Direct Attached Storage Array required for Extreme Storage requirement

[shubhankar_venkatesh]

Hi.

I need an extremely large storage solutions for keeping my data. I have in excess of 10TB in almost 11 or 12 hard drive 7 internal and the rest external attached to my computer via USB. I need a storage solution in which a can put all these hard drives together.

I was considering about Dell PowerVault MD3200/MD3220 SAS Storage Arrays which can accomodate 12 hard drives of 3.5" with individual HDD of max 3 TB (7.2K RPM).

Please suggest any other storage arrays or otherwise which I can check out for my storage requirement. I need atleast 20-30 TB of storage space keeping future in mind.

 

[jsrudd]

I think you could do this using primarily your existing equipment.

Your board says that you have 8 SATA ports on the board. Get two PCI SATA cards and you'll have eight more.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815287006#top

Then the only problem is having space for all those drives. Get a full tower case which will have space for 8-10 drives and then get some 5.25 bay to 3.5 bay convertors. That way you can get up to 14 hard drive bays (leaving room for a DVD drive).

I think this will be much cheaper than going with a PowerVault, especially since you would have to buy SAS drives to fill it up.

 

[WyomingKnott]

I agree with jsrudd. The cheapest solution is to roll your own with a big case.

You could buy a few of these and a USB 3.0 controller: http://www.american-media.com/external_storage_raid.htm . I have no idea of what their track record is, but the devices are relatively inexpensive and USB 3.0. About $220 apiece: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816216003 .

I used to have a rackmount 8-drive system with Ultra320 SCSI (at the time I got it, that was the fastest interface). You can buy 16-drive rack systems, but you would be talking serious money.

Buy some larger drives and reduce your total number of drives?

Let me know if any of the ideas that I threw out grab your attention, and I'll say more. Or you could look up the 40 TB storage server our member firewire2 built himself. EDIT: Here it is.

 

[tokencode]

I've used the Del Powervault MD3200's extensively and they're a great piece of equipment. If you choose to build your own, keep in mind your RAID controller is going to matter more than anything. It all comes down to reliability in my opinion, going with consumer grade stuff and building your own solution will definitely be cheaper, but if this is critical data, I recommend going with a proven, supported solution such as the MD3200 you mentioned.

 

[shubhankar_venkatesh]

What is the cost of MD3200 Power Vault along with 12 SAS (2 TB or 3TB) hard drives ??
Can any one tell me any kind alternate solution like MD 3200 which can support multiple (more than 10 ) normal SATA 7200 or 5900 or 5400 RPM everyday use hard drive ??

 

[WyomingKnott]

You are talking a lot of money. The Power Vault will be a couple thousand dollars, even if you get one on Ebay. SAS drives can run $500 for 1 TB; you might want to stick with SATA drives. It will work with SATA drives also.

If you have a pile of money, buy a prebuilt enterprise-grade solution like that. Dell will sell you one, without drives, for only $6000: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=brct22y&cs=ussoho1&dgvcode=ss&c=US&l=EN&dgc=SS&cid=52103&lid=1342491&acd=12309948312782312

Or you could go to Ebay for only $4300: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-MD3200-Warranty-thru-1-12-15-2-300GB-SAS-15k-Dual-Ctrl-PowerVault-/150799194382?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item231c55190e

If you have to scrimp, you will want to either homebuild the whole thing or buy a more consumer-oriented DAS RAID device and get larger drives. The investment in larger individual drives will save you money in the long run: Instead of having to control 10 1 TB drives, you could use 4 3 TB drives. Or 4 of them, and use RAID5 to ensure a little data redundancy, but I'll bet you a donut that that would slow down your throughput.

So give us an idea of your budget, so we can make intelligent comments. I've made suggestions that run from about $1000 to about $9000. That's $1000 for a Venus device, four 3 TB SATA drives, and a USB 3.0 controller. And $9000 for the Dell device populated with 2 TB SAS drives.

 

[FireWire2]

How about a tower that allow you to expand up to 40x drives?

You can start out as 12bay and upgrade when you need it

http://www.datoptic.com/ec/scalable-forty-40-drive-raid-system.html


{edit - add)
But you need over 1000MB/sec transfer rate then you must use SAS configure. I would look at this

http://www.datoptic.com/ec/3u-scale-able-sixteen-16-sas-sata-6gb-s-raid-with-40gb-s-bandwidth-sas-6gb-controller-included.html

You dont have to spend an arm & leg to get what you need.
But if you know where to look - you can save lot of money and headache

 

[tokencode]

You might want to look at the older MD1000, it will take 15 3.5" drives. You can get a fully loaded MD1000 2TB drives (30TB RAW, I would recommend running it as a 26TB RAID6, maybe 24 RAID6+hotspare if you don't need the space) will run you ~$8k. You would then just need to purchase a SAS RAID controller.

If you find cheaper drives, the chasis itself is ~$2k.

 

[shubhankar_venkatesh]

Hey... Where is the link to fireweire2 Media server build that you were talking about ??

I agree with jsrudd. The cheapest solution is to roll your own with a big case.

