Recommendation for small business NAS or SAN?

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shooman332

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Jul 2, 2010
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I have been very frugal with my budget and and am looking for a way to not only backup my files but backup the virtual machines. I have 7 servers and 4 virtual workstations on two Dell R410 physical servers, We have a second location where the information is replicated to and has been used in the past as the primary location when power has gone out. I have roughly a terabyte of data along with VMs. We are using Microsoft Hyper-V on servers running MS Server 2012 core.
Do I need to have a SAN or or multiple NAS devices? I was looking at getting 2 R710 servers off of Ebay and Starwind for the storage software.
 
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Run StarWind Virtual SAN in a hyper-converged scenario (StarWind & Hyper-V share the same hardware). That would be cheapest (less physical hosts and corresponding network infrastructure like switches) and fastest (reads are local and never go over slow Ethernet and caches run on the same host) way to go. VMware does now with their Virtual SAN what StarWind has been selling for 3+ years so it's clearly an indication where to go and what to do :)

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Alabalcho

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SAN (Storage Area Network) is a (usually) separate network (not necessary Ethernet, more often fibre channel) where many servers access common storage pool. If you go with that, you are looking for a lot of expensive equipment just to get it running. SANs are also consideret storage solution, not backup solution.

If you go your custom route with StarWind and storage servers, make sure you dedicate a separate Ethernet network (another network card in your servers, plus fastest switch you can afford) just for that.

 
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shooman332

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I will have separate servers for the SAN, 2 Dell R710's with 4 port gb NICs. I have two separate gigabit switches as well. Earlier this year, I purchased some servers off of eBay and a company near me was going out of business and they were selling their gigabit switches for $200 each. I have a Comcast business line we use for our classroom network that is only used 3 days a week at most that I can use to help move the data. The SAN would be used for data storage and availablity.

I just don't know if this is the right solution. I would like to have the data available if something should go wrong at our main location. We have had a lot of challenges with our electiricity in the past.
Thanks!

 
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NISMO1968

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Jun 21, 2014
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Run StarWind Virtual SAN in a hyper-converged scenario (StarWind & Hyper-V share the same hardware). That would be cheapest (less physical hosts and corresponding network infrastructure like switches) and fastest (reads are local and never go over slow Ethernet and caches run on the same host) way to go. VMware does now with their Virtual SAN what StarWind has been selling for 3+ years so it's clearly an indication where to go and what to do :)


 
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NISMO1968

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Dedicated Etherent wiring for IP SAN is considered to be an "old school" (used by guys who basically clone FC configs with iSCSI). StarWind engineers recommend to use VLANs and QoS in a combination with MPIO (Round Robin setup) to give all possible physical paths to SAN. That would be fastest and the most reliable way to go.


 
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shooman332

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The reason I mention the Comcast line is that I still have to replicate the information for redundancy. My boss fears that one day our main location will go down. We have 2 to 4 major power outages each year. We have protection for our electrical panels and each server is connected to two separate UPS units.

BTW thank you for the information. I am still trying to figure out if the SAN is the best solution for me.
 
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