NAS or Fileserver?

[Chaftalie]

Hi,

just a "quick" Question what do you think what I should do? ^^

 

My Dad has got a small company (like LTT but far less IT Infrastructer needed).
At the Moment we have an Server thats used as an remote System for two people, some database stuff thats not really intense, and about 200 to 300GB very important Data and 500GB not frequently used data.

We have a team of 4 CAD designer and they say that the save times of our projects (which are really small max. 10MB per project) are really slow, up to an minute.
Our drives are pretty much full, which is probably the cause of the slow loading times.

Also our server is about 5 years old, Xeon e3-1240 v3 4c8T | 32GB Ram | about 1TB of 10K SAS HDDs Raid1
At the moment we have a working backupsystem with tape, there is no need to do something there.

 

But there is a need to do something about our Server infrastructure.
We got an offer from our IT consulting company

I think thats apart from the hard drives not an useful offer cause ~5700USD just for an HDD upgrade makes no sense to me, because we probaly would have to buy a new Server in 1 to 2 Years again, because the hardware would be to slow for some new Software we will get in the next years.

A quick question, why SAS HDDs? whats the big important different to SATA drives apart from their latency thats better because they are spinning faster?
(Also we would have to spend another 7000 bucks for new software licences)
So thats not really an option at the moment. (At least for me, if I say thats OK my dad will buy it)

 

The secound option would be to buy a Fileserver / build on myself with pretty decent enterprise Hardware

running Linux or Windows. (Does someone know about an very good linux distro for NAS applications? (It does not have to be free)

The biggest plus of this option would be, that we have an IT store with their warehouse in our neightborhood, so if something breaks I can get that part in less than half an hour. Also I can ask them to always have that parts in stock for me, because I know some guys there ^^.

 

The third opten would be to buy an NAS.
At the moment my favourite would be an synology ds3018xs with 3 x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf PRO  with 5 years warranty in Raid 5

This NAS is probably a little bit overkill for only 3 HDDs but overkill is good isn't it?

 

I would love to get some input to think about from you guys.
 

[Mikensan]

Man, that is not a quick question - it's a wall of text.

 

Your 5 year old server is more than capable of handling your needs. You simply need to add storage. You could connect an external, move files off of it temporarily, replace the drives, and move the data back.

 

SAS adds more "lanes" thus increases r/w speeds etc.. If you're working off a 1gb network and simply using this for storage - there's no benefit. If the server is doing some local computation and heavy i/o then SAS would benefit (or a very busy SQL Server).

[hooraah]

Something isn't adding up.  4 users all simultaneously saving a 10mb file should be almost no load on the server, unless you have exactly 0 bytes left, or if one of the hard drives is failing.

 

I would start looking at some stats and see where the bottleneck on your current server is - is the throughput maxed?  disk i/o maxed?  sitting there idle?  If you copy a 1GB file to a file share, whats the transfer rate?

 

You definitely don't need a new server to the tune of 5K.  New hard drives at most.

[Chaftalie]

Sorry for the "wall" of text

 

Yeah our network is 1 Gbit (could easily upgraded to 10 if neede, all cables are Cat7, but there is no need for that)

The server run Windows Server small business 2011

Some say that this Operating System is very slow at data handling? or even generaly?

 

I already tried some things:

If I copy big text files (should be easy and fast to copy), about 1 to 2 GB of Data, it copies themat nearly the full speed of 1Gbit over the network but

the HDDs on the server are only saving at a rate of 20 to 30 Mbit that means it buffer the files in the ram (or Raid Controler ?) I did not investigated that any further.

Spoiler

Nobody is working on the server at the moment most of the time it is like this 80 to 100% of usage and abou 0 to 30 MB/s write/read

 

That Server will probably get an SSD upgrade for the databases and the main System. And maybe it will get virtualised with Microsofts vSphere Software (with a big maybe).

 

We want to locate all files (except Database and such things) in an other machine, because if there happens anything bad on the software part of the Server half the company can't work anymore.

 

The Question remains Filesevrer or NAS?

I tend to the Fileserver with Linux as operation System, cause I like new things.

