NAS vs. Windows Server

[Strikermed]

Hi guys,

 

I'm trying to find the differences and disadvantages and advantages of using an NAS vs a WIndows Server.

 

My primary use would be an office scenario with upwards to 6 computers accessing the storage at one time.  2 of these computers will be editing video using multible streams on each computer (1080p at the moment max 4:2:2 pro-res).  The reamining 4 are graphics and various accessing users to grab a file.

 

What I want to know is, what does Windows Server have over something like FreeNAS or another free NAS software?  I also want to consider using a version of Windows: Vista or Higher (most likely 7) and just have it host an abundance of drives in RAID.

 

I have components sitting around from an old build and I would just need to get a RAID card and possibly a new NIC (perhaps a 10gb/s).

 

Any thoughts will be appreciated. 

 

In terms of performane, will a server be able to support multiple streams of layered video efficiently?  I ask this due to my knowledge of a traditional HDD is made to read one file at a time, which makes me questions if this idea is even a solution.

 

Thanks for your thoughts!

 

 

[WPanayides]

I personally prefer Windows for a server, because you can always use low level components, and get away with a decent server, i know the FreeNAS servers require very very large amounts of RAM compared to say a Windows Server, plus you can host a plethora of other servers on that server then such as, MySQL, Apache, Mercury, IIS Servers and many others. 

 

If your a small company you might want to get a static IP and then have the freedom to setup a VPN and you can access your Server anywhere in the world, the benefits of Windows and just a NTFS file system for me make sense as my main rig and slaves all run Windows Natively... 

 

So there is my 2 cents

GLWSearch

[Eniqmatic]

You need to weigh up your options, but first have a look at your question:

 

"In terms of performance, will a server be able to support multiple streams of layered video efficiently?"

This is all going to be determined and bottle necked by your network speed and disk speed, OS isn't really going to come into it.

 

You should ask yourself, do you need more features of a Windows OS or do you want the safety and security of ZFS and FreeNAS? If you go FreeNAS, depending on the amount of drives you plan to use, you won't need a RAID card. What you will probably want to do regardless of which you decide to go for is add a couple of extra NIC's for link aggregation to ensure that everyone can access data when they need to. Or go 10 gigabit as you mentioned.

 

What you could do if you go for FreeNAS is to have a large data pool of your traditional disks, then get a couple of SSD's and create another pool for them to act as a fast access storage for immediate video editing projects so that the two editors can keep the current project on those disks at the time. However if you are using 1gigabit network, the slowest thing in your storage is still going to be the network, even on traditional HDD's.

[WPanayides]

I completely agree with Eniqmatic you almost need atleast 1x 10Gb Nic imo 1per user thats using it for pro-res (so 2x 10Gb Nic in this case), and i would personally go for something with a raid card in, like RAID 5, 6 or 10 if you have the HDD's and then yeah a High Speed Cache Disk in the Workstation would probally be what i would do so like a 250 or 512Gb SSD / PCIex M.2 card or something in each workstation to cache locally as apposed to across the network the whole time there by freeing up the 10 / 20Gbps of throughput for users to pre-cache on-demand as apposed to working directly on the NAS, might take 5 minutes to pull the file but then you have 0 Network delay once its on the local SSD / PCIex / m.2

[Eniqmatic]

If you go FreeNAS then don't go RAID card, if you go Windows then make sure it has a battery backup at least.

[Strikermed]

Some good informations Thank You!

 

 

If you go FreeNAS then don't go RAID card, if you go Windows then make sure it has a battery backup at least.

 

Do you mean that a RAID card wouldn't work using FreeNAS?  And are you aware if components, say from a machine with a quad core AM3 socket processor and DDR2 RAM work with FreeNAS?

 

 

I completely agree with Eniqmatic you almost need atleast 1x 10Gb Nic imo 1per user thats using it for pro-res (so 2x 10Gb Nic in this case), and i would personally go for something with a raid card in, like RAID 5, 6 or 10 if you have the HDD's and then yeah a High Speed Cache Disk in the Workstation would probally be what i would do so like a 250 or 512Gb SSD / PCIex M.2 card or something in each workstation to cache locally as apposed to across the network the whole time there by freeing up the 10 / 20Gbps of throughput for users to pre-cache on-demand as apposed to working directly on the NAS, might take 5 minutes to pull the file but then you have 0 Network delay once its on the local SSD / PCIex / m.2

 

I've never heard of a m.2 card.  Let me try to better understand what you are saying  Are you saying that you that you can either get an m.2 card or an SSD and set it up as a cache?  Also, can you explain how that would function?  Would you need to manually copy files to the cache then?  Or would it automaticcaly work in some way?

