NAS Units

[Skinner]

I was actually thinking along those lines Edwin, of going with a 8 or bigger array with smaller disks, then add bigger drives as they fall in price.

I would gain speed as well due to more read/write heads.

As for the idea of buying enclosures and opening them, you'd be horrified to find your Western Digital enclosure has a freaking seagate in it, or your seagate has a wd scorpio blue. You'd thing a disk manufacturer would use their own brand hard drives, this isn't the case at all.

You could be buying a WD enclosure and get a seagate disk, or a Seagate and get a samsung disk. The only way to be sure what your getting is buy a retail pack disk.

This also explains why enclosures are cheaper

I like WD products but their black are noisy as hell, I can see putting 4+ of them and the unit vibrating off the cabinet , the green are awesome for backup solutions but the Red just seem have teething issues at the moment. Not unlike Hitatchi had when they earned the name Deathstar instead of Deskstar.

Anthony the drobo 5 bay is on CCL at less than £400, the higher end drobo are costly tho. Way more costly than my budget allows. I'd rather spend the money on better disks.

 

[Edwin]

It would cost £661.78 for a Drobo 5N plus 5x the Toshiba 2TB disks for 6TB of usable storage and 2 drive redundancy. Add about £50 if you go for WD Green instead. That would cover you for 18 months, by which time the 5TB or 6TB drives will be out and you should be able to get 4TB ones cheap and swap out the 2TB drives one at a time for 4TB drives, double your capacity.

Or for about £850 you could have the whole thing with 3TB disks for 9TB usable storage.

And once all of that is full, you could buy a second unit

I love this kind of "thought experiment" with computer parts... can you tell?

 

[Skinner]

Using UKdomains hp proliant 5 bay at £130,, you could drive the cost down even more to around £400, that's crazy cheap.

I think I'm set on the Synology products, but I am swaying on cheap 3tb drives with double redundancy.

 

[Edwin]

Another thought...

8 bay Drobo at £687.42
http://www.cclonline.com/product/76...-Area-Network-SAN-Array-for-Business/BAK2854/

Then add 3 4TB drives now for 4TB usable space, and add another 4TB drive every time you start to run out of room.

Ultimately, that will give you 24TB of usable space down the road, plus it preserves the 2x redundancy all the way through (1+2 spare, 2+2 spare, 3+2 spare etc). And you get to ride the decreasing price curve that the 4TB drives are sure to follow.

 

[Skinner]

Have a read into Synology Hybrid Raid Edwin, you can use different sized hard drives.

I'm thinking get the 8 bay synology (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/synology-ds1813plus-scalable-nas-for-smb-growing-demands), and start with 4 x 3tb for 6tb storage. Once 4tb drop in price, I can add 4tb into the remaining slots then move the 3tb out into the backup solution, which could end up the 5 bay hp proliant.

 

[Edwin]

Yeah, I saw that mentioned in an article about them.

Not that I'm planning to buy either, but for my non-existent money the 5 bay Drobo solution (9TB version) just sounds so much cheaper and simpler, at an approx. 20% drop in throughput as the compromise. But I'm not the customer here

Another thought...
8 bay Synology + 4 drives + 1 spare drive in the cupboard = £1,200 approx. (6TB usable space)
2x 5 bay Drobo units + 10 2TB drives + 1 spare drive in the cupboard = £1,400 approx (2x6TB usable space, across 2 devices - total 12TB usable space)

 

[woopwoop]

Thanks Skinner for the info. You've actually spurred me to be on the same mission as you (looks like I'm really going to have to sell a domain or two to fund this now!)

I've done so much research and learned about different NAS, RAID setups (still confused) and software/apps for the NAS, and uses...

My concern with employing RAID5 is the vulnerability of the array when it is critical/rebuilding, especially with 4Tb drives. If you want 12Tb of usable storage using 4Tb discs then I strongly suggest a 5 bay (e.g. 1513+) and to use RAID6. That way if a disc in the array dies and you're rebuilding you can still afford another disc failing without data loss. Naturally you'd also employ backup to USB connected external hard drives and also to Amazon Glacier. The 1513+ can take two DX513 5-drive expanders allowing for a total of 15 drives if required.

I learned about Amazon Glacier for the first time! Seems like a great solution for backing up the device off site.

