10Tb NAS for SME ?
Discussion
We're a smallish company with about 20 of us, we need a NAS (our old one failed).
It has been suggested we should have 10Tb of storage, it can be housed in a data centre for which we've all got network access to a raft of servers etc.
What can anyone recommend/ go for ?
Someone suggested that we re-purpose a redundant / spare HP DL380 G9 server that we've got sitting in a rack at the data centre and fill it with disks in a suitable RAID configuration, but personally I'm not convinced it's the best use of the server.
It doesn't have to be blisteringly fast, Virtual Machines / VM images were stored on the old NAS for building servers from.
Thoughts / advice on a solution ?
Personally I'm thinking dedicated NAS, but wouldn't know what to look at.
Thanks
BS
It has been suggested we should have 10Tb of storage, it can be housed in a data centre for which we've all got network access to a raft of servers etc.
What can anyone recommend/ go for ?
Someone suggested that we re-purpose a redundant / spare HP DL380 G9 server that we've got sitting in a rack at the data centre and fill it with disks in a suitable RAID configuration, but personally I'm not convinced it's the best use of the server.
It doesn't have to be blisteringly fast, Virtual Machines / VM images were stored on the old NAS for building servers from.
Thoughts / advice on a solution ?
Personally I'm thinking dedicated NAS, but wouldn't know what to look at.
Thanks
BS
butchstewie said:
You haven't mentioned protocols or anything about the importance of the data but if I had a spare DL380 G9 lying around and it had the right amount of drives in it I'd struggle with why I'd need to go and buy a NAS if I was just doing normal SMB stuff.
It currently only has 3x 300Gb traditional drives installed currently as it was used for reference kit prior to retirement.Disk redundancy would be required in a RAID5 (I think it was RAID5 when used as ref kit)
Protocols - just SMB / sftp.
Thanks
BS
Edited by blackscooby on Thursday 2nd July 19:41
Well you could use those for a boot mirror and add 4 bulk drives in RAID10 and you've got the capacity so job done assuming a Windows or Linux OS and you've got the skillset to admin/look after it.
You could go spend money on a Synology or QNAP but for SMB/sftp I'm not convinced you end up massively better off and probably worse off as assuming the DL380 was sensibly specced the hardware is going to be superior to pretty much any entry level NAS.
I'm making a load of assumptions here that backups and admin is covered
You could go spend money on a Synology or QNAP but for SMB/sftp I'm not convinced you end up massively better off and probably worse off as assuming the DL380 was sensibly specced the hardware is going to be superior to pretty much any entry level NAS.
I'm making a load of assumptions here that backups and admin is covered
butchstewie said:
You haven't mentioned protocols or anything about the importance of the data but if I had a spare DL380 G9 lying around and it had the right amount of drives in it I'd struggle with why I'd need to go and buy a NAS if I was just doing normal SMB stuff.
It'll be cheaper to buy new because the DL380 will use a lot more power for the same performance. I have a ML390, it's a great bit of kit, but far more power than you're going to need for file management and far too inefficient.If you use Microsoft 365 etc have you considered whether you need your own disconnected storage at all? If you're paranoid you could setup another cloud or offline location to backup to as well, but you could also just run all your files through One Drive and Sharepoint and have it all integrated with how you work. Chances are you'll get better up-time this way and you don't have to think about maintenance and all that sort of stuff either.
butchstewie said:
Well you could use those for a boot mirror and add 4 bulk drives in RAID10 and you've got the capacity so job done assuming a Windows or Linux OS and you've got the skillset to admin/look after it.
You could go spend money on a Synology or QNAP but for SMB/sftp I'm not convinced you end up massively better off and probably worse off as assuming the DL380 was sensibly specced the hardware is going to be superior to pretty much any entry level NAS.
I'm making a load of assumptions here that backups and admin is covered
Would be Linux, would be monitored via a Zabbix server so would get email alerts on failure etc. I had dismissed using the DL for a NAS, but I could come back around 180 degrees !You could go spend money on a Synology or QNAP but for SMB/sftp I'm not convinced you end up massively better off and probably worse off as assuming the DL380 was sensibly specced the hardware is going to be superior to pretty much any entry level NAS.
I'm making a load of assumptions here that backups and admin is covered
paulrockliffe said:
It'll be cheaper to buy new because the DL380 will use a lot more power for the same performance. I have a ML390, it's a great bit of kit, but far more power than you're going to need for file management and far too inefficient.
If you use Microsoft 365 etc have you considered whether you need your own disconnected storage at all? If you're paranoid you could setup another cloud or offline location to backup to as well, but you could also just run all your files through One Drive and Sharepoint and have it all integrated with how you work. Chances are you'll get better up-time this way and you don't have to think about maintenance and all that sort of stuff either.