(Does someone know about an very good linux distro for NAS applications? (It does not have to be free)

But an NAS would probably be a lot more comfortable...

 

No matter how we decide, a drive like the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 4TB in Raid 5 is most likely to be our goto for storage space.

If they are to slow I will just add a SSD as a cache.

 

Again a wall of text sorry about that ^^

[Chaftalie]

Is ther a way to delete an post I cannot find a delete button

[LinusOnLine]

It is pretty much impossible to answer. To say for sure you would need to analyze data usage. How critical is the data, how much redundancy do you need and so on. Is there even enough users to be worth doing an analyze like that?

[Mikensan]

17 hours ago, Chaftalie said:

Sorry for the "wall" of text

 

Yeah our network is 1 Gbit (could easily upgraded to 10 if neede, all cables are Cat7, but there is no need for that)

The server run Windows Server small business 2011

Some say that this Operating System is very slow at data handling? or even generaly?

 

I already tried some things:

If I copy big text files (should be easy and fast to copy), about 1 to 2 GB of Data, it copies themat nearly the full speed of 1Gbit over the network but

the HDDs on the server are only saving at a rate of 20 to 30 Mbit that means it buffer the files in the ram (or Raid Controler ?) I did not investigated that any further.

  Reveal hidden contents

Nobody is working on the server at the moment most of the time it is like this 80 to 100% of usage and abou 0 to 30 MB/s write/read

 

That Server will probably get an SSD upgrade for the databases and the main System. And maybe it will get virtualised with Microsofts vSphere Software (with a big maybe).

 

We want to locate all files (except Database and such things) in an other machine, because if there happens anything bad on the software part of the Server half the company can't work anymore.

 

The Question remains Filesevrer or NAS?

I tend to the Fileserver with Linux as operation System, cause I like new things.

(Does someone know about an very good linux distro for NAS applications? (It does not have to be free)

But an NAS would probably be a lot more comfortable...

 

No matter how we decide, a drive like the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 4TB in Raid 5 is most likely to be our goto for storage space.

If they are to slow I will just add a SSD as a cache.

 

Again a wall of text sorry about that ^^

 

Text files can be compressed so your actual disk I/O will be low while the CPU or Raid Controller will be more active. The hardware and O/S shouldn't have any problems saturating the gigabit. Any delay in save times will either be because you have 1 disk failing - slowing down the other disks or their workstations have some issues.

 

I do suggest that databases have their own raid array in most cases, even if it's just 3 disks in a RAID that get backed up. So a dedicated server for SQL would be even better which sounds like it might be your goal.

 

Fileserver is synonymous with NAS - but I take it you mean a NAS appliance from a vendor like Synology / QNAP vs server hardware like a Dell R7x0. It really depends on your goals. With a file server you can add a HBA card and just add a storage shelf and forever expand the storage. Some higher end Synologies / QNAPs also allow you to expand but you're right back at the price point of server hardware.

 

If your only goal is faster save times for your engineers, there's 0 difference. If your goal is to be able to expand then you have some differences to consider.

 

To me, Synology and QNAP just offer a nicer GUI to manage the NAS and is more turnkey. Great for small to medium business depending on the business needs.

[Chaftalie]

The databases will remain on the old server and may get their own SDDs.

On 2/1/2019 at 2:05 PM, Mikensan said:

Fileserver is synonymous with NAS - but I take it you mean a NAS appliance from a vendor like Synology / QNAP vs server hardware like a Dell R7x0.

Yeah, that's exactly what i meant.

 

Our primary goal is faster save times for our engineers and seperating the server, which is worked on, and the data.

 

As it is right now I tend to an NAS because as you said they are more turnkey.

Are there any recommendations or even NAS systems to definitelly avoid?

 

 

[Mikensan]

16 hours ago, Chaftalie said:

The databases will remain on the old server and may get their own SDDs.

 

Yeah, that's exactly what i meant.

 

Our primary goal is faster save times for our engineers and seperating the server, which is worked on, and the data.

 

As it is right now I tend to an NAS because as you said they are more turnkey.

Are there any recommendations or even NAS systems to definitelly avoid?