If you are backing up ~8TB of data, can a system cope with attached USB devices also for backup? If the RAID is set up where 1 disk backs up another and Amazon Glacier is used, shouldn't that be enough without the USB drives?

Regarding the failure during rebuilding, I've read this in a bunch of places but aside from off site backups - how do you defend against it?

I was reading about Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS), should a system like this include one?

I did have this concern, along with the issue highlighted by the first review on the amazon WD Red link I posted (2 bad sectors on 2 diff drives potentially killing a rebuild)....

From someone new to this the bad reviews on the Reds have completely put me off them. I also found out that HGST is a subsidiary of WD...

A few other interesting nuggets I found was the surveillance station app on Synology is only good enough for 1 ip camera, after which you have to buy additional licenses at $50 each! Which is a shame really.

Also anyone looking to run Plex Media Server, will run into trouble if they don't buy a synology with the right processor. I think the 412+/1513+ are both good, but the 413/414 don't work with Plex at the moment.

My WD MBL had issues streaming certain video formats to the Samsung Smart TV. I'm not sure if it's because of the TV or the WD MBL (which ran a version of Twonky) but I'd hope that running Plex on a 412+/1513+ would allow for most formats to be played on the TV - am I right in thinking that?

I've read about transcoding on the fly that is possible with certain Synologies, does that mean, for example, if I'm sending an AVI to the TV (and let's say the TV doesn't like AVIs) that the TV can convert and play it as an MP4 or some other TV-allowed format?

Regarding the RAID setup. If a NAS has 5 bays, can data for 3 or 4 of the drives be compressed and backed up on 1 or 2 of the drives? or is a 1 to 1 backup best? I'm a bit confused with RAID5 V RAID6 and what exactly double redundancy means.

 

[Skinner]

Raid isn't an easy subject to grasp, think of it along the lines of spready data. So you have say 4 disks, each disk is cut into 4 pieces. each disk carries a piece of the other 4, so if 1 disk dies, the other 3 disks will all the parts to rebuild the missing disk.

The bad sector issue I mentioned during rebuild, synology have build a strong defense against this in their software raid, and its only really an issue with hardware raid. I mentioned it due to being open minded to a degree on which NAS I use.

The main problem with Glacier and other cloud back ups is uk upload speeds are not great, so you end up leasing a line or posting the data, I personally uploaded 500gb by sending it to my web host, they plugged it into the server USB and transferred from my webserver to the cloud, otherwise can take weeks or months to upload. Especially on ADSL.

Double redundancy and local back ups are the main defense against rebuild errors. Double redundancy means you can lose 2 drives from your set, 9/10 you get 1 drive fail, and you just swap it out and rebuild. Its unlikely you'll get 2 but its possible. if you get a second fail with double redundancy you can still recover but with raid 5 a second fail would be catestrophic. This is where a USB back up comes in.

HGST will still have their own in house people, and it will just be a parent company, gotta remember back in the day before IBM came in HGST created a deathstar their hard drive technology was THE WORST, I'm talking 123-reg kinda bad but they came back and now pretty much own the market. Hitachi drives out perform WD, Seagate and everyone else.

I'm still backing Hitachi as my top choice

I use WD all the time, its only really the REDs which have problems, I use scorp blue/black in laptops (as backups) and caviar green and black in desktops for storage, but green is too slow for NAS and Black are noisy as hell, they sound like the arms smashing into the casing heh.

Don't rule WD out too soon, just give them time to fix the Red issue.

I run plex off a DS211+ which doesn't have the ability to transcode, however plex on my Samsung 6500 series TV plays everything AVI, MKV etc, so it doesn't really need to. The transcoding is more with DLNA and webserver streaming. My samsung tv's could never see the dlna so never tried it.

I wouldn't buy the 413/414, its all about the 412+ or higher.

You could run multiple raid arrays yes, however lots of data can't be compressed, so you'd just end up with essential Raid 0+1, i.e. a Raid 0 array mirrored onto another Raid 0 to create a type of Raid 1.

I think I covered all your questions there.

