Building 50-100TB NAS/RAID Backup Server for Genomic Lab

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

jonobk

New Member
Feb 19, 2011
18
10
3
Winnipeg
Sounds like a number of lower cost commercial solutions are at the top of the responses....
Synology
IX Systems
QNAP
Nexenta

Personally, I use FreeNAS on my own hardware. However, that's for my home as a hobby. If other people relied on it for their living I'd go commercial.

For the off-site backup side of things you might want to checkout BackBlaze.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ari2asem

csp-guy

Active Member
Jun 26, 2019
372
153
43
Hungary, Budapest
I would buy ixsystems Truenas XL+ solution, it is out of box.

10GBE, 8x14TB sata disk, plus something with PLP for ZIL + UPS.

I would leave 2 disk for parity.

Net capacity: 84TB.

Snapshot, deduplication possible to another site.

This is ths smallest footprint / noise ratio.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ari2asem

MaverickZ

New Member
Feb 2, 2024
1
0
1
Hello all!

I am researching storage options for 50-100TB of usable storage space for a genomic lab. Essentially, I am trying to get an understanding of best practices and cost to build such a server. Right now, I am in the early stages of investigating solutions, so I can understand the direction we need to focus on.

Note: I initially made a post on LinusTechTips and then discovered this community and its articles. Thought it would be beneficial to post here.

Key Considerations/Details:
1. The server will be used as a backup for compressed and encrypted genomic data. It's main purpose will be backing up files, which individually can be quite large (250-500GB). Generally speaking, this isn't something that will be accessed frequently and certainly nothing that we will be running computationally demanding programs on (e.g. no video-editing 4K movies). It simply needs to transfer large files in a reasonable amount of time.

2. Data redundancy is very important as the data is quite valuable. We don't want a RAID setup where rebuilding could take weeks. Additionally, this server won't be the only back-up (Currently planning to also have an off-site cloud backup solution).

3. Ability to scale. I was asked to investigate the cost/typical-solutions for 50-100TB. For our current needs, I suspect 25TB is adequate. So being able to create a server for 25TB and then scale it to 100TB with little notice/effort would be a huge plus.

4. Noise and form-factor. This will be held in a lab environment. I know typical server-racks can sound like mini-jet engines. I am also a bit concerned about the form-factor of a server. That being said, I am open to all suggestions and realize a normal server may be most cost effective.

5. We may also use this server to make daily backup copies of user's home directories on the cluster (e.g rsync). Additionally, I am intrigued at the possibility of having the backup server also act as a git-server. This may make latency concerns more important.


Again, looking for the general information so I can make more informed inquiries in the future.
Hello,
We are a research team having the same problem you have mentioned in your post. We are currently using another University's Cluster to store 200TB of our sample data. Would be great if you could discuss the solution you finally came up with.
Thank you.