Enterprise Storage System with 224TB - Build advice/evaluation -

[GringoDeLobo]

We are setting up a storage system for our university department. The storage system should have 200+TB and be used by up to 300 employees. It will be used for workstation backups and network storage. We want to use ZFS as the file system.

If anyone has experience with such a setup, could you evaluate if the following system seems feasible for the task? Any other helpful tips to give us?

1x Supermicro Barebone 6048R-E1CR36N
1x Intel CPU Xeon E5-2620 v3 2.4 GHz
1x Kingston DDR4 Memory ECC Reg. 32GB 4-Kit 2133MHz
1x Supermicro Adapter SSD-DM128-SMCMVN1, SATA DOM 128GB (To host the System)
1x APC USV SMX3000HV 3000VA/2700W
28x HGST Harddisk HUH721008AL5200 8 TB


Thank you in advance for any advice/suggestion!

 

[camieabz]

Given the costs and mission critical aspects of that system, I would e-mail Supermicro with your intended spec and get their input. They will have a better idea of HW requirements, based on expected user base and load.

 

[velocityg4]

We are setting up a storage system for our university department. The storage system should have 200+TB and be used by up to 300 employees. It will be used for workstation backups and network storage. We want to use ZFS as the file system.

If anyone has experience with such a setup, could you evaluate if the following system seems feasible for the task? Any other helpful tips to give us?

1x Supermicro Barebone 6048R-E1CR36N
1x Intel CPU Xeon E5-2620 v3 2.4 GHz
1x Kingston DDR4 Memory ECC Reg. 32GB 4-Kit 2133MHz
1x Supermicro Adapter SSD-DM128-SMCMVN1, SATA DOM 128GB (To host the System)
1x APC USV SMX3000HV 3000VA/2700W
28x HGST Harddisk HUH721008AL5200 8 TB


Thank you in advance for any advice/suggestion!

Have you considered enterprise SSD? I know they are expensive. But 300+ people backing up to HDD will kill performance. Just accessing files will be slow.

What about the network adapter? Will the server have a fiber optic connection to the main switch and each switch connected each other via a fiber optic uplinks?

If all SSD is just too expensive. You can also do a large PCIe SSD Cache of a few TB for frequently accessed files on the file server. To keep costs down and improve performance. I assume you'll setup the Backup and File Server as separate array on the same computer.

ZFS is a RAM hog. The rule of thumb is 1GB RAM per 1TB of actual Storage. Although this isn't linear. Many say 32GB is fine for 100TB. At 225TB you may want to consider at least 64GB.

Just some things to consider. Although costly. Cost per user is pretty low. Time spent by staff waiting for the server is lost productivity.

Also will you be using SMB, iSCSI or something else for your protocol?

 

[GringoDeLobo]

Thank you both for your input.

I will contact Supermicro directly. Didn't occur to me before, but makes a lot of sense.

Full SSDs are just not in the budget. I will keep the suggestion to use SSDs as cache in my mind for future upgrades though. Same goes for RAM. Previous calculations suggested 32GB should be enough, if only just. But that's with full utilization. Sub-divisions will only slowly move to the new system, so hopefully we have enough time to spot the need for an upgrade, if RAM becomes a bottleneck.

Most connections will use SMB or CIFS, we might set up iSCSI if someone has need for it.