I've been researching NAS options for an office environment comprised
of about 15 users and a mix of desktop and server operating systems.
So far, I've looked at the following:

-Dell, IBM and HP offerings  (an "appliance" solution based on a 64-bit
CPU, 2GB RAM, and Windows Storage Server 2003 R2)
-Snap Appliance SnapServer 520 -
http://www.snapappliance.com/Products/520.shtml
-Thecus N5200 - http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=1&pid=8
-Celeros ezNAS - http://www.celeros.com/products_eznas.html
-Intel SS4000e -
http://www.intel.com/design/servers...000-E/index.htm


I am looking for something that will give me about 1.5TB of useable
storage after RAID config. I'd prefer that it has dual power supplies,
and it must have dual GB ethernet. We run a mixed network with a
variety of linux servers and workstations, Windows XP desktops, and
Windows 2000/NT Servers, with about 15 users.

The primary purpose of the NAS is Three-fold:
1.) act as intermediate "backup" storage for servers and desktops on
the LAN - the tape backup system would then pull from the NAS and not
from individual desktops or servers.  It also allows us to recover
files from disk rather than tape if there is an issue with an
accidental deletion (99% of all backup requests. :-)
2.) act as overflow and/or primary storage for some development systems
- the development server has run out of space and it would require
removing and replacing existing drives with larger disks, putting the
entire system at risk.
3.) Act as a centralized file store/share for corporate information,
files, proposals, etc.

Whatever we get has to be able to have "shares" (or LUNS if we go
iSCSI) allocated that allow both Windows and Linux clients to access
the space.  It has to be visible within a SAMBA-domained network to our
Window's clients.

I'd prefer SAS or SCSI to SATAII but both push the solution out of my
price range unless I look at getting a WSS300R2 server (they were all
quoted with 6x300GB  SAS drives).  We've had 3 SATA failures in the
last year, so my solution (if we choose a SATA option) is to make sure
we have extra spares on hand and a device that supports hot-swapping
drives...

The cheapest of the above solutions is definitely the THECUS system,
with the Celeros next and Snap Appliance and the WinSS2003 solutions on
par for price.

I lost interest in the Intel box when I read a review that indicated it
had increasingly slower performance on large file transfers from
windows clients.

My question is, has anyone had any experience with the above mentioned
products, good or bad, that you would be willing to share? What would
you recommend?  I looked at Network Appliance and unfortunately, it's
out of my price range.  The entire server, including disks has to come
in under $7000.  Has anyone implemented a Windows Storage Server 2003
R2 solution in a mixed network? How did it perform serving up NFS
shares? (snap appliance claims they are twice as fast. Does anyone have
any evidence to that effect?)

Should I stick with a purely NAS solution or go iSCSI? (with iSCSI I'd
have to install drivers on all the systems that needed to access the
storage server, correct? Unless I install the drivers on one Linux
server and have it act as a file server out to the network... but then
what is the impact on performance in that scenario?)

Any and all advice, commentary, warnings, and suggestions are welcome...

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Natalie wrote:

...

> Any and all advice, commentary, warnings, and suggestions are welcome...

Well, in that case...

I'd suggest looking at ZFS on x86-64 Solaris if I were confident that
ZFS was ready for prime time (I don't know that it isn't, but I don't
know that it is, either:  perhaps someone else here is better acquainted
with it):  among other things, it would give you convenient flexibility
in trading off space between the normal uses you've described and the ad
hoc need to supplement development-system space.

The price is certainly right (free software on an industry-standard
platform that doesn't require RAID hardware to achieve reasonable RAID
performance - at least for reasonable RAID-1 performance:  their
parity-RAID implementation seems, to put it charitably, sub-optimal) and
the data integrity-checking features are really suave (assuming that
you're using ECC RAM and quality components and assembly to minimize any
danger of data corruption while it's in main memory, ZFS covers the data
the rest of the time).

But it is new software, with the risk which that implies.

- bill

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

> Any and all advice, commentary, warnings, and suggestions are welcome...

Have you looked at StoreVault S500 a NetApp company starts at $5k for 1TB .

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Natalie wrote:
> I've been researching NAS options for an office environment comprised
> of about 15 users and a mix of desktop and server operating systems.
> So far, I've looked at the following:
>
> -Dell, IBM and HP offerings  (an "appliance" solution based on a 64-bit
> CPU, 2GB RAM, and Windows Storage Server 2003 R2)
> -Snap Appliance SnapServer 520 -
> http://www.snapappliance.com/Products/520.shtml
> -Thecus N5200 - http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=1&pid=8
> -Celeros ezNAS - http://www.celeros.com/products_eznas.html
> -Intel SS4000e -
> http://www.intel.com/design/servers...000-E/index.htm
>
> I am looking for something that will give me about 1.5TB of useable
> storage after RAID config. I'd prefer that it has dual power supplies,
> and it must have dual GB ethernet. We run a mixed network with a
> variety of linux servers and workstations, Windows XP desktops, and
> Windows 2000/NT Servers, with about 15 users.
>
> The primary purpose of the NAS is Three-fold:
> 1.) act as intermediate "backup" storage for servers and desktops on
> the LAN - the tape backup system would then pull from the NAS and not
> from individual desktops or servers.  It also allows us to recover
> files from disk rather than tape if there is an issue with an
> accidental deletion (99% of all backup requests. :-)
> 2.) act as overflow and/or primary storage for some development systems
> - the development server has run out of space and it would require
> removing and replacing existing drives with larger disks, putting the
> entire system at risk.
> 3.) Act as a centralized file store/share for corporate information,
> files, proposals, etc.

If you can eliminate the dual GigE connections and settle for one, then
a cheap Buffalo Terastation might do the job.  We're going to throw
some of them out in to our smaller offices as backup devices (most
definitely not primary or overflow file store).  They're cheap enough
that we can have a spare lying around here to overnight ship to an
office if one does die.  With 4 500GB drives in them, we'll get 1.5TB
usable in a RAID-5 config.

http://www.buffalotech.com/products...ryid=27


At about $2k, they're under half the price of anything we could buy
from HP.  We'll experiment and see how it works out.

Your requirements currently combine file storage with backup storage.
Use one of these cheap things to back up your desktops and then you can
spend more money on a better solution for your centralized flie store.

../Ed

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

mo wrote:[vbcol=seagreen] 
>
> Have you looked at StoreVault S500 a NetApp company starts at $5k for 1TB .[/vbcol
]

Yes, I looked at it. The problem is that they don't sell the StoreVault
outside of the US.  I'm in Canada.  :-(

-Natalie

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]