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Home > Archive > Data Storage > March 2006 > NAS Purchase options
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NAS Purchase options
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| MQCarpenter 2006-03-17, 8:51 pm |
| I am reviewing NAS options for our office and am using any input I can
find to qualify, so I appreciate any input from those that have
experience here.
This is a small office (75 Users), our needs are for 1TB or less on
RAID 5. We are a Windows 2003 AD shop and remote control is not
necessary.
I am looking at:
* HP ProLiant DL100 G2 Storage Server
* IOMEGA NAS 400R SERIES 1 TB
* ADAPTEC SNAPGUARD 4500 1TB
* Various Dell offerings
I see a few things that are better on one or the other, but nothing is
drop dead about anything. HP seems to have the best reputation from
what I see, but the Snap appliciances have great reviews from
Networkworld, PCWorld, and others. The low price and Linux part is a
bit daunting, as my CDW rep states that many issues have arisen from
working with AD. Anyone who has used any of these are has other
suggestions, I would appreciate it.
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| eyemole 2006-03-17, 8:51 pm |
| Check out NetAPP filers for NAS environment From Network Appliances.
Network Appliance NAS products are easy to work with , full of features
and reliable as well.
eyemole
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| MQCarpenter 2006-03-17, 8:51 pm |
| Isnt that priced in the $10K-20K range? For my small usage, that is out
of range
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| Andrei Ivanov 2006-03-17, 8:51 pm |
| MQCarpenter <mqcarpenter@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a small office (75 Users), our needs are for 1TB or less on
> RAID 5. We are a Windows 2003 AD shop and remote control is not
> necessary.
>
> I am looking at:
>
> * HP ProLiant DL100 G2 Storage Server
> * IOMEGA NAS 400R SERIES 1 TB
I've got one iOmega NAS P400u device. And I have no plans
to add anything like that in future. In all their propaganda
Iomega claims that one can manage their device with any web
browser. Well, any web browser will work fine, as long as
its name contains the "Internet Explorer" part in it (which
shouldn't be a problem in your case, I guess). This device
provides rather strange kind of RAID5 though. It will withstand
failure of any disk but the 1st one. Their manual says:
"The Iomega NA should boot using the second drive;
however, all data and user accounts will be lost."
And if your budget would allow it, I'd strongly recommend to
consider some filer model from Network Appliance.
--
andrei
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| Steve Cousins 2006-03-17, 8:51 pm |
| MQCarpenter wrote:
>Isnt that priced in the $10K-20K range? For my small usage, that is out
>of range
>
What price and performance are you looking for? We bought a Infrant
ReadyNAS unit and it works pretty well for what it is. It is low
performance (about 10MB/sec writes) compared to our other NAS systems
but it is also quite a bit cheaper. I don't know about AD issues but
I've had pretty good luck with their support so I bet they'd work out
anything that you came across.
Good luck,
Steve
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| MQCarpenter 2006-03-21, 2:55 am |
| I have heard of similar issues with Iomega as well. Doesn't it use SW
RAID? We are a Windows shop but use Firefox most of the time. Using IE
for management is not an issue though.
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| MQCarpenter 2006-03-21, 2:55 am |
| More like $5K. It may be too low. I do not want to buy garbage if it is
not going to do the job. I will look at Network App and see if anything
is in range.
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| Andrei Ivanov 2006-03-21, 2:55 am |
| MQCarpenter <mqcarpenter@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have heard of similar issues with Iomega as well. Doesn't it use SW
> RAID? We are a Windows shop but use Firefox most of the time. Using IE
> for management is not an issue though.
The P400u is based on FreeBSD, but you can't peek inside.
Web interface is the only thing available. I would guess
that they're doing RAID in software, but can't say for sure.
--
andrei
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| Steve Cousins 2006-03-21, 2:55 am |
| MQCarpenter wrote:
>More like $5K. It may be too low. I do not want to buy garbage if it is
>not going to do the job.
>
Well, I wouldn't exactly call it garbage. Like I said it does well for
what it is. It all depends on the performance you are expecting. What
performance are you expecting?
>I will look at Network App and see if anything
>is in range.
>
$5K is a tough price for this sort of thing. There are a number of low
end devices below $5K but if you want a higher end system you need to go
above $10K as far as I know. I'd be interested in knowing if there is a
NetApp in the $5K range.
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| I have 8 Dell NAS 715,725 and 745. They have been used now for 3-4
years in a mild production file server enviroment and I had few major
issues. The current 745 uses a SATA Raid card rather then OS Raid. It
is shipped with a mirrored boot virtual disk and a raid 5 vd. You can
loose any drive, but only one at a time. I have never lost two drives
on any of the NAS systems I have at the same time, it has been really
close though. I recommend them for what you are looking for, just make
sure to get 4hr response time.
NetApp will be way over priced for your needs, unless the data is
mission critical
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| MQCarpenter 2006-03-23, 8:54 pm |
| My understanding is that SATA based NAS is a bad idea due to failure
rates and performance in comparison. Does Dell offer a SCSI option? I
will look at my account.
I figured that NetApp would be out of reach right now. With about 25
users on our current file server, the performance rate is not high.
Anything would be a step up from our current set up.
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| Check out the Open-e NAS in a chip solution. I'd consider the
Enterprise Version, even though you consider yourself as a small shop,
their solutions start with products targeted at 2-5 users - so the
enterprise product is the best for your reqs. There are several
integrators who build systems with the Open-e NAS operating system and
that will save you a lot of time compared to integrating it yourself.
I'd recommend looking for a system with a 3Ware RAID card. The web
interface for Open-e allows you to pass through to the 3Ware
controller/management function if you need to.
In general, you are not going to find the perfect solution for $5K, but
I think you'll find that Open-e provides an awful lot for the money.
FWIW, if you want to go with SCSI, the software supports it, but I'm
not sure how many integrators are selling Open-e with SCSI due to the
higher costs for SCSI hardware (adapters, drives and cables).
Finally, if you like the thrills and spills of building systems and
your management team allows you to indulge yourself this way, then you
could build your own NAS system from a barebones system and use a
supported SCSI RAID card. IMHO, despite what bh1 says above (and I
don't doubt his testimony), the reliability of SATA is better than what
a lot of people think. People tend to forget that SCSI drives fail too.
However, if you are feeling squeamish, order a spare drive to have on
hand so you can replace any drives that might fail. A spare SATA drive
costs a LOT less than buying SCSI for this application.
I think building systems from scratch is fun, but I'm a bit of a
masochist this way and I don't have to answer to "the boss" because I
am the boss. That said, if I wasn't the boss I would probably spend
more of his/her money and buy a system from an integrator so I could
justify my time.
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