both Windows and Mac OS X servers.
With an iSCSI SAN, centralized storage is provided to each server over a high-speed Gigabit Ethernet network where it can be allocated or expanded instantaneously"
So once the DROBO is mounted on the MAC, then that can be shared by switching on the file sharing on the mac server. Hope this is a good path to go
-
On the "Choose the right DROBO for you section" i just checked
When you select the second option and then 2-5TB you get the Drobo 5D, when you choose the 3rd option with 2-5TB takes me the one you said Drobo B800i
-
@Ambarishrh said:
So if I go with a B800i and a MAC mini, that would be a good option for this setup. On the Drobo site, it says "The Drobo B800i changes that by introducing zero-click iSCSI configuration for both Windows and Mac OS X servers.
The B800i and the B1200i are both super duper simple to setup for iSCSI. I mean seriously easy. The B800i is a nice little unit and you can bug @art_of_shred or @Mike-Ralston to hook you up with access to a live one as the NTG Lab runs one with 12TB on it. It's not super fast and does not have a lot of redundancy and whatnot so you need to be careful where you use it.
But if you want ease of use, nothing touching Drobo for SAN.
-
@Ambarishrh said:
On the "Choose the right DROBO for you section" i just checked
When you select the second option and then 2-5TB you get the Drobo 5D, when you choose the 3rd option with 2-5TB takes me the one you said Drobo B800i
The B800i is 8 bays, rack mount, no cache.
The 5N is 5 bays, desk mount, single SSD cache option.
-
The B1200i is 12 bays, with an option 9 spinning rust with 3 SSD cache with lots of redundancy and rack mount.
-
The current problems i needed to solve is the slow access. I think enabling backup of the data to their existing NAS drive could add as a second copy in case something goes wrong with the new one.
-
@Ambarishrh said:
So once the DROBO is mounted on the MAC, then that can be shared by switching on the file sharing on the mac server. Hope this is a good path to go
Correct. The Drobo mounts on the Mac like you added a local drive. Then you share it just like making any file share.
-
tomorrow would be quite a lot of calls to vendors on pricing!
-
This seems to be a good option giving me a usable space of 5TB with dual disk redundancy.
-
Just listing what I find useful for me, might be a good starting point for someone else in the future.
-
Keep in mind that the B800i is SATA only. SAS drive options do not exist until you use the B1200i.
-
We use the B800i behind our XenServer in the lab. Works really well. We are on RAID 6 (dual redundancy as they call it) of course.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@Ambarishrh said:
How does it work with MAC?
Macs talk the same protocols as everyone else. SMB first, NFS second and AFP deprecated but included. There is no concept of "storage for Mac" anymore. That's an old idea.
The only thing to be aware of is the Finder issue and that plagues all non-Mac native storage equally.
This is good to know...
-
@scottalanmiller said:
- Give up on file sharing and move to SAN + clustered filesystem like SAN-MP so that you are using a Mac-managed HFS+ system.
I can only imagine how expensive that would be!
-
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
- Give up on file sharing and move to SAN + clustered filesystem like SAN-MP so that you are using a Mac-managed HFS+ system.
I can only imagine how expensive that would be!
It's not horrible, presumably because you go cheap on the SAN side. SAN and NAS are the same price, so you aren't losing a lot there. SAN-MP is in the same price range as a good Finder replacement. So we aren't talking about anything crazy. But not cheap like Windows or Linux would be.
-
Hi all
Just an update on this:
Found one vendor in Dubai and seems like they are the only one for Drobo through out the GCC!
I asked for a demo unit and they dont have B800i, and instead they were suggesting me to check Drobo Mini/ an alternate device which i guess is their custom device as there are no specs/details on their site.
Not sure if a Drobo mini is a good idea for 30-50 users working on Photoshop with big image files.
-
@Ambarishrh said:
Not sure if a Drobo mini is a good idea for 30-50 users working on Photoshop with big image files.
Ha ha. The Drobo Mini is not a SAN, it's a single user external drive device. Yes, it is a full RAID unit with four drives in it (all 2.5" SATA) but it is a direct attach only and is designed to be exactly the same as a really nice external USB drive except faster with RAID protection. That's all. Super high end USB drive.