 

[Edwin]

The WD Black is noisy because by default it parks the heads every few seconds to save power ("clunk") but then Windows will inevitably wake the drive straight up again with some bit of housekeeping or other ("click"). There's a solution to get rid of the sound which I applied to the two Black drives in my PC, but I did it about 18 months ago so I forget exactly what I did. Certainly they used to be super-noisy and now they're silent (and I've built the machine myself from components picked for their quietness, so it's not that some other sound is drowning the hard drive noise out)

 

[Edwin]

The WD Black is noisy because by default it parks the heads every few seconds to save power ("clunk") but then Windows will inevitably wake the drive straight up again with some bit of housekeeping or other ("click"). There's a solution to get rid of the sound which I applied to the two Black drives in my PC, but I did it about 18 months ago so I forget exactly what I did. Certainly they used to be super-noisy and now they're silent (and I've built the machine myself from components picked for their quietness, so it's not that some other sound is drowning the hard drive noise out)

Added: I did a bit of hunting and I think this is what I used.
http://support.wd.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en

Note the HUGE number of disclaimers, which I think you should take seriously, especially if you're going to start tinkering with drives containing "live" data.

 

[Skinner]

The hard drive noise is the least of my issues, in my workstation the 3 x GTX 680s and in my laptop the 2 x GTX 580s produce soooo much fan noise, then the extreme x960 i7 processors (overclocked to buggery) require massive cooling too, both my laptop and desktop sound like aircraft taking off heh.

 

[Edwin]

Interesting thread about why most WD drives are (deliberately) unsuitable for RAID systems
http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/602903.aspx

 

[Skinner]

that's the app many people are using to convert their WD Green's into WD Reds, switching the error control on/off.

Lots of NAS units like Synology use software raid, which is fine with or without the error control. So the remapping of bad sectors won't kill your raid array.

 

[Edwin]

that's the app many people are using to convert their WD Green's into WD Reds, switching the error control on/off.

Lots of NAS units like Synology use software raid, which is fine with or without the error control. So the remapping of bad sectors won't kill your raid array.

If you see the thread I linked to above, apparently WD have caught onto this and their newer consumer drives don't allow TLER to be activated any more (used to be possible until they "fixed" it)

 

[mdrussell]

Raid isn't an easy subject to grasp, think of it along the lines of spready data. So you have say 4 disks, each disk is cut into 4 pieces. each disk carries a piece of the other 4, so if 1 disk dies, the other 3 disks will all the parts to rebuild the missing disk.

The bad sector issue I mentioned during rebuild, synology have build a strong defense against this in their software raid, and its only really an issue with hardware raid. I mentioned it due to being open minded to a degree on which NAS I use.

The main problem with Glacier and other cloud back ups is uk upload speeds are not great, so you end up leasing a line or posting the data, I personally uploaded 500gb by sending it to my web host, they plugged it into the server USB and transferred from my webserver to the cloud, otherwise can take weeks or months to upload. Especially on ADSL.

Double redundancy and local back ups are the main defense against rebuild errors. Double redundancy means you can lose 2 drives from your set, 9/10 you get 1 drive fail, and you just swap it out and rebuild. Its unlikely you'll get 2 but its possible. if you get a second fail with double redundancy you can still recover but with raid 5 a second fail would be catestrophic. This is where a USB back up comes in.

HGST will still have their own in house people, and it will just be a parent company, gotta remember back in the day before IBM came in HGST created a deathstar their hard drive technology was THE WORST, I'm talking 123-reg kinda bad but they came back and now pretty much own the market. Hitachi drives out perform WD, Seagate and everyone else.

I'm still backing Hitachi as my top choice

I use WD all the time, its only really the REDs which have problems, I use scorp blue/black in laptops (as backups) and caviar green and black in desktops for storage, but green is too slow for NAS and Black are noisy as hell, they sound like the arms smashing into the casing heh.

Don't rule WD out too soon, just give them time to fix the Red issue.

I run plex off a DS211+ which doesn't have the ability to transcode, however plex on my Samsung 6500 series TV plays everything AVI, MKV etc, so it doesn't really need to. The transcoding is more with DLNA and webserver streaming. My samsung tv's could never see the dlna so never tried it.

I wouldn't buy the 413/414, its all about the 412+ or higher.

You could run multiple raid arrays yes, however lots of data can't be compressed, so you'd just end up with essential Raid 0+1, i.e. a Raid 0 array mirrored onto another Raid 0 to create a type of Raid 1.

I think I covered all your questions there.

