Help me find a NAS, 10gbps/SSDs

[Crush3r]

Hello,
I am tasked with upgrading the storage for our marketing department, they work with a lot of Adobe software and their files can become pretty big 10GB+
Currently they are working of a Synology NAS with 4x WD RED Pro 4TB in BTRFS, SHR-1, they are only using about 450GB now (most data is stored somewhere else).
Speeds on this aren't great at all.

In a couple months their department will move to another office location and probably grow an extra 3 employees.
As the current NAS also serves other purposes I can not move the NAS with them, therefor I am looking at something else.

My goal here is to get all of their desktops on 10 Gbit and have a NAS with 2x 10Gbit (LACP), desktop model.
I was thinking of setting it up like:

• 3x 1TB SSD in RAID 5 or 4x 1TB SSD in RAID10 - in EXT4
• 4x 10TB WD RED Pro's SHR1, BTRFS for archive and offsite backups from the other office

The model I was looking at was the Synology DS1821+, with 8GB extra RAM and the Dual SFP+ network card, this model leaves room for more drives in the future if needed.
For the SSDs I was looking at the Seagate IronWolf SSD 125 1TB or Samsung 860 PRO 1TB.

So basicly I am looking for a 2TB Share with very, very good speeds even when its hit by multiple users.

I'd like to hear some thoughts on this.

 

[gea]

Another option:
- use a professional server. I prefer Supermicro- Dell, HP or Lenovo is ok with 16-64 GB ECC RAM, 10G nic and 12G SAS adapter (LSI 3008 HBA) onboard, ex Enterprise-Optimized Storage Servers | Supermicro
- use enterprise class SSDs, not desktop SSDs, ex WD SS530 SAS
- use ZFS due the superiour data security, snaps y and caches. I prefer Solaris or a free Solaris fork like OmniOS, OmniOS Community Edition due the kernelbased SMB server and the easy setup (ZFS, SMB setup and updates simply works). Free-BSD based solutions are also ok.

 

[Crush3r]

Another option:
- use a professional server. I prefer Supermicro- Dell, HP or Lenovo is ok with 16-64 GB ECC RAM, 10G nic and 12G SAS adapter (LSI 3008 HBA) onboard, ex Enterprise-Optimized Storage Servers | Supermicro
- use enterprise class SSDs, not desktop SSDs, ex WD SS530 SAS
- use ZFS due the superiour data security, snaps y and caches. I prefer Solaris or a free Solaris fork like OmniOS, OmniOS Community Edition due the kernelbased SMB server and the easy setup (ZFS, SMB setup and updates simply works). Free-BSD based solutions are also ok.

I am not comfortable enough with ZFS and Linux/etc to support it in a production environment. I'm more aiming for a solution thats a bit more standardized. Licensing/cost/support wise i'd like to stick to some sort of NAS that we can get 5 year warranty on. Our IT partners are likely also not familiar with ZFS.

As for the drives, I dont expect we'll come anywhere close to the end of the SSDs RW limit in 5 years.

 

[BlueFox]

The above poster has a vested commercial interest in the things they mentioned, so, take that into consideration. They pitch it at every opportunity.

In regards to the Synology, don't forget that they have dual M.2 slots for SSDs, you could just run a large hard drive based volume (like the 4 x 10TB you mentioned) and have a pair of 2TB M.2 SSDs in RAID1 for caching, which will likely offer you similar performance and you wouldn't need a separate SSD volume. That would still leave you with 4 bays to expand. DS1621+ has identical hardware, just 2 fewer bays, so it's an option too.

 

[sth]

The ‘above poster’ didn’t even mention the product he has a commercial
Interest in. Supermicro hardware with Solaris or OmniOS are excellent suggestions and would be a solid foundation for most folks to build on.
I do not believe 4x10TB plus pair of cache disks will meet the performance requirements of this environment.

 

[Crush3r]

The ‘above poster’ didn’t even mention the product he has a commercial
Interest in. Supermicro hardware with Solaris or OmniOS are excellent suggestions and would be a solid foundation for most folks to build on.
I do not believe 4x10TB plus pair of cache disks will meet the performance requirements of this environment.

Hi, the SSDs arent for caching, I was thinking on making 2 volumes, SSD only and HDD only.

 

[Crush3r]

The above poster has a vested commercial interest in the things they mentioned, so, take that into consideration. They pitch it at every opportunity.

In regards to the Synology, don't forget that they have dual M.2 slots for SSDs, you could just run a large hard drive based volume (like the 4 x 10TB you mentioned) and have a pair of 2TB M.2 SSDs in RAID1 for caching, which will likely offer you similar performance and you wouldn't need a separate SSD volume. That would still leave you with 4 bays to expand. DS1621+ has identical hardware, just 2 fewer bays, so it's an option too.

I want to store our offsite Veeam backups on this too, would that not change the cache overnight and result in the marketings department data being uncached in the morning? I pretty much wanna be sure that their data is always fast. It will help them out a ton.

I would get the DS1821+ over the DS1621+, its basicly €80 for 2 more bays.

