SMB Storage Appliances
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This is a subject of continuous discussion over on some other online communities. I am quite surprised how often the same questions get asked and the same general advice is given over and over again with the same wrong information, missing information, etc.
SMB Storage Appliances lack the enterprise support levels and generally lack the custom engineering and high end design of enterprise devices. Rarely do they have dual controllers or power supplies, parts replacement is typically next business day and features are typically relatively basic. Hardware is commodity whereas enterprise devices tend to have ASICs or other custom gear. Nearly all SMB storage appliances are unified storage with both NAS and SAN functionality in a single unit with only one key exception (Drobo.)
The key vendors: Netgear ReadyNAS and ReadyDATA, Synology, IoSafe, Buffalo, Thecus, Western Digital and Drobo.
Most of these vendors make Linux-based storage devices. So the general feature sets and performance are relatively similar. ReadyDATA is unique, in this category, in that it is Illumos (OpenSolaris) based instead. And Drobo is completely unique. Buffalo and WD are the only products in this category that offers a Windows-based unified storage device product line too.
Drobo is unique that they make three completely independent lines, one for DAS, one for NAS and one for SAN. Their NAS product is the only one of all of these vendors that does not offer Active Directory integration or NFS.
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@scottalanmiller What question(s) sparked this?
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@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller What question(s) sparked this?
There is one or two nearly every day. Just being proactive
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I'll throw one at you for S&G's
What's the consensus on running iSCSI volumes on a NAS? Any reason to or not to?
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@Bill-Kindle said:
I'll throw one at you for S&G's
What's the consensus on running iSCSI volumes on a NAS? Any reason to or not to?
Well that turns it into a SAN at a pedantic layer.
Running iSCSI is fine, but it is a more complex situation than NAS protocols. It should be used only where required. And iSCSI works best on dedicated networks. Using iSCSI on the LAN is not advised. Using NFS on a dedicated networks is great but uncommon.
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So you would use NFS on the LAN?
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@Dashrender said:
So you would use NFS on the LAN?
99% of time you use NFS and SMB on the LAN. But if you can justify a separate network just for your file sharing, doing so is great for performance and security.
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@scottalanmiller what if you are using NFS for VMWare storage?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller what if you are using NFS for VMWare storage?
Then you definitely want to treat it as a dedicated network and, if possible, have no network at all but connect directly treating it like DAS but with file protocols.
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For those interested, NTG now has the Drobo B800i iSCSI SAN being used as a datastore for a XenServer cluster in the NTG Labs.
