10gbe is it worth it for local NAS?

[theEmbark]

Hey guys,

I am in the middle of some IT upgrades to my recording studio. I am getting ready to implement a NAS into my system and I'm intrigued by the thought of 10gbe seeing test results as high as 550mb/ps.

My question is what kind of cost am I looking at to implement this? I would need a 10gbe card for my NAS but what else? A 10gbe router/switch that I would then anything connected to that 10gbe router with a 10gbe card would run at the 10gbe speed?

Also I am getting ready to set up master/slave between 3 machines using this music software would I be able to connect via 10gbe?

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[Solandri]

If you're going to put SSDs in your NAS, then you may want to do this.

If you're going to put HDDs in it, then about all you're going to do is raise the max sequential transfer speed from 125 MB/s to about 175 MB/s.

Other important things to consider are:

- Unless you're doing work which involves transferring large sequential files (e.g. copying movies back and forth over the network), the sequential speeds aren't what you're interested in. Most computing performance is bottlenecked by the 4k read/write speeds. Those are around 1 MB/s for HDDs, 30-70 MB/s for SSDs. 1 Gigabit network is plenty fast enough for that.

- MB/s is the inverse of wait time. In other words while 550 MB/s does mean the data gets transferred 5x faster than 110 MB/s, the time you save isn't as much as you'd expect. Imagine you need to transfer 1 GB.

62.5 MB/s (mid-grade NAS) = 16 sec
125 MB/s (high-end gigabit NAS) = 8 sec (8 sec saved)
250 MB/s (low-end SSD on 10Gb ethernet) = 4 sec (4 sec saved)
500 MB/s (high-end SSD on 10 Gb ethernet) = 2 sec (2 sec saved)

See how the amount of wait time reduction (seconds saved) drops in half every time you double the MB/s? The bigger MB/s gets, the smaller the reduction in wait time. So if most of the files you're transferring are 100 MB or smaller, all going from 125 MB/s to 550 MB/s would mean is the transfer finishes in a blink instead of a breath. It doesn't make any practical difference.

 

[bliq]

Hmmm, well a QNAP 4bay that's upgradeable to 10GbE is about $650 without drives... If you want a Synology, they've got an 8bay with 10GbE for $1400.

whether or not it's worth it depends on how much money you make from your recording studio- if you make a decent profit, and time really is money, then it probably isn't going to be hard to justify. If it's a hobby, then it's harder.

 

[theEmbark]

Thank you for the prompt and thorough response!

That really clears up the thoughts with my NAS as it only contains HDDs with Logic Pro X and audio files.

I still have a question regarding the machine that will be master/slave. This machine will operate with high end SSDs. The purpose of this machine is different than the NAS my main workstation is for audio engineering and has all my DAWs etc loaded but to save time I am using the slave to load my virtual instruments which will then be used in real time. Could and would using 10gbe here make more sense then just gigabit?

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[bliq]

Thank you for the prompt and thorough response!

That really clears up the thoughts with my NAS as it only contains HDDs with Logic Pro X and audio files.

I still have a question regarding the machine that will be master/slave. This machine will operate with high end SSDs. The purpose of this machine is different than the NAS my main workstation is for audio engineering and has all my DAWs etc loaded but to save time I am using the slave to load my virtual instruments which will then be used in real time. Could and would using 10gbe here make more sense then just gigabit?

Thanks,
Kevin

I'm not really understanding the master/slave model here. is the NAS considered the slave and your workstation considered the master? what is loading the virtual instruments and to where? I guess I'm not familiar enough with the use case to answer well without a little more detail. I'm also curious to understand what you want out of using a NAS? Are you looking to share files among several computers in your network? Are you looking for more capacity than you can fit into a tower? More fault tolerance? can you share a little more detail of what you're planning to set up?