 

 

I personally prefer Windows for a server, because you can always use low level components, and get away with a decent server, i know the FreeNAS servers require very very large amounts of RAM compared to say a Windows Server, plus you can host a plethora of other servers on that server then such as, MySQL, Apache, Mercury, IIS Servers and many others. 

 

If your a small company you might want to get a static IP and then have the freedom to setup a VPN and you can access your Server anywhere in the world, the benefits of Windows and just a NTFS file system for me make sense as my main rig and slaves all run Windows Natively... 

 

So there is my 2 cents

GLWSearch

 

Currently we have a static IP set up with our Synology NAS, but that's where my bottleneck is.  They are configured for back ups rather than being a working drive.  They only have 1gbps NICs.  That's interesting abou tthe other servers running on a windows server.  I'll have to look into those as well.  I've heard that there can be some limitations with earlier versions of windows server, or if you use windows server 2012 with Windows 7 vs winows 8 on 10gbps networks.  Any thoughts?

 

Thanks all!

[scottyseng]

Some good informations Thank You!

 

Do you mean that a RAID card wouldn't work using FreeNAS?  And are you aware if components, say from a machine with a quad core AM3 socket processor and DDR2 RAM work with FreeNAS?

 

I've never heard of a m.2 card.  Let me try to better understand what you are saying  Are you saying that you that you can either get an m.2 card or an SSD and set it up as a cache?  Also, can you explain how that would function?  Would you need to manually copy files to the cache then?  Or would it automaticcaly work in some way?

 

Currently we have a static IP set up with our Synology NAS, but that's where my bottleneck is.  They are configured for back ups rather than being a working drive.  They only have 1gbps NICs.  That's interesting abou tthe other servers running on a windows server.  I'll have to look into those as well.  I've heard that there can be some limitations with earlier versions of windows server, or if you use windows server 2012 with Windows 7 vs winows 8 on 10gbps networks.  Any thoughts?

 

Thanks all!

 

FreeNAS uses ZFS, and ZFS prefers to be as close to the bare drive as possible (It wants it to be like you plugging a drive straight into your mobo, it wants full access to that drive). RAID just presents a large volume as a drive while the RAID software or hardware handles the SMART data / any corruption. ZFS wants to know the SMART / any data corruption. If you go the FreeNAS route, you just need a basic HBA card (Pretty much a card that turns PCI express into SAS / SATA ports).

 

On your client PCs, they need some way to get all of this high speed data without being a bottleneck, so you should use a SSD, M.2, or PCI express NVMe (Intel 750) drive as a scratch disk. You would then work with the files on the high speed scratch disk that you will access for your video editing on that project. If you have files that you aren't going to be using at that moment, you can move them to a slower hard drive on the client PC. If you are sending data back to the NAS, you should put it on the scratch disk to send back (To prevent read speed from being a bottleneck).

 

As others have stated, you will need a 10Gigabit card and a 10Gigabit switch. The limitation will be your networking if you use 1Gigabit cards. They top off at 125 MB/s at max load (You will lose some speed with interference in wiring, etc). 10 Gigabit opens that up to 1.25 GB/s, a lot more bandwidth for your machines.

 

If you go FreeNAS, you should use HBA cards. If you go Windows Server, get a good hardware raid card with a battery backup, but they usually start at $600. You should never run a RAID card without battery back up (Or Cache Vault if you buy LSI MegaRAID cards). A good RAID card would be the LSI MegaRAID 9361-8i (Make sure to get the Cache Vault module for it).

 

I would recommend Windows Server if you can afford it. If you're running mostly Windows PCs, it'll save you the headache of using samba to communicate to ZFS on FreeNAS (I myself haven't figured this out yet either). NTFS isn't as cool as ZFS, but on a hardware RAID card, it'll be pretty good. Make sure you have good cooling for the RAID card though. I really doubt you will kill a RAID card...they're meant to be pushed to the limit in a server 24/7. Most pro-consumer / consumer people can't really do that.

 

As for limitations, what you are thinking of is the connection limits (One connection = One user). Windows 7 and 8 Pro limit you to 10 connections at one time. Windows Server is unlimited. Windows Server can accept a higher limit of memory as well (Windows 8 Pro tops off at 512 GB RAM) while Windows Server (Datacenter / Standard) takes up to 4TB of RAM.

[Eniqmatic]

This is correct as above, FreeNAS goes against your instinct and wants to have direct access to each drive individually, not through a RAID card. This is how it works so well to protect data.

 

@scottyseng I found the shares easy to setup for Windows, are you using the latest version? What are you struggling with on the shares side?