You could buy a few of these and a USB 3.0 controller: http://www.american-media.com/external_storage_raid.htm . I have no idea of what their track record is, but the devices are relatively inexpensive and USB 3.0. About $220 apiece: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816216003 .

I used to have a rackmount 8-drive system with Ultra320 SCSI (at the time I got it, that was the fastest interface). You can buy 16-drive rack systems, but you would be talking serious money.

Buy some larger drives and reduce your total number of drives?

Let me know if any of the ideas that I threw out grab your attention, and I'll say more. Or you could look up the 40 TB storage server our member firewire2 built himself. EDIT: Here it is.

 

[shubhankar_venkatesh]

hey

@ Firewire 2 ... That was a brilliant piece of information that you gave. I checked out that Tower by Data Optic. But I am pretty sure that these are unavailable in India.
I needed to know that whether these storage Towers support SATA II (variable RPM) 3 GBps HDDs (different sizes and different RPMs working together) ??

 

[tokencode]

I checked out the links firewire sent, I only see 12 bays in the module, it seems you have to buy extra shelves to get to the 40 drive max. If this is the case, the MD1000 (15) drives for $2k is a better deal per drive than either of the 2 links. If I'm missing something and this thing takes 40 drives for under $2k I'll order a few myself.

 

[sk1939]

I checked out the links firewire sent, I only see 12 bays in the module, it seems you have to buy extra shelves to get to the 40 drive max. If this is the case, the MD1000 (15) drives for $2k is a better deal per drive than either of the 2 links. If I'm missing something and this thing takes 40 drives for under $2k I'll order a few myself.

This is probably the best deal you are going to find on them. I personally think it would be vastly cheaper just to buy a large, and nicer, case and a SAS RAID controller and still be out of less money than trying to buy a MD1000 (plus the cost savings on your energy bill).

 

[shubhankar_venkatesh]

hey dude

That was a brilliant piece of information that you gave. I checked out that Tower by Data Optic. But I am pretty sure that these are unavailable in India.
Can you tell me that whether these storage Towers support SATA II (variable RPM) 3 GBps HDDs (different sizes (500 GB 1 TB , 2 TB ) and different RPMs working together) ??

How about a tower that allow you to expand up to 40x drives?

You can start out as 12bay and upgrade when you need it

http://www.datoptic.com/scalable-forty-40-drive-raid-system.html


{edit - add)
But you need over 1000MB/sec transfer rate then you must use SAS configure. I would look at this

http://www.datoptic.com/3u-scale-able-sixteen-16-sas-sata-6gb-s-raid-with-40gb-s-bandwidth-sas-6gb-controller-included.html

You dont have to spend an arm & leg to get what you need.
What know where to look

 

[tokencode]

This is probably the best deal you are going to find on them. I personally think it would be vastly cheaper just to buy a large, and nicer, case and a SAS RAID controller and still be out of less money than trying to buy a MD1000 (plus the cost savings on your energy bill).

The energy being used is to power the drives, which would be identical regardless of the enclosure you would use, maybe the MD uses a little more for the power fans etc but thats needed when you run 15 drives that close together. Remeber all of those power and cooling requirements to have a relable enclusre need to be taken into consideration if you build your own as well. For $1100, the MD1000 is a great deal and you can add a second shelf for 30 drives off a single external SAS connector.

MD1000- $1100
PERC6 SAS RAID controller - $165

Total $1265


Just a 16port internal SAS controller costs around $800 whoch doesn't leave you much for powersupply, cooling etc and it's defintely not as reliable as an MD1000+PERC

 

[sk1939]

I don't see the MD1000 as being any more reliable than any other direct attached storage enclosure, or an internal card for that matter. A direct attached enclosure really should not be any more or less reliable than an internal arrangement, since it operates with effectively the same hardware and concept. Something like a PowerVault or EqualLogic is different.

 

[shubhankar_venkatesh]

Best answer selected by shubhankar_venkatesh.

 

[FireWire2]

I know this tower works with 4TB Hitachi drives - but you do need to TURN OFF (disable) the NCQ in the HDD
Matter of fact, green drive works just fine

 

[FireWire2]

hey dude

That was a brilliant piece of information that you gave. I checked out that Tower by Data Optic. But I am pretty sure that these are unavailable in India.
Can you tell me that whether these storage Towers support SATA II (variable RPM) 3 GBps HDDs (different sizes (500 GB 1 TB , 2 TB ) and different RPMs working together) ??

Sorry miss the post

Yes the tower is support SATAII Green and noe Green drives...

As rule of thumb all the raid member should be the same model or at least the same rpm.

Since this tower support multiple raid volumes and up to 40x drives, therefore you can have like
- 12x Green HDD as raid5 - refer the same model
- 8x 7.2K rpm as RAID10 - - refer the same model
- 5x HDD as JBOD* - indiscriminate HDD
- 15x remain HDD as SPAN/BIG - indiscriminate HDD

*JBoD is multiples individual HDD mode such as Just a Bunch of Drives.

I wont buy ANYTHING from manufacture calls BIG/SPAN as JBoD - simply I think they can not even differentiate JBoD and SPAN, what else is there they dont know but pretend to know?