Local storage to the data centre makes more sense in our set up, as we'd be moving files between servers within the data centre / jump ISOs etc. Little file traffic would leave the data centre in reality.If you use Microsoft 365 etc have you considered whether you need your own disconnected storage at all? If you're paranoid you could setup another cloud or offline location to backup to as well, but you could also just run all your files through One Drive and Sharepoint and have it all integrated with how you work. Chances are you'll get better up-time this way and you don't have to think about maintenance and all that sort of stuff either.
paulrockliffe said:
It'll be cheaper to buy new because the DL380 will use a lot more power for the same performance. I have a ML390, it's a great bit of kit, but far more power than you're going to need for file management and far too inefficient.
If you use Microsoft 365 etc have you considered whether you need your own disconnected storage at all? If you're paranoid you could setup another cloud or offline location to backup to as well, but you could also just run all your files through One Drive and Sharepoint and have it all integrated with how you work. Chances are you'll get better up-time this way and you don't have to think about maintenance and all that sort of stuff either.
Needs to use a lot of power for that to be a factor I'd have thought?If you use Microsoft 365 etc have you considered whether you need your own disconnected storage at all? If you're paranoid you could setup another cloud or offline location to backup to as well, but you could also just run all your files through One Drive and Sharepoint and have it all integrated with how you work. Chances are you'll get better up-time this way and you don't have to think about maintenance and all that sort of stuff either.
Personally I'd sleep better with a decent specced DL380 than I would some cheap 1U Synology/QNAP with a single PSU and best endeavours support.
Pros and cons each way I suppose.
butchstewie said:
paulrockliffe said:
It'll be cheaper to buy new because the DL380 will use a lot more power for the same performance. I have a ML390, it's a great bit of kit, but far more power than you're going to need for file management and far too inefficient.
If you use Microsoft 365 etc have you considered whether you need your own disconnected storage at all? If you're paranoid you could setup another cloud or offline location to backup to as well, but you could also just run all your files through One Drive and Sharepoint and have it all integrated with how you work. Chances are you'll get better up-time this way and you don't have to think about maintenance and all that sort of stuff either.
Needs to use a lot of power for that to be a factor I'd have thought?If you use Microsoft 365 etc have you considered whether you need your own disconnected storage at all? If you're paranoid you could setup another cloud or offline location to backup to as well, but you could also just run all your files through One Drive and Sharepoint and have it all integrated with how you work. Chances are you'll get better up-time this way and you don't have to think about maintenance and all that sort of stuff either.
Personally I'd sleep better with a decent specced DL380 than I would some cheap 1U Synology/QNAP with a single PSU and best endeavours support.
Pros and cons each way I suppose.
Hardware wise we have a good stock of spares for the HPs, it's just the disks we don't have.
butchstewie said:
Needs to use a lot of power for that to be a factor I'd have thought?
Personally I'd sleep better with a decent specced DL380 than I would some cheap 1U Synology/QNAP with a single PSU and best endeavours support.
Pros and cons each way I suppose.
Yeah, I agree, I wouldn't recommend a generic consumer grade NAS over just about any enterprise-grade kit. But a more modern version of that DL380 might make sense because of the power-saving, I don't dare put a power meter on mine, but the twin CPUs are doing 50w each at idle. If I turn it off I can see when in the room temperature charts!Personally I'd sleep better with a decent specced DL380 than I would some cheap 1U Synology/QNAP with a single PSU and best endeavours support.
Pros and cons each way I suppose.
paulrockliffe said:
butchstewie said:
Needs to use a lot of power for that to be a factor I'd have thought?
Personally I'd sleep better with a decent specced DL380 than I would some cheap 1U Synology/QNAP with a single PSU and best endeavours support.
Pros and cons each way I suppose.
Yeah, I agree, I wouldn't recommend a generic consumer grade NAS over just about any enterprise-grade kit. But a more modern version of that DL380 might make sense because of the power-saving, I don't dare put a power meter on mine, but the twin CPUs are doing 50w each at idle. If I turn it off I can see when in the room temperature charts!Personally I'd sleep better with a decent specced DL380 than I would some cheap 1U Synology/QNAP with a single PSU and best endeavours support.
Pros and cons each way I suppose.
The thing I would check is the drives.
I haven't used HPE kit for years so I don't know how fussy (or not) they are about non-HPE drives assuming that's the direction you'd be going.
And there's a cost to caddies if you don't have them. But check and confirm the third party drive situation first.