 

 

Having never actually bought and used these NAS's I can't personally vouch for any. However the two vendors I've seen with the most praise has been Synology and QNAP. You may pay a premium over a brand such as Buffalo / Netgear / whatever, but their large communities and support are worth it imo.

 

The honest truth is a lot of them share hardware (SoC / embedded) with maybe the differences being the enclosure / powersupply / backplane / memory. Just like anything else, accept the risks for buying something you're unsure of.

 

As for the "big boys" like NetApp / HPE / Dell that also sell somewhat turnkey solutions for enterprise environments - those things might not have the prettiest GUI / interface, but they are tanks. Last place I left was using a NetApp from 2008 - only ever had the occasional dead disk but the 5 shelves and controller never had an issue.

 

However I would not pay too big of a premium - if for the difference in cost between the low end cheap vs brand name you could buy an entire second cheap one, it's a no brainer. 

 

My last thoughts are just budget for backups including offsite - CYA. Even if it's just a USB external drive off of craigslist lol.

[Chaftalie]

Today we had an meeting and we came to the conclusion that we will buy a second server, virtulize both of them.

The fileserver will run on one of the servers.

 

We got to this conclusion, because with a second server + virtulization we can run other services on the server like our warehouse management.

 

Thanks for your input @Mikensan

 

On 1/31/2019 at 10:26 PM, LinusOnLine said:

It is pretty much impossible to answer. To say for sure you would need to analyze data usage. How critical is the data, how much redundancy do you need and so on. Is there even enough users to be worth doing an analyze like that?

Without the Data the company can't run, so thats very critical.

But for that we have a working backupsystem on tape thats working great. Without the NAS we will stick to the tapes.

And yeah, their are definitelly too few users justifying an exact analyse.

[Mikensan]

On 2/4/2019 at 9:04 AM, Chaftalie said:

Today we had an meeting and we came to the conclusion that we will buy a second server, virtulize both of them.

The fileserver will run on one of the servers.

 

We got to this conclusion, because with a second server + virtulization we can run other services on the server like our warehouse management.

 

Thanks for your input @Mikensan

 

Without the Data the company can't run, so thats very critical.

But for that we have a working backupsystem on tape thats working great. Without the NAS we will stick to the tapes.

And yeah, their are definitelly too few users justifying an exact analyse.

Cool beans, I think ultimately this is the best route. As for backup, maybe look at data that maybe your company would need within minutes to survive while servers / data is restored. Then cost that out to a cloud provider such as google/microsoft/aws.

 

I'm not sure where your backup software is installed for your tape drive, but if it is the file server then if it dies you'll be down for an extended period of time. Also by identifying data that's a "must have" for daily operations, you get offsite storage that can be recovered quickly.

 

Food for thought anyhow, lets us (or at least me lol) know how it all goes.

[Chaftalie]

On 2/5/2019 at 3:52 PM, Mikensan said:

Cool beans, I think ultimately this is the best route. As for backup, maybe look at data that maybe your company would need within minutes to survive while servers / data is restored. Then cost that out to a cloud provider such as google/microsoft/aws.

 The Data sadly is not anonymized, so storing it in the claud an a google, microsoft, usw. server is not that easywith the DSGVO (Datenschutzgrundverordnung, new EU regulation "general data protection regulation") Sadly thats a lot of paperwork and saving customer files an servers that could be located out of the EU is not an option right now.

 

On 2/5/2019 at 3:52 PM, Mikensan said:

I'm not sure where your backup software is installed for your tape drive, but if it is the file server then if it dies you'll be down for an extended period of time. Also by identifying data that's a "must have" for daily operations, you get offsite storage that can be recovered quickly. 

At the moment the software (acronis) is only installed on the server, but that will change when we get the new server. (I think the new software is called veeam backup ore something like that)

The server will be virtualized, so if the server melts or something like that, we can start an image of the server on the old server or on another machine to get to the data if there is no othere way, but there must be a lot going wrong to get to this point.

 

On 2/5/2019 at 3:52 PM, Mikensan said:

Food for thought anyhow, lets us (or at least me lol) know how it all goes.

Sure, we should get the new server in about 2 to 4 weeks, I will update how it goes and what we do for added data safety if there is something new.