NAS devices

[Dan Ritter]

On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 10:56:14AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> A while back we had a discussion on NAS devices. It appears that my 
> office is expanding. Currently we are using a Linux system with non-RAID 
> drives serving both NFS for our 9 Linux systems and a few directories 
> exported via SAMBA. That Linux box is a SCSI box that is pretty well 
> maxed out. We currently have over 800GB of data. For backup we are using 
> a WD Mybook 2TB system which is adequate but very slow. What I am 
> looking for is a rack mounted 1U or 2U dedicated system. All but 2 of 
> the Linux systems are in the rack. We currently have a 24 port Netgear 
> gigabit switch in the rack. For performance I could set up a NAS devices 
> on a private network with its own switch connected to the second port of 
> the existing servers.
> What we probably will need is initially 2TB usable storage in the RAID1, 
> 5 or 6 configuration to replace the current Linux server.
> One system that looks good is the Netgear ReadyNAS series.
> 
> I would prefer that the systems run Linux internally and support both 
> NFS as well as Samba. As I mentioned above, performance is important. I 
> don't think that I would need the private LAN option initially. I would 
> probably use the higher speed SATA drives. At this point a SAN is 
> probably too expensive.
> 
> I'm just looking for personal experience with NAS devices so when I make 
> a recommendation, I will have some experiences.

Not exactly what you asked for, but -- I think very highly of
the HP P800 SAS/SATA card. You can get a 1U box with four 3.5"
drives -- don't buy HP drives, the price is astoundingly high --
and later plug in a 2U 12x3.5" chassis or a 2U 25x2.5" chassis.
These can be cascaded, too -- 96 3.5" disks (up to 2TB SATA) or 
50 2.5" disks (500GB SATA or 300GB SAS) depending on whether you
need more speed or space.

Alternatively, any decent 4 disk 1U box can do 4TB (usable) in
RAID10 for you. 

IMHO, small NAS appliances are primarily for people who can't be
bothered to set up things that you've already set up.

-dsr-

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