NAS hardware recommendations please

[m8rk]

We're in a critical position in that all 3 of our file servers are low on space, 2 seriously.

I want some advice on the options for expansion please.

We are a school with 950 users, including staff. At any one time, 60 staff and 100 students could be logged in. Currently we have one server for kids home folders, one for staff home folders and staff shares, and one shared file server.

I'm thinking we could add some kind of NAS to the mix. What would you recommend would be up to the job? We did think of a vanilla PC with some big SATA drives, but I'm worried it just isn't up to the job.

Setup is W2003 DC, all file servers W2K. Gbit fibre backbone, servers connected with Cat5 Gbit.

[m8rk]

Someone has recommended me a HP Proliant 320s Storage server with 3Tb and running Windows Storage server 2003 for £1500

For that price I presume it's with SATA drives.

Anyone have an opinion on these? How well it suits the application etc..

Ta!

[nmX.Memnoch]

At that price that has to be a very basic system. I can't imagine that includes the 3TB of drive space. I'm also quite positive it's SATA drives with some pretty low end specs for the CPU and RAM. How much are y'all willing to spend? A good solution will cost quite a bit more...

Since you have a good backbone and everything is GigE you could opt for a NAS and use iSCSI to allot some space to each server. Or you could go directly to an entry level SAN and use fiber channel. You say you have about 160 users online at any given moment and you appear to be using roaming profiles for all of your users (?)...but what other types of stuff are they doing while online? Are there any databases, internal websites...anything that may be really disk intensive?

[m8rk]

Yes, does seem too cheap for 3Tb of disk space.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF...9-12843976.html

Kids all have mandatory profiles, staff have local, changing them all to mandatory over the summer hopefully.

The kids home server also hosts a database for RMs Successmaker, the Staff server runs SIMS .net (Schools Information Management System) running on MSDE soon to be upgraded to SQL 2005 Express. The gerneral share server runs a few CD images and is the print server. The 2003 Domain Controller is seperate.

Someone has said we should be thinking about SAN for the long term. I know nothing of all the options you suggested nmX.Memnoch. Any information/ links gratefully received.

Thanks a lot!

[fizban2]

this first thing you need to do is spec out how much space you are going to need now, and what you want for the future (typically you would look at growth over x length of time but we don't have to get that specific right now )

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF...4-78164217.html

Price about £ 5185

this is more along the lines of the DL320 storage server line, the one you posted would just be a regular DL320 server that you would use as a DC or what not, the one i have listed here is setup more along the lines of a NAS device (WS2003 Storage Server) 1.5 TB (12 x 146g SAS drives)

this would be an ideal starter server to get you going with a NAS tye setup, you might end up buring through the space fast through depending on how much space you actually need.

to do an entry level SAN you are going to have to buy the storage device and a SAN swith at least to get started.

ISCSI

Internet SCSI (iSCSI) is a network protocol standard, officially ratified on 2003-02-11 by the Internet Engineering Task Force, that allows the use of the SCSI protocol over TCP/IP networks. iSCSI is a transport layer protocol in the SCSI-3 specifications framework. Other protocols in the transport layer include SCSI Parallel Interface (SPI), Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Fibre Channel.

Acceptance of iSCSI in corporate production environments has accelerated now that Gigabit Ethernet is becoming more common. Building iSCSI-based Storage Area Networks (SAN) has become a less costly but worthy alternative to creating Fibre Channel-based SANs.

SAN

In computing, a storage area network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices such as disk arrays, tape libraries and optical jukeboxes to servers in such a way that, to the operating system, the devices appear as locally attached devices

[m8rk]

Fantasic! Thanks fizban2

That spec looks very good - thanks for doing that.

I don't know our space requirements so I suppose that's the first thing to approach management with. I need to get someone to quote seriously I think and make the points clearly, so that management can see that this is really needed and not just me suggesting something they don't need.

Sorry to be a pain but could anyone point me to an entry level Storage Device and SAN switch? Would the above NAS serve as that device - I assume it wouldn't.

