Netgear 526/8x and 626/8x Support SSD Cache

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msvirtualguy

msvirtualguy

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While I continue my research on finding the best 10Gb storage solution at home, and moving away from FreeNAS, i'm looking for the best NAS for Price/Peformance.

Since i'm purchasing a XS708e again, I decided to look into Netgear NAS solutions and these two popped up. However, I can't find a thing that states they support SSD cache.

Does anyone know if these particular models do? I'm leaning towards QNAP, but one of these would fit in my new custome "home rack" nicely, plus they support 10Gb-BaseT out of the box which is perfect to go along with the switch.

Any other suggestions outside of BYO FreeNAS or custom solution, which i'm quickly moving away from?
 
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Patrick

Patrick

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QNAP/ Synology I think you may really like. You did not try the 2U QNAP we had in the lab did you? @whitey and @markpower28 on here did I believe.
 
msvirtualguy

msvirtualguy

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@Patrick I did not, no. Is this something I would sign up for with your lab?

Rackmount is out, sticking with SFF and that little office rack I have so I figured the Netgear would work perfectly (replacing that older PX4-300d you see pictured below), also getting another XS708e as my main lab switch. The Ubiquiti 10Gb is going to remote office..just finalizing the supermicro rack now getting everything configured then moving it.


 
Patrick

Patrick

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@msvirtualguy I probably could have gotten you on but we sent the unit back. Oh well.

What are you using that storage for? Is it just backups for the Nutanix storage?

The trick with FreeNAS for 10G and 40G is that you have to use caching, lots of cache is good, and there are a few settings that need to be tweaked (e.g. the L2ARC fill rate which is set really low by default.) You are right it is not plug-and-play.
 
msvirtualguy

msvirtualguy

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Patrick said:
@msvirtualguy I probably could have gotten you on but we sent the unit back. Oh well.

What are you using that storage for? Is it just backups for the Nutanix storage?

The trick with FreeNAS for 10G and 40G is that you have to use caching, lots of cache is good, and there are a few settings that need to be tweaked (e.g. the L2ARC fill rate which is set really low by default.) You are right it is not plug-and-play.
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It will just be primarily file storage, PC Backups. No Nutanix Backups since I have three clusters now and the rack going offsite will be a 10TB Nutanix Cluster for DR/Backups via built-in replication.

As for FreeNAS, i'm just looking to simplify my entire stack but still get decent performance. That's why i'm consolidating from PC/Macbook to the Alienware 13 R3 and I minimized my lab footprint while still getting what I need out of it.
 
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Patrick

Patrick

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Ah ok. So one bit on the ZFS file storage, if you only have 1-2 users ZFS may be slow to cache stuff in L2ARC. Here is a decent thread on tunables:

HOWTO: Tuning L2ARC in ZFS

There was a large difference in performance of my home FreeNAS after a few weeks/ months of use. Files that I use often are in L2ARC and are much faster to serve now.
 
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