FYI we run 60% WD and 40% Seagate in our servers. A few thousand drives in total. There's almost nothing in it between the failure rate in the enterprise drives. I use WD RE4s at home and would recommend anyone doing RAID in any type of NAS environment to spend a little more and buy a drive designed for continuous usage in RAID. Worth it for peace of mind.

 

[Skinner]

Ordinarily I'm 100% with you, Ultrastars are my choice, but moving to an 8 Bay unit with lesser disks (probably Deskstars) but more tolerance is a likely and longer term option I'm not sure I can justify 2 disk tolerance on ultrastars tho

FYI we run 60% WD and 40% Seagate in our servers. A few thousand drives in total. There's almost nothing in it between the failure rate in the enterprise drives. I use WD RE4s at home and would recommend anyone doing RAID in any type of NAS environment to spend a little more and buy a drive designed for continuous usage in RAID. Worth it for peace of mind.

 

[woopwoop]

Does the spin speed of these disks matter 5400 v 7200 or is the bottleneck elsewhere?

 

[Edwin]

Does the spin speed of these disks matter 5400 v 7200 or is the bottleneck elsewhere?

I would guess the bottleneck would be the network.

 

[woopwoop]

I would guess the bottleneck would be the network.

I just read this on another site:

5400rpm is the smart choice when you are storing large files, for example when using the HDD to store backups, movies, pictures, archives; etc.

If, however, you will be using the HDD to act as system drive, running applications from it that care about latency instead of throughput, then you should pick 7200rpm HDDs or even better; SSDs.

Not sure if that's accurate.

I was very close to buying this today but the only store I can do a pick up from is closed until 10am tomorrow, great store but they're closed on Saturdays! I think I'm going to buy the 1513+ tomorrow and at least 2 x 4tb Deskstars or maybe the deal on the set of 5 seagates...

The package below with tax is $1540 (£940)
Synology 15TB (5 x 3TB) DS1513+ 5-Bay NAS Server Kit with Drives
The 5 x 3TB drives are Seagate Barracuda (I know you're not fond of Seagate Skinner).

The 1513+ on it's own is $790 (£480) + tax
Synology DS1513+ DiskStation 5-Bay NAS Server

And the HGST Deskstars 4gb are $210 each (£129) + tax, they were $199 5 minutes ago! (3tb's are
HGST 4TB Deskstar 3.5" SATA III Internal Desktop Hard Drive

So getting the 1513+ with 5 x 4tb Deskstars would be ~$1835 (£1125)

I just saw these for preorder:
HGST 3TB/7200 Deskstar NAS Internal HD 3.5" 64MB $159

Too many decisions with Deskstar Nas (preorder only), Deskstar Coolspin (discontinued at B&H Photo), Ultrastar... drive options

The ram upgrade is $55 (£34) + tax which takes the ram to 4gb:
Synology - 2GB DDR3 RAM Module for Synology Servers

What do you think is the best setup? Risk it with the Barracudas or figure out the best Deskstars... possibly waiting for the Deskstar NAS that are preorder only?

@Skinner I'm not sure if this is significantly cheaper than UK prices but if so let me know if I can save you £ by ordering and shipping... just have to be careful of warranties, power cable and risk of customs tax! (unless you know anyone traveling back to the UK soon)

 

[Skinner]

The main difference with 5900rpm vs 7200rpm vs 10,000rpm vs 15,000rpm is speed, access speed and throughput.

If you plan on transcoding video and such the 5900 will be a bottleneck, if you plan on using it purely as a storage medium then 5900 won't be a problem. To get the best out of a Synology which photo's, videos, cctv etc you'd be better with the 7200rpm without a doubt.

In my dell poweredge I have a pair of 10,000 rpm scsi cheetahs (R1) and they are blazing fast, I can tell when I'm accessing the wd greens and the system drives. Gotta be 10 yrs old, the system runs 24/7/365, perfect example of how great seagate used to be

I used to love seagate, cheetahs, velociraptors was the mutts but after a total of 6 disk failures and a nas death, I assume much like West Digi now, and Hitachi before them they are having issues.

I personally would buy the Deskstar or Deskstar NAS drives, the DS211 ((I think) has a pair of the 2tb versions of he hitachi nas drives, the other has ultrastars. I forget which way around it is.