[nmX.Memnoch]

Since you have that many users, are using mandatory/roaming profiles and there's a database involved my recommendation would be to just start with an entry-level SAN and skip NAS/iSCSI all together. We have a Dell|EMC CX3-20 that absolutely screams. Our isn't used as a SAN in the strictest since though...it's used as the shared storage for a database cluster. Dell has an entry level CX3-10c that you'd probably want to look into. It can handle up to 18TB of storage spread over 60 drives. The base system includes the two storage processors, battery backup and a DAE (direct attached enclosure). Each DAE4P holds 15 Fiber Channel or SATA drives and you can add up to three more DAE4P's. The management utilities for them are fairly easy to use as well. Additionally, should you find out in the future that you need more space to grow you can replace just the storage processors without having to replace the entire system. So basically you can do an in-place upgrade to a CX3-20...and if I'm not mistaken that can even be done without taking the system offline. Oh...and it's 4Gb/s. Most entry-level SANs on the market right now are still 2Gb/s.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/produ...px/pvaul_cx3-10

You will need a fiber channel switch as well. For that I recommend the Brocade SilkWorm 200E. It provides up to 16 ports for connectivity. Since each storage processor has two FC connections I recommend getting two of the switches. If you purchase the load balancing addon it'll provide you with additional throughput while both switches are running, and it'll also provide you with a failover solution should one of the switches fail. Make sure you get dual-port host-bus adapters (HBA's) for each server as well (or two single-port adapters).

http://www.dell.com/content/products/produ...px/pvaul_ds16b4

Edited July 26, 2007 by nmX.Memnoch

[m8rk]

Thanks nmX.Memnoch for that thorough reply. I really appreciate your help guys as this is way over my head/ ahead of my experience so far by miles. I have made enquiries of 2nd user kit as that looks like it'll be expensive.

We have a problem in education in general I think that management isn't in place with experience in these matters, although surely they'll need to be in the not too distant future.

We do have 300 PCs/Laptops in total, 160 is an estimate of the average concurrent users, it could be more.

[fizban2]

I totally agree with you Memnoch,

my only worry is that for a school system, i don't think they will be willing to float the money required to get the SAN system. it would be the right was to go, but to expensive for them when there is a cheaper route that will do the job, do you know how much a cx3-10 would be? (roughly) i have never checked out the prices on them before.

[nmX.Memnoch]

It won't be cheap...I can tell you that. Well...I say that based on what our CX3-20 cost us (about $140K USD). But our system was loaded and that included onsite install with a Dell Engineer. Our system has two DAE's (the included one and an extra) with 30x146GB 15K RPM 4Gb/s FC drives. Basically what I'm saying is that we went all out with ours. I honestly can't even begin to guess how much the CX3-10c would cost...but I don't think it'd be near as much as we paid for ours.

I do know that Dell is very good about giving some pretty serious discounts to the education sector.

At any rate, I do think it would be the better option than purchasing a NAS device (and a good one won't be cheap either) and then realizing a year later that you should've gotten the SAN.

I have the same worries as fizban2 about them floating the cash. But what you have to do is figure out how to explain it to them that it's "spend all this now and be done with it or get a half-baked solution that we'll have to upgrade every year".

[fizban2]

"spend all this now and be done with it or get a half-baked solution that we'll have to upgrade every year".

Woooo Half-Baked Solution all the way!!!

M8rk

you best bet is to contact who ever your supplier is right now (HP, Dell what ever) then tell them what you are looking for.

things you will want to know before ou call them

1. how much Space you are currently using

2. what have been your growth in the last year or 2 (if you don't know, take what you have and double it just to be safe)

3. decide what solution you actually want (NAS or SAN) if the price is doable i still agree with Memmnoch on the basic SAN solution. EMC|Dell is a fantastic soution is you go that route, HP uses there own systems which i have heard aren't bad either.

good luck on the research! let us know how it goes!