Question Fast Networking in small business 5 PC

[Gaganailawadi]

Hi Experts,

I am noob in networking setup, would like to take your advice, Thanks in advance.

I want to setup networking in 5 windows pc, in less budget

I want these pc to access 1 location where all the files are, without making it slow in anyway. do i have to buy a server for that? any alternative? as server is damn expensive. i also heard we can buy a big drive that have Ethernet port and can use it as a server? is it true any help? how? which?

The working hours for all the system is 10 hours a day.

can you suggest how that can be done? what i need to purchase? router , cat 7 cables etc. NETWORKING SPEED NEEDS TO BE FAST

 

[bill001g]

Since you do not have any detailed requirements it is hard to say. It depends what application you are running. Something like a database needs a far different system than a video storage archive.

In general what you want is called a NAS. I strongly suspect you need nothing fancy because you would clearly know your requirements if you needed something big. A box to share files between machines is easy all you need to do is determine how much disk space you need. There are many brands to chose from qnap tends to be the most popular and they make device from end consumer level all the way to large enterprise level devices.

Also since you don't have a clear requirement I would suspect a simple 8 port switch with gigabit ports to connect everything is fine. You can use cat5e cable with gigabit connections. Things like cat6a are used for 10g but provide no extra benifit for the extra cost when you use them on equipment that has 1g ports. Again if you had requirements for 10g your end machines would also have 10g ports and the strong disk systems in the pc needed to use them.

You need nothing special for the router it is purely based on how much internet traffic you have. All traffic between the machines and the nas will stay on the switch only traffic going to the internet will go to the router.

 

[Gaganailawadi]

Since you do not have any detailed requirements it is hard to say. It depends what application you are running. Something like a database needs a far different system than a video storage archive.

In general what you want is called a NAS. I strongly suspect you need nothing fancy because you would clearly know your requirements if you needed something big. A box to share files between machines is easy all you need to do is determine how much disk space you need. There are many brands to chose from qnap tends to be the most popular and they make device from end consumer level all the way to large enterprise level devices.

Also since you don't have a clear requirement I would suspect a simple 8 port switch with gigabit ports to connect everything is fine. You can use cat5e cable with gigabit connections. Things like cat6a are used for 10g but provide no extra benifit for the extra cost when you use them on equipment that has 1g ports. Again if you had requirements for 10g your end machines would also have 10g ports and the strong disk systems in the pc needed to use them.

You need nothing special for the router it is purely based on how much internet traffic you have. All traffic between the machines and the nas will stay on the switch only traffic going to the internet will go to the router.

Thanks for replying, The application we will be running is 3ds max ( animation purpose ) we have to access the storage device continuously it should have very good read speed. All the 5 system will be using the library ( textures and other stuff) from the storage.

Two of my system will be high end- Amd threadripper with x399 aurus xtreme

Can you tell what all i have to purchaser to make this working? speed is priority

Thank you

 

[PaulDesmond]

Could one of the PCs double up as a server. Just asking because I am looking into similar.

Just thought. You can set up a partition on a PC or another HDD for sharing and let the other 4 PCs share the same part ion or HDD. I have done this before.

Its called setting up a work group.

 

[hang-the-9]

Thanks for replying, The application we will be running is 3ds max ( animation purpose ) we have to access the storage device continuously it should have very good read speed. All the 5 system will be using the library ( textures and other stuff) from the storage.

Two of my system will be high end- Amd threadripper with x399 aurus xtreme

Can you tell what all i have to purchaser to make this working? speed is priority

Thank you

You would want a bit more than a basic NAS setup for this, although if you use SSD drives in the enclosure it should help with speeds a bit.

Normally companies that setup fast network storage pay thousands for the setup, including fiber back end connections and higher end disk storage. Which cost about as much or more than a low end server.

If you don't have a network setup and you don't have any network or IT people, you should get a consultant to plan this out for you and get things installed unless this is just for a hobby or you are not depending on the setup to make a living.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Could one of the PCs double up as a server. Just asking because I am looking into similar.

Just thought. You can set up a partition on a PC or another HDD for sharing and let the other 4 PCs share the same part ion or HDD. I have done this before.

Its called setting up a work group.

I would not recommend this for several reasons.

One it will bog down the machine. Net traffic is easily tie up a machine.

Two if your machine becomes infected, you risk losing all your data. (Although this is still possible with a NAS, it's less likely IF setup properly)

As this is a business critical hardware, a dedicated machine is recommended. I would recommend a NAS with at least Raid 5 (3 drives minumum) or two sets of Raid 0 + 1 (four drives). Redundant fail-over with a backup would be another recommendation. Rebuilding large drive arrays can take days. And goodness knows you want backups.

I would contact your local IT consulting agency and have them set you up. NAS's with backup is a heavy IT territory and it takes some skill. (Especially when you are dealing with Linux based backup devices) They contract out their services. After install their cost really is minimal. It can make the difference between you going out of business due to data loss and being up and operating in a few hours.

 

[failboat]

1Gbs networking is pretty fast. 10Gbs is getting less expensive. There is a mikrotik switch with 8 SFP+ ports <$400 + each pc nic/dac (used $45ea).

Striped sata3 SSD will hit really good speeds all around. intel optane hits insane random 4k r/w cost per TB will be 5x higher than sata3.

If you can find out if what % r/w are random/seq you can plan this out much better. random 4k reads are some of the most common and they are also the weakest of drive stats.

intel C3558 or C3758 are good platforms to look at. they use DDR4 ECC RDIMM and some boards have SFP+ and mini sas. you can add a nic to the pcie slot as well.