48Tb NAS - Your thoughts? Or a custom build of up to 72Tb?

[henri br]

Thecus N16000

We've been working on project which may require us to share a few hundreds educational contents/files in audio, video & book formats. We'd like to share these contents on eMule/bitTorrent similar apps, as well through HTTP/FTP. Also, as we've been in need of a network-attached storage solution I thought this one would be a solution for all these needs. The problem is that this NAS seems to be in "beta version": 1, 2, 3, 4.

The NAS requirements is something that can:

- Handle 15 local persons editing and messing these contents
- At the same time, share these contents on eMule/bitTorrent similar apps, as well through HTTP/FTP
- Support Sata III 3Tb HDDs like this Hitachi
- Support 10Gb Ethernet card
- Any 2U, 3U or up to 5U NAS would be fine
- Be someway future proof, and provide at least 48Tb of storage

This is not a mission critical system, and we are not worried on uptime.
It's more to local use, P2P sharing on a 200Mbit WAN...
The critical part of this project may be hosted somewhere "in the cloud".

What are your thoughts about this Thecus N16000 NAS?
Do you know some other that would fit on above requirements?
Any advice on these as I'm a newbie on this subject?


Thanks, and by the way it's nice to become part on Tom's Hardware!

 

[henri br]

Best answer selected by henri br.

 

[Daniel925]

I think if you are running a 10gbit network you should do pretty well. 10gigbit/8 1,250megabits of throughput. The old rule of thumb was something like 40% before networks start to degrade so really with 1,250x40% or 500megabytes per second for 10gigbit, 50megabytes for 1gigbit, and 5 megabytes for 100megbit network links. Divide that by 15 local persons and it starts to get pretty painful doing things over the slower networks.

There is some stuff now with SAS switches that might be faster for you if everyone is located near enough to each other. I have read you can get upto 2400mega bytes/second over sff-8088 cables.

 

[henri br]

It's interesting Daniel.

That Intel X520-T2 has 2 10Gb ports - 2.500MB of throughput - Or those 1GB following that rule.
In this case, probably, a bottle neck could be the disks'/array's throughput.

What makes me ponder at this moment is with regard to upgrades or possible problems. For hardware RAID, when we select a controller card, it seems we're "prisoner of it". If something goes wrong, we may need the very same model to keep the data - If that card or specific model is not available, you're in trouble. If something better shows up, maybe there's no way to go with it without backing up all the data and reconfigure the entire RAID, what means more expenses and/or some real work. What if you don't have a way to backup 48Tb+ for an upgrade/improvements?

Is it actually this way? How do you guys deal with these kinds of things?

 

[FireWire2]

It's interesting Daniel.

.....

Is it actually this way? How do you guys deal with these kinds of things?

That is where SAN enter there are certain SAN systems have redundant RAID controllers. But does it 100% fail proof, not really it's only minimize the down-time

 

[henri br]

Good to know it.
What about dealing with upgrades?
Get a better up-to-date RAID card?
How does it work?

It would not be that nice to buy e.g. an external enclosure and some dozens of disks, backup the data, upgrade the card and 'configure it', and re-transfer the data. Another 24 disks would cost at least $3K, 40 disks ~$5,3K; depending on the volume of data you have.

Also, a RAID controller you selected may not be available on the market in a few months or years; then you must to upgrade. This is the kind of hardware I'd be glad to upgrade if something much better appears.

What would to be a wise/best way to deal with it? I mean, an upgrade.