Rackmount NAS Questions

[Fliggle_Slaps]

Hey Guys, this is Austin I'm planning to set up 2x identical NAS (1 as a backup of the other) and would prefer rack mountable servers in a small rack rather than towers/boxes on the floor. I can go into detail of what I want/plan to do for curiosity or other guidance but first I have a few questions (completely new to server type stuff).

 

My first move was to look at what is available for new servers, which is to say not second hand servers. From the few affordable ones I've seen, they tend to have no Ethernet and only mini-SAS out. So question 1, how would I connect the server to my network without Ethernet? From what I understand, SAS is a disk interface like SATA, but if that's all that's available for output is it also a LAN technology?

 

Looking at second hand servers like the Dell R710 that seem popular here, they all seem to support 2.5" drives which won't work for me. I also worry about buying second hand because since they're not recent, replacement parts will only be harder to find, especially in Australia's crappy used market.

 

Maybe I should ask a more general question. What factors should I be looking for in a rack mountable NAS server that will essentially be large storage connected to a basic 4-port Ethernet switch, then to the router?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Fliggle_Slaps said:

From the few affordable ones I've seen, they tend to have no Ethernet and only mini-SAS out. So question 1, how would I connect the server to my network without Ethernet? From what I understand, SAS is a disk interface like SATA, but if that's all that's available for output is it also a LAN technology?

Thats a DAS, you connect it to anouther server and its basically a external hdd. No network.

 

If you want used server, look for a dell c2100 or hp dl180g6. They both hold lots of 3.5 drives and can be found cheap

 

How many TB? How much power?

 

I wouldn't have a onsite backup nas, unless your runing HA. If you want a backup, id look at tape solutions.

[Fliggle_Slaps]

Just looked up DAS and although interesting, not quite what I'd like. Looking at something like this, would it be as simple as switching out the mini-SAS PCIe card with a gigabit NIC to turn it into a NAS?

 

I'll definitely look into those, though I read to avoid HP because you'll need paid licenses for whatever it is that needs licensing...

 

To start with, they'll have 4x10TB IronWolfs in RAID5 and more will be added when needed. 8-bay racks would be great but if there's a big enough price saving I'd go 6-bay.

Not quite sure what you mean by "How much power". I'd absolutely like less power consumption but it's not the deciding factor.

 

I don't have any critical data that needs absolute redundancy, but at the same time it's important enough to have 2 identical RAID5 servers. I'd be devastated if I lost the data but I wouldn't be losing a company or research etc.

[Fliggle_Slaps]

Another thing I'm noticing is that all rackmount servers have very low limits on drive size. Considering what I was going for (multiple 10TB drives) is my only option to custom build in some NAS chassis like this or this? Considering I don't know what causes the limitation, would this issue also be present on a NAS build from desktop parts?

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 hours ago, Fliggle_Slaps said:

ooking at something like this, would it be as simple as switching out the mini-SAS PCIe card with a gigabit NIC to turn it into a NAS?

no you can't, you need to put a sas card in anouther server to use it. Its a external hdd. Id also stay away from highpoint, there normally cheap stuff.

 

8 hours ago, Fliggle_Slaps said:

I don't have any critical data that needs absolute redundancy, but at the same time it's important enough to have 2 identical RAID5 servers. I'd be devastated if I lost the data but I wouldn't be losing a company or research etc.

do you need redundancy or backup?

 

Id look into backups with tape, no a second server.

1 hour ago, Fliggle_Slaps said:

Another thing I'm noticing is that all rackmount servers have very low limits on drive size.

some old raid cards have a limit of 2tb, there isnt any other limits.

 

id get something like this http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-FS12-TY-C2100-8-Core-2-13GHz-L5630-16GB-12x-HDD-TRAYS-/381744926594?hash=item58e1c54f82:g:ankAAOSw5cNYZCO7

 

you will need to put a different raid card, like a h700 to use drivers over 2tb.

 

also what os are you going to be running

[Fliggle_Slaps]

8 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

do you need redundancy or backup?

 

Id look into backups with tape, no a second server.

Absolutely. As mentioned, I'd be devastated if I lost the data. Over the years I've been buying a new external hard drive each time the current drive was filled and couldn't bring myself to spend double to have backups. I'm biting the bullet now and going all in. The two purposes are 1. to have all of the data in one easily accessible place and 2. to have a backup of it all.