 

[BoredSysadmin]

I am not comfortable enough with ZFS and Linux/etc to support it in a production environment. I'm more aiming for a solution thats a bit more standardized. Licensing/cost/support wise i'd like to stick to some sort of NAS that we can get 5 year warranty on. Our IT partners are likely also not familiar with ZFS.

As for the drives, I dont expect we'll come anywhere close to the end of the SSDs RW limit in 5 years.

Since this is for prod environment, I'd recommend giving iXsystems a call and help them design you a production-ready and very well-supported system. The amount of Linux/Unix knowledge needed for running a Truenas system could be a much as zero.

I personally wouldn't put in prod ANY white box server, regardless of spec. Where iXsystems offers true 24/7 support, no Qnap/Synology does that.

 

[BlueFox]

I want to store our offsite Veeam backups on this too, would that not change the cache overnight and result in the marketings department data being uncached in the morning? I pretty much wanna be sure that their data is always fast. It will help them out a ton.

I would get the DS1821+ over the DS1621+, its basicly €80 for 2 more bays.

There's a setting specifically to prevent that which had sequential IO bypass the cache:

 

[sth]

How would that option help in this case? Are you suggesting backups are sequential I/O?

 

[BlueFox]

How would that option help in this case? Are you suggesting backups are sequential I/O?

It would prevent the Veeam backups from flushing the cache and negating the benefit that it offers. I am indeed indicating that backups are generally sequential IO (though not always depending on type). I have this exact setup (Veeam for backups + Synology with 2 x M.2 SSDs for caching) and it works as I've described. Even though my regular synthetic full backups are larger than my cache, it doesn't get purged:

 

[sth]

Veeam backups are usually handled through blocks to support incremental backups and deduplication etc, they are very unlikely to be 'serial' in nature. I suspect the reason your cache isn't being purged is for other reasons.

EDIT: My recommendation to the OP is that in relation to the costs associated with hiring three additional marketing folks, investing in some professional storage consultation from the likes of SmallTree, TrueNAS or Gea (the poster above who has a commercial interest in providing the ZFS tool 'Napp-it') would be a worthwhile investment.

 

[BlueFox]

Block tracking is performed client side last I checked and the vib file is written in a sequential manner to the backup target. Can easily watch it slowly grow in size during a backup itself. I'm fairly certain that Synology's software just looks for large files that are locked for extended periods of time. Either way, appears to work as advertised.

 

[Crush3r]

Since this is for prod environment, I'd recommend giving iXsystems a call and help them design you a production-ready and very well-supported system. The amount of Linux/Unix knowledge needed for running a Truenas system could be a much as zero.

I personally wouldn't put in prod ANY white box server, regardless of spec. Where iXsystems offers true 24/7 support, no Qnap/Synology does that.

I should have mentioned were from Europe, introducing American partners isnt something we would wanna do.
Our Synology support is covered with our standard IT partner contract.

However I will look more into ZFS/Truenas and other linux solutions for the future projects as alot of people are mentioning these sort of setups.
But at this moment I am more looking at ready-to-go NAS solutions.

 

[Crush3r]

Block tracking is performed client side last I checked and the vib file is written in a sequential manner to the backup target. Can easily watch it slowly grow in size during a backup itself. I'm fairly certain that Synology's software just looks for large files that are locked for extended periods of time. Either way, appears to work as advertised.

Caching might be a great idea then, I disqualified caching because of Veeam but without that being a factor the speed of M.2s could be really nice. Especially because they use a lot of the same data like product images etc. This way I also dont need to sacrifice 4 HDD slots for SSDs.

Which M.2 drives are you using?

 

[BoredSysadmin]

I should have mentioned were from Europe, introducing American partners isnt something we would wanna do.
Our Synology support is covered with our standard IT partner contract.

However I will look more into ZFS/Truenas and other linux solutions for the future projects as alot of people are mentioning these sort of setups.
But at this moment I am more looking at ready-to-go NAS solutions.

Funny, you fully trust half-assed support by Taiwanese (only a small step away from China), but having trust issues with a small American company?
Okaaay..

As mentioned above, Gea's Napp-IT is Germany-based, at the very least you should pick his brain.
All I am going to say again is this - It's your call, but I would NEVER get a critical production server/storage without 24/7 support, and Synology/QNAP isn't.

 

[Crush3r]

Funny, you fully trust half-assed support by Taiwanese (only a small step away from China), but having trust issues with a small American company?
Okaaay..


As mentioned above, Gea's Napp-IT is Germany-based, at the very least you should pick his brain.
All I am going to say again is this - It's your call, but I would NEVER get a critical production server/storage without 24/7 support, and Synology/QNAP isn't.

Our partner that supports these is a local company that has deployed hundreds of these and has handled every support case we've had.
However as this market has existed for quite some time I was looking for what the alternatives for Synology are nowadays.

As mentioned I will read more into ZFS/Truenas/etc based solutions for future projects, we got a few coming up.

For now I'll be going with Bluefox's recommendation, its not to costly and I can use Synology's backup feature to copy the data to our main office.
And if needed I can also run a simple VM on that box.