Hello all,
We’re considering building/buying an enterprise NAS for additional storage / achieving capabilities and I was curious as to what suggestions you might have. Without getting into too much detail, our backup storage is full and is quickly filling our achieve capacity, so we’re either going to buy additional backup solutions for additional storage/replication/features (new deduplication options in CentOS6/7, currently on 5). Or we can buy/build additional NAS storage and use that how we see fit. The immediate use would be for backup archives and files storage, but to me, the NAS would be much more flexible in our environment, but less streamlined for reporting on the backups…
We’re considering buying another Dell Equallogic (it’s one of the best pre-built options financially speaking), a 45Drives option, and finally a complete in-house DIY option. IT (myself included) is no where near where we want to be LinuxAdmin wise, but are very eager to learn.
Questions? Options? Suggestions?
Thanks for your time.
I don't know how much I can help since I have no experience with Enterprise grade equipment., but I can toss in some ideas.
Personally I would go with the custom built option, you can get exactly what you want. However, it does take time to find parts build it and set up.
Pre-built ones come at a high cost but are backed buy warranties, and come with good software software to add features. and generally are plug in and go. Also they come with support unlike a DIY ones where you have to support your device.
With my small home network I have a crappy server and a simply synolgy nas. looking back I wish that i had taken the money from the nas spending and put it into the server and run virtualization on that server and host the nas inside of a virtualized session and then I could have other virtualized servers running other task without needing several machines to do the same work that could be done by one.
The synolgy nas has a nice feature set of software on it. DSM as they call it. but I like to have as few devices as possible now this does run into problems if say a part falls on the server holding all of the services the whole thing comes down.
synolgy also makes a few enterprise grade NAS might want to check them out too, I do not know their cost/benefits verses other brands.
Hopefully this helped even if it was just a little bit.
The pre-built options are always nice considering how many drives you can cram into them and hardware replacement support if you need it.
Synology are nice, I have a friend who uses them, and it's been nothing but reliable.
The other thought you have to consider is bit-rot. @wendell makes a very good case about why RAID is dead and needs to be weeded out.
Building your own is always fun, and with software like FreeNAS, and being able to use ZFS, is not something to shy away from.
Picking out all the hardware for a DIY setup is easier on small scale, and becomes increasingly limited the bigger you go.
Do you have any hardware currently in mind?
We just got a quote in for a Lenovo (meh) SA120 70F1 and 12x4TB 6GB/s SAS lenovo drives for around $4k (dat govment discount doe), which is certainly appealing capacity/financially. I was leaning more towards Synology or a Qnap solution with some nice HGST SAS drives (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175089-who-makes-the-most-reliable-hard-drives). I haven't messed with FreeNAS or any free variant, but am interested in learning, so that's always an option.
FreeNAS is really simple to use, and gives you the added benefit of using ZFS, it may also be possible to use the Lenovo Hardware (depending on how it's connected to a server) to be your storage for a FreeNAS setup.
Your biggest concern, should be making sure you get reliable hardware, both in terms of drives and backplane for the drives.
1 Like
Neither option is out right better than the other. Both pre-made and custom build have their advantages and disadvantages. And so I can't really say one or the other. But I can try to start you off on a decision:
Pros of premade
warranty
easy setup
You know exactly what you are getting
lower energy use
generally more compact
Pros of custom
Easier expandability
no unneeded features
Upgradability
more Powerful
Generally you can add more drives to a custom
wider options for software
not stuck with a single company after purchase
These are all the things I can think of at the minute. Please feel free to add to the list anyonev or disagree with me.
1 Like