My thoughts are that one RAID6 NAS and no backup is vulnerable to some sort of failure resulting in all data being lost, but two RAID5 NAS would mean there's a backup if that does happen and there's still the redundancy of a single disk failure, along with room for 1 more 10TB drive when I need it down the track.

 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding how tape backups work, but isn't it simply a copy of all of the data onto the tape? or perhaps it's only key data that's needed to rebuild after a failure? If it's the full data, it seems cheaper to have a second server considering the starting capacity of my NAS will be 30TB.

 

9 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Some old raid cards have a limit of 2tb, there isnt any other limits.

I'm confused because when I visit the manufacturer pages they tend to have a max capacity limit or single disk limit that isn't always 2tb. For example, I came across one stating max drive capacity of 4tb per disk and another for max 8tb per disk. Is this purely a RAID card limit then? Is getting around this limit in any server simply a matter of swapping out for a better RAID card?

 

9 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

id get something like this http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-FS12-TY-C2100-8-Core-2-13GHz-L5630-16GB-12x-HDD-TRAYS-/381744926594?hash=item58e1c54f82:g:ankAAOSw5cNYZCO7

I was looking at that exact link and other configurations by that seller. What scared me off was the 2TB disk limit that may not be an issue depending on your response from my question above.

9 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

also what os are you going to be running

I'm not sure yet, I haven't even started looking into any NAS OS. Considering how simple my needs are I'll look into some that are easy to use, probably starting with FreeNAS since it seems popular.

 

I appreciate the help so far by the way. Things are getting clearer and I'm learning a bunch.

[Electronics Wizardy]

59 minutes ago, Fliggle_Slaps said:

If it's the full data, it seems cheaper to have a second server considering the starting capacity of my NAS will be 30TB.

Tape will be cheaper.

Here is 30tb of lto5 tapes

https://www.amazon.com/Pack-Quantum-MR-L5MQN-01-Ultrium-5-Cartridge/dp/B008BNUAXK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1491706098&sr=8-2&keywords=lto5

 

 

You then need a drive to put them in. Id get something like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerVault-TL2000-Tape-Library-w-LTO5-LTO-5-1-5-3TB-Tape-Drive-w-Rails-/371893570825?hash=item5696958d09:g:~WYAAOSwXYtYyZ2B

 

The tapes will then autoload, and that unit can hold 24 tapes.

 

 

 

Tapes will last longer in time, use less power, and protect you from more thing. It would be harder to affect them with a randsomware than 2 synced servers, and is much easier to move offsite if you want a offsite backup.

 

Id also look at something like s3 to store your backups.

[RezidentSeagull]

If you're just looking for a good NAS+Backup combination, I have to second @Electronics Wizardy.

 

I've worked with tape drive backups before at one of my previous jobs, and while they are kind of a pain in the butt to backup and restore from (and they certainly don't win any speed rewards from me), they are super-cheap compared to disk drives and are super easy to cart around to an offsite-backup, such as a rented storage unit or something.

[Fliggle_Slaps]

I've actually already bought 8x10tb IronWolfs, it was my way of forcing myself to get this NAS started. What you linked above covers me for a full RAID5 NAS wi these drives (NAS = 70tb; Tape Backup = 72tb). What I need to think about now is do I want to build a full 8 drive NAS knowing I won't fill even half of it by 2018, stick with the original plan or do a 4 disk NAS, tape backup and then either one 4 disk NAS for backing up all my other stuff or two 2 disk NAS for that + media + games library.

 

Given that I already have the drives I think it's cheaper buying 2 NAS servers rather than 1 NAS, 1 Tape Library + 24 Tapes.

 

Also, living in Australia means online backup isn't feasible. I'm lucky enough to live in a place with a 100/40 fiber connection but being a renter means I may have to leave at the end of any year and into a place with our brand new top of the line Fiber to the Node technology that performs worse than ADSL2 and that every country in the world must be jealous of laughing at.

[Fliggle_Slaps]

2 minutes ago, RezidentSeagull said:

If you're just looking for a good NAS+Backup combination, I have to second @Electronics Wizardy.

You guys are absolutely selling me, even though I won't be doing any off-site backups and slow restoration is absolutely fine since it should be a rare situation. I'm just not sure it's the best way for me to go since I bought the drives already.

