Fastest NAS Solutions

[uninspired]

Hey all-

I read some of the posts below regarding NAS suggestions, but my situation is a little different. I work in a video department, and soon we will be shipping a couple NAS boxes back and forth (to India) for video encoding.

We purchased a pair of TeraStation Pro NAS 1.6 TB boxes, but found them to be dreadfully slow (We're talking 3 days or more to copy off 1TB of data). This is a bottleneck that we just can't accomodate, so we're looking for a faster solution.

Price is not a factor -- only speed and dimensions (it needs to be something we can ship, so a big rackmount system would be less than ideal). Anyone have any ideas? The ReadyNAS units seem to be the most highly recommended of the NAS products reviewed here at Tom's...

Thanks
-Chris

 

[zadak]

I like DAS because of the speed.
DS-1200 eSATA:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816133001
But it is 3U rackmount

 

[IVAces]

Your smaller NAS's are really just now becoming popular and are still working the bugs out of the system.

If you want true unbridles speed in a small package, you should consider using a couple of P4 computers and then use one of these esata cases.

http://www.cooldrives.com/dkreca1.html

Then use a PCI-Express x4, half-length, 8-port multi-lane internal (SFF-8087) Serial ATA II hardware RAID card with RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 50

9590SE-8MLKIT

All you have to do is to populate the external case with drives. Put the cards into the computers in each place then ship the case back and forth.

 

[uninspired]

I'm having a hard time getting the guy to whom I'm shipping the data to see alternate solutions as viable. He keeps insisting he needs an ethernet NAS setup, which severely limits my choices. I have a pair of MicroNet half-terabyte, firewire800 drives which are (obviously) dramatically faster, and I don't see why he can't just plug one of those in and share it on the network.

Nevertheless, what I'm looking for is the absolute fastest NAS box out there that I can suggest to this guy. I spent most of yesterday searching online reviews, and the best (read: fastest) unit I saw was the Infrant ReadyNAS NV. Anyone familiar with this one?

Reviews:

Tom’s Networking - http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2006/03/03/infrant_readynas_nv/
Trusted Reviews - http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?page=5842&head=0
AnandTech - http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2723&p=1


Performance comparison graphs:

http://images.tomshardware.com/2006/03/03/infrant_readynas_nv/infrant_readynas_nv_write_100m_compare_big.png
http://images.tomshardware.com/2006/03/03/infrant_readynas_nv/infrant_readynas_nv_write_1g_compare_big.png
http://images.tomshardware.com/2006/03/03/infrant_readynas_nv/infrant_readynas_nv_read_1g_compare_big.png

Thanks for the help
-uninspired

 

[IVAces]

:trophy:

/drool/

Thats the one I want. If you have to have a NAS, thats the one.

I haven't seen anything that compares in that relm.

Just my opinion but, this person you are talking to over there seems to have different goals in mind than you do.

 

[uninspired]

I think your opinion is dead-on, Aces. I've done a lot of this in the past with other video clients, but none quite as particular as this guy. I can fill the drives up incrementally, so I won't feel the big 78+ hour sting that he will when unloading it. He has around 40 computers set up for distributed video encoding, and I think he's afraid that an external firewire drive shared on the network will be even less effective than a slow NAS box.

Anyway, I guess the best you can do is make suggestions to your clients. Although they never seem to want the easy solutions.

Thanks again for the help
-uninspired

 

[IVAces]

LOL,
It Pays the same either way!

I'm not seeing the point of mailing this guy a nas and him filling it and then what?

 

[sdemerch]

What type of ethernet are you using? Fast (100 Mbit) will be slower than Firewire[/code]. To stick with ethernet you will need gigabit ethernet if you want better performance.

And truth be told, a Firewire enclosure attached to a PC becomes an NAS unit. I think you need talk some sense to your partner.

some thoughts,

Sean

 

[IVAces]

LOL some customers just can't be taught logic. They put their bliinders on based off someone's opinion bla bla bla and even though you might be the smartes IT consultant on the planet, your poinion doesn't count as much as this other person's.

Spend enough time in IT and you'll run across these people more times than you want to.

"You can lead a horse to water but you cant make the stupid animal drink!"

 

[uninspired]

Well, in typical business-world fashion, it only took a week to get back to where we started

I convinced him we needed something more flexible, so we're going to go with a few LaCie Biggest F800 (2TB) ( http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10600 ) drives. Even the USB 2.0 should be faster than those Buffalo TeraStations we started with (which are now doorstops).

Spend enough time in IT and you'll run across these people more times than you want to.

You said a mouthful

Have a great weekend, and thanks for all the input
-uninspired

 

[IVAces]

LOL you mind mailing me a door stop.

I could really use one.

 

[ericb]

uninspired- once you get these new LaCie devices, post what you are getting for throughput....I am very curious, Thanks!

 

[sdemerch]

Well, if the RAID controller is robust, you might gain some write performance for sustained writes on a RAID 5 solution (or lose some). A robust controller might also let you have a 4 drive RAID 0 which should increase performance.

Nonetheless, you need to ensure that you have no bottlenecks in your connection to the device. Get a Firewire 800 (1394b) PCI-Express X1 card if you do not already have a 1394b port.

Stepping back to your original data copy problem. I just looked at the terrastation specs and except for the 1394 it looks very similar. Did you use a crossover cable to connect directly for the copy? This would remove network interference issues from other systems. Do you have any hubs on your network? Hubs murder performance. Do you have a quality gigabit ethernet switch? Lots of things can be a performance bottleneck here. Do you have the latest ethernet drivers on your computer and on the NAS unit?

some more thoughts,

Sean