[scottyseng]

This is correct as above, FreeNAS goes against your instinct and wants to have direct access to each drive individually, not through a RAID card. This is how it works so well to protect data.

 

@scottyseng I found the shares easy to setup for Windows, are you using the latest version? What are you struggling with on the shares side?

 

I guess I haven't figured out how to make Windows access FreeNAS. I've only been able to find tutorials on how to set up FreeNAS on the FreeNAS side for Windows. Admittedly I haven't looked into it much (I only play with it to learn about it on my free time). If you have a tutorial though, that would help.

[Eniqmatic]

I guess I haven't figured out how to make Windows access FreeNAS. I've only been able to find tutorials on how to set up FreeNAS on the FreeNAS side for Windows. Admittedly I haven't looked into it much (I only play with it to learn about it on my free time). If you have a tutorial though, that would help.

 

So you have all your CIFS setup? Is this on the latest version?

[scottyseng]

So you have all your CIFS setup? Is this on the latest version?

 

Yes, CIFS setup / latest FreeNAS version.

[Eniqmatic]

So I assume when you browse to the FreeNAS nothing shows up?

 

@scottyseng

[scottyseng]

So I assume when you browse to the FreeNAS nothing shows up?

 

@scottyseng

 

Yep. I think I just need to look around for better tutorials.

[Strikermed]

So those who know about windows servers.  When I search for an instalation CD and license what should I be looking for.  There are so many options on Newegg that it's hard to figure out what I need.

 

I'm curious what limitations I'm looking at in terms of networking.  What I would ideally like to do is access and edit content dirrectly from the server rather than transfering files to local PC drives and then working on them.  Will this be an issue with mutliple streams of video content playing simultaneiously?  How about the same with multiple users using it in the same way?

 

With my knowledge on how a regular spindle hard drive works, you can get one stream very efficiently, but when you start accessing more than one files you run into issues getting a steady stream.  Obviously this would be solved by a SSD, but I don't think I have the budget to get the storage capacity I need with SSD's.

[SP4C3]

The main benefit of a Windows Server is having a kind of known environment you work in. Also if you want to use more Windows specific features like Active Directory a Windows server could be handy.

 

But! you have licensing cost and are bound to Microsofts update, release and lifetime policies.

 

Using freenas or a similar system has advantages. No licence fees, huge communities and a huge softwarepool which is easy to use and install.

Using freenas or anything else which uses zfs as a backend storage is a great choice btw. ZFS offers a lot of features Windows filesystems don't(as far as I know) and is able to detect data corruption a normal raid cannot, due to checksums for each block stored on the disks. Disk failure is not a binary thing. Data on your disks may get corrupted while the disks reports no error and the datablock gets read perfectly fine....

[ErickS89]

For a file server both ReFS or ZFS are going to do the job,  either is fine as you alone are not going to fill the capacities of either file system.

BTRFS while new has been stable for me, and I'm aware it's a ticking time bomb!  Funtoo and BTRFS make a wonderful server! 

[SP4C3]

For a file server both ReFS or ZFS are going to do the job,  either is fine as you alone are not going to fill the capacities of either file system.

BTRFS while new has been stable for me, and I'm aware it's a ticking time bomb!  Funtoo and BTRFS make a wonderful server! 

After some btrfs "failures" i moved away from using it at its current state. Ok it happend more than one year ago, but I feel better by waiting. But they are making great progress.

[Jarsky]

Depends what you want to do.

 

If you just want to use it like a networked computer - then you don't need Windows Server.

Windows Server is for the Server features & roles, like Active Directory, Domains, DFS, iSCSI Targets, Software RAID, Storage Spaces, Hyper-V, Remote Desktop Services, etc.....

 

Windows Server Standard would be your main stream one, Windows Server Datacentre is designed for clustering and would not be suitable.

If you don't need all these advanced features from server roles though then you could just as easily use Windows 8.1 Pro.

 

Theres also Windows Server Essentials which is a stripped down version of Standard without Hyper-V (which you can replace with any other hypervisor like VMware Workstation)

 

 

So as far as Pricing

Windows 8.1 Pro if you dont need any actual server features/roles

Windows 2012 R2 Essentials if you don't require Hyper-V (which can mostly be replaced by vmWare or similar

Windows 2012 R2 Standard 2CPU if you want all the bells and whistles without the support for clustering which is for the Datacentre edition.

 

You can download trial versions from Microsoft to try out for 3 months I believe it is - before buying a licence. You could either install it to your server, or run it in a VM like Hyper-V Manager (Windows 8 Pro) or vmWare Workstation