 

I think what I should do now is just build the full 8 disk NAS and do a tape backup based on my current space used, buying more tapes as my NAS is fills up more. I'm getting a little excited to be honest.

[RezidentSeagull]

1 minute ago, Fliggle_Slaps said:

You guys are absolutely selling me, even though I won't be doing any off-site backups and slow restoration is absolutely fine since it should be a rare situation. I'm just not sure it's the best way for me to go since I bought the drives already.

 

I think what I should do now is just build the full 8 disk NAS and do a tape backup based on my current space used, buying more tapes as my NAS is fills up more. I'm getting a little excited to be honest.

Glad you're excited! Computer projects like these can be so much fun, as long as you don't mind/enjoy the fiddling to get it all together! But yeah, tapes can be a great way to get economical long-term storage, especially for the stuff that you just need to have at some point, but that point ends up being years down the line (like backups of family photos, or critical documents and files).

 

Plus, you get to be the cool person who gets to show-off their sweet tape backup machine!

[Fliggle_Slaps]

So a few questions on the hardware side.

 

For picking the right HBA/RAID Controller what do you need to look for? First and foremost, I can't seem to find any that support 10tb drives, that's just not information any product pages specify. Can anyone point me towards cards that support 10tb drives?

 

How important is the cache size on HBA/RAID cards? Do you need a certain amount of MB in the cache per GB/TB in the RAID?

 

Same as above but for system RAM, I believe it's recommended to have 1gb of RAM per TB in the RAID?

 

Other than having a compatible HBA/RAID card with the drive capacity and SAS connectors, plus having enough RAM and power, is there anything else I need to consider? I feel like I'm close, but not close enough to make any decisions. Lack of information about RAID cards (specifically supported drive capacity) makes this difficult. My fault for getting 10tb drives before learning this stuff I guess...

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, Fliggle_Slaps said:

So a few questions on the hardware side.

 

For picking the right HBA/RAID Controller what do you need to look for? First and foremost, I can't seem to find any that support 10tb drives, that's just not information any product pages specify. Can anyone point me towards cards that support 10tb drives?

 

How important is the cache size on HBA/RAID cards? Do you need a certain amount of MB in the cache per GB/TB in the RAID?

 

Same as above but for system RAM, I believe it's recommended to have 1gb of RAM per TB in the RAID?

 

Other than having a compatible HBA/RAID card with the drive capacity and SAS connectors, plus having enough RAM and power, is there anything else I need to consider? I feel like I'm close, but not close enough to make any decisions. Lack of information about RAID cards (specifically supported drive capacity) makes this difficult. My fault for getting 10tb drives before learning this stuff I guess...

For hba any one that supports greater than 2tb will work fine. A dell h700 or h300 will work fine and Any lsi 9200 series will work fine. 

 

What network us this on. If this is a gigabit network don't worry about speeds at all. You will be network limited and all cases. 

 

That ram is only for zfs. I'd your running MD or hardware raid you can put all 30 tb on 256mb of ram just fine. But extra ram is used as a disk cache and buffer. But that won't matter on a gigabit network. 

 

[Fliggle_Slaps]

20 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

For hba any one that supports greater than 2tb will work fine.

I came across a couple of posts online from people who couldn't get 8tb drives going on a H700 so I got a little worried and confused. So long as I buy from someone with a decent refund policy I'll feel comfortable enough.

 

20 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What network us this on. If this is a gigabit network don't worry about speeds at all. You will be network limited and all cases. 

The NAS will go into a cheap $50 4-port gigabit switch I got a few years ago, which will go into my ISP provided router (I'll buy an aftermarket at some point...).

 

20 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

That ram is only for zfs. I'd your running MD or hardware raid you can put all 30 tb on 256mb of ram just fine. But extra ram is used as a disk cache and buffer. But that won't matter on a gigabit network. 

I've pretty much decided to go with FreeNAS with a RAID-Z2 config. I'm hoping to find a server with 16GB of RAM minimum but my options are basically nil. The eBay link you posted earlier looks great but the shipping to Australia is over $1,000, that's just not happening. All I can do is look around for something local (in Australia) but it's just not likely anything I'm hoping for will show up. It's gonna be quite some time before I make any more progress here. GAAAHH why is our used computer market so different...

 

PS. The reason my reply was so late is because I slept, then went to work, then read a bunch about HBAs, FreeNAS etc.