I haven't used HPE kit for years so I don't know how fussy (or not) they are about non-HPE drives assuming that's the direction you'd be going.
And there's a cost to caddies if you don't have them. But check and confirm the third party drive situation first.
butchstewie said:
The thing I would check is the drives.
I haven't used HPE kit for years so I don't know how fussy (or not) they are about non-HPE drives assuming that's the direction you'd be going.
And there's a cost to caddies if you don't have them. But check and confirm the third party drive situation first.
Disks - yeah fair enough. HPE caddies - we have a stock of them. I haven't used HPE kit for years so I don't know how fussy (or not) they are about non-HPE drives assuming that's the direction you'd be going.
And there's a cost to caddies if you don't have them. But check and confirm the third party drive situation first.
Thanks
BS
butchstewie said:
The thing I would check is the drives.
I haven't used HPE kit for years so I don't know how fussy (or not) they are about non-HPE drives assuming that's the direction you'd be going.
And there's a cost to caddies if you don't have them. But check and confirm the third party drive situation first.
This one is probably not too bad for drives. Mine is a SFF server,, same generation I didn't know what that meant when I bought it but I guess that's why I could afford it. I used the SFF backplane to run 8 random SATA SSDs instead - just plug them in and put some window packers in between to support the weight of the drives - I should 3D print a proper 'caddy' for those!I haven't used HPE kit for years so I don't know how fussy (or not) they are about non-HPE drives assuming that's the direction you'd be going.
And there's a cost to caddies if you don't have them. But check and confirm the third party drive situation first.
I have random 3.5" hard drives running off both the internal SAS ports and a random LSI HBA card and it's not bothered at all. It has been fussy with things like not supporting bifurcation over PCI so I can't run a multiple drive NVME adaptor and it won't boot at all if I put a PCI Coral adaptor in it, but hard drives it's happy enough with whatever I've given it.
Obviously don't do it the way I've done it, but I'd be hopeful it'll be happy with whatever drives you have.
blackscooby said:
Disks - yeah fair enough. HPE caddies - we have a stock of them.
Thanks
BS
From a quick Google I'd perhaps do a bit of digging on Reddit just around drive models and firmware versions.Thanks
BS
You might know this so apologies if so but "enterprise" boxes like Proliants and PowerEdge's can do weird stuff if they detect non qualified hardware.
Had it myself with non-branded PCIe where the fans just run at full blast as a kind of "punishment beating" for daring not to buy OEM cards.
There's similar reports with some combos of fans and disks so I'd perhaps do a little bit of homework there.
You may or may not be concerned about power consumption, probably not.
If you already have it, I'd use it. What's the NAS actually for? Does it need to be super-fast or super-reliable? e.g. this may be just for storing images etc; whereas you have Sharepoint for working documents. If so, then shoving Proxmox (or whatever variant you run) on the server, then setting up a NAS instance to share some disks should be pretty easy. With RAID/backups etc.
Just using it as a bare-metal NAS would be massive overkill; but that's not necessarily a problem if it fits in with your other infrastructure and reduces support costs.
If you already have it, I'd use it. What's the NAS actually for? Does it need to be super-fast or super-reliable? e.g. this may be just for storing images etc; whereas you have Sharepoint for working documents. If so, then shoving Proxmox (or whatever variant you run) on the server, then setting up a NAS instance to share some disks should be pretty easy. With RAID/backups etc.
Just using it as a bare-metal NAS would be massive overkill; but that's not necessarily a problem if it fits in with your other infrastructure and reduces support costs.
biggiles said:
You may or may not be concerned about power consumption, probably not.
If you already have it, I'd use it. What's the NAS actually for? Does it need to be super-fast or super-reliable? e.g. this may be just for storing images etc; whereas you have Sharepoint for working documents. If so, then shoving Proxmox (or whatever variant you run) on the server, then setting up a NAS instance to share some disks should be pretty easy. With RAID/backups etc.
Just using it as a bare-metal NAS would be massive overkill; but that's not necessarily a problem if it fits in with your other infrastructure and reduces support costs.
Currently the OS is ESXI7, but more than likely we'll use Proxmox rather than bare-metal. I'll see if we can get a quote for some larger disks and see where we get to.If you already have it, I'd use it. What's the NAS actually for? Does it need to be super-fast or super-reliable? e.g. this may be just for storing images etc; whereas you have Sharepoint for working documents. If so, then shoving Proxmox (or whatever variant you run) on the server, then setting up a NAS instance to share some disks should be pretty easy. With RAID/backups etc.
Just using it as a bare-metal NAS would be massive overkill; but that's not necessarily a problem if it fits in with your other infrastructure and reduces support costs.
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