Topic: Interesting storage solution (Read 7986 times)

BernardLanguillier · « **on:** June 18, 2006, 10:58:42 pm »

Dear all,

Those, like myself, always looking for faster/more reliable/(cheaper) storage solutions might be interested in this very promising product:

http://www.sansdigital.com/MR5S1.htm

Cheap is probably not the right word, but at 1800 US$ it is not completely un-affordable. This is of course the price without drives...

Regards,
Bernard

Graeme Nattress · « **Reply #1 on:** June 19, 2006, 09:08:45 am »

I think looking at an e-sata based solution would be much more cost effective than SCSI these days. I'd check over at www.hdforindies.com and see what hard drive solutions Mike is coming up with these days. He's the master of the cheap / large / fast hard drive solution.

Graeme

Jack Flesher · « **Reply #2 on:** June 19, 2006, 10:05:32 am »

I'd suggest holding off for another month or so. Some new NAS systems are very close to market, 4-bay 2T SATA with giga-lan connectivity.

Secondly, with the price of drives what they are now, RAID 1 is becoming a far more logical solution for photographers than RAID 5 configurations; full RAID 1 can be had for around $2/gig. In fact, many enterprise solutions for critical data are going to RAID 1-1, or dual mirrored. $2/Gig is peanuts compared to the time/talent required to maintain Raid 5, as it is cheaper to replace and destroy a defective 2G station than repair it.

Graeme Nattress · « **Reply #3 on:** June 19, 2006, 10:10:18 am »

Time / Talent for RAID 5? None - it just sits there and does it's job. I'm using an Apple XRaid.

Graeme

gryffyn · « **Reply #4 on:** June 19, 2006, 02:11:07 pm »

Quote

I'd suggest holding off for another month or so. Some new NAS systems are very close to market, 4-bay 2T SATA with giga-lan connectivity.

Can you give us some more info on what vendors/timelines/prices these new NAS systems include?

I'm in the market as well....though I've been considering building an inexpensive NAS server using an inexpensive PC chassis, gigabit lan card, and a free prebundled NAS/RAID open source software package that is based on Linux.

Jack Flesher · « **Reply #5 on:** June 19, 2006, 04:54:50 pm »

Quote

Time / Talent for RAID 5? None - it just sits there and does it's job. I'm using an Apple XRaid.

Graeme
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=68532\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Graeme, yes it sits there and does its job -- until a drive in the array fails. Then it needs to be replaced and restored and that's where the time and talent comes into play. Granted, for most photographers this is not going to be a common event and moreover, most of us will probably have the technical savvy to replace and rebuild the RAID 5 drive. However RAID 1-1 gives us a virtual guarantee against a non-recoverable failure where RAID 5 does not.

Cheers,

Jack Flesher · « **Reply #6 on:** June 19, 2006, 04:56:40 pm »

Quote

Can you give us some more info on what vendors/timelines/prices these new NAS systems include?

I'm in the market as well....though I've been considering building an inexpensive NAS server using an inexpensive PC chassis, gigabit lan card, and a free prebundled NAS/RAID open source software package that is based on Linux.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=68565\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I'm not at liberty to share more yet -- stay tuned for details.

Graeme Nattress · « **Reply #7 on:** June 19, 2006, 05:01:11 pm »

I don't think it's terribly hard. If a drive goes down, you put a new one in and it knows to rebuild itself. It's not like you have to tell it to do anything. If any drive was acting up, it would email me right away to tell me.

But yes indeed, RAID1 is very good, and simple - it's just not so good for video which is where I am mostly.

Graeme

DarkPenguin · « **Reply #8 on:** June 19, 2006, 05:16:32 pm »

Quote

I'm not at liberty to share more yet -- stay tuned for details.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=68582\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Tease.

BernardLanguillier · « **Reply #9 on:** June 19, 2006, 06:22:52 pm »

Dear all,

A few comments:

1. the solution above isn't pure SCSI. The drives in the bay are SATA, only the connection of the bay to the PC is SCSI 320.

2. According to the specs in these RAID5 solutions, all you need to do in case of problem is to remove the drive from the bay and put a new one in. All the restore is done automatically for you.

To my eyes, RAID 5 still makes a lot of sense over RAID 1 if you shoot a lot.

Regards,
Bernard

DiaAzul · « **Reply #10 on:** June 19, 2006, 06:57:51 pm »

Quote

To my eyes, RAID 5 still makes a lot of sense over RAID 1 if you shoot a lot.

Regards,
Bernard
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=68590\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

And if you are really paranoid, Raid 6 - double parity - makes sense over Raid 5 (also supported by the product you link to plus several others).

This has now descended into the realms of commodity box plus commodity disks. There are still things to choose between them, but from a basic protected storage point of view, the differences are not so great. Point to bear in mind is that even if it say GigE on the box you are unlikely to saturate the ethernet link with the limited amount of processing power in the storage box and in your PC.

Jack Flesher · « **Reply #11 on:** June 20, 2006, 07:15:46 pm »

Quote

Tease.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=68585\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I've been called worse

gryffyn · « **Reply #12 on:** June 20, 2006, 08:33:38 pm »

Quote

This has now descended into the realms of commodity box plus commodity disks. There are still things to choose between them, but from a basic protected storage point of view, the differences are not so great. Point to bear in mind is that even if it say GigE on the box you are unlikely to saturate the ethernet link with the limited amount of processing power in the storage box and in your PC.

Exactly my thinking, which is why I am looking at using FreeNAS ( http://www.freenas.org/ ) which is a bundled open source version of Unix that includes support for:

Protocol:s CIFS (samba) , FTP, NFS, SSH, RSYNC and AFP
Hard drives: ATA/SATA, SCSI, USB and Firewire
Networks cards: All supported by FreeBSD 6 (including wireless card!)
Hardware RAID cards: All supported by FreeBSD 6
Software RAID 0, 1 and 5

I figure you can get a cheap clone PC for about $400 with a gigabit ethernet card. Then you buy some honking big disk to put in the RAID array.

Probably a lot cheaper than all the commercial NAS offerings I have seen that charge a huge premium for what is commodity hardware under the covers.

Unless Jack's hints presage some more reasonably priced NAS appliances in which case I might consider those. If he comes clean soon enough and the vendors actually can deliver within a few weeks of coming out of the closet of course. ;-)

Having been in the technology world all my career (decades!) might explain why I'm a bit sceptical about the product announcements.

And for me, having some technical chops, a DIY solution based on open source has a lot of attraction and benefits.

YMMV of course.

Author Topic: Interesting storage solution (Read 7986 times)

DarkPenguin