Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Off Topic NAS enclosure buying advice

Suppose that'll do! Thanks.

Not that I know what I am looking for in particular...

Read performance (for streaming); probably RAID5 read performance from those figures.

Turns out, this is a pretty common topic. So much so that Intel has created a little program to test all sorts of digital consumer "scenarios" with a NAS. I will admit I have yet to get it to run on my network, but thought it was worth highlighting.

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/NAS_Perf_Toolkit.htm

I'm running a number of home-built FreeBSD NAS servers. I couldn't get the performance I needed from any of the "prosumer" products, and the "enterprise" brands are way overpriced for what they deliver. My systems each hold 32TB in an enclosure 5.25" tall:

2 servers in rack
Server internals

These systems can read or write at 400Mbyte/sec continuously for days, with 10-second burst rates exceeding 4Gbyte/sec. They're limited by the Gigabit Ethernet network ports - at some point I'll add 10Gigabit cards and re-run the network throughput benchmarks.

These systems have 48GB of RAM, dual E5520 CPUs, and a 256GB PCIe SSD as a ZFS accelerator.

At this capacity, backups become a good deal more challenging. I'm using offsite servers (connected by 2 Gigabit Ethernet links) for replication as my first line of defense, and I have a 48-tape LTO4 robotic tape library (so, 48 * 800GB before compression) which I use to make regular backups, which go in a vault at a different offsite location.

^Impressive. Is that for movies?

S

The previous generation of these was created to store images of audio CDs (the collection had outgrown over a dozen commercial Snap 4100's). The bulk of the storage these days is used to hold video from my race car, which I drive all over the country (Picture). I've been running 2 cameras continuously (whenever the car's ignition is on) since 2008, and plan to switch to 1080p video shortly.

^Looks like you're having a lot of fun!

Do you race in the Spec series? It's interesting that they made video mandatory in all cars. Is it a liability thing?

Check out Promise Technologies, they have a variety of products for this type of home storage plue they have a fairly large product line for various other scenarios. A strong company with good track record.

No, I use my Atom as a Grand Tourer, which it isn't particularly well-suited for. I do have the highest recorded mileage in the US (33,411) which also gets me 2nd-highest in the world.

In driving from coast to coast every year, I do manage to run on various racetracks here and there. A bunch of Atom owners get together almost every year for a planned event. The most recent one was 2 days at Laguna Seca and a coastal run. Sometimes these drives are fun, sometimes less so. You might want to look at a set of videos I posted to YouTube some time ago - rollbar and nose cameras of a large group of Atoms on the Golden Gate Bridge, and another video of what happens when it rains.

All of the SRA cars are supposed to be identical (same suspension, brakes, etc.) so when they decided on video, I guess it became mandatory for all. My car is substantially older (ordered September 2005, delivered August 2006) and was built by a different company (Brammo) that no longer builds Atoms.

Yep - I've got one ! ;-)