Network Drives

[petert]

Anyone have any experience with one of these units?

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...e/terastation/

I want to get one for use with my Mac Pro system... any help/comments would be appreciated...

Peter

[srwatters]

I just bought a 500GB Adaptec SNAP drive 110 for use at work, but I've heard nothing but good things about the Buffalo units. You will have to use SMB (Windows) access though, since the Buffalo drives don't support NFS mounts. That's the main reason I went with the SNAP drive. My target systems at work are Sun Solaris, so rather than use Samba, I chose the native NFS support.

Good choice though. GigE is much better than USB/Firewire.

[Tapper]

They seem to work pretty well, and are cheap. They are intended to work with winders boxes, so Mac users will probably have to jump through more hoops.

I'd be a lot more interested in them if they supported iSCSI, but for home use they should be very fine. Fry's runs them on sale pretty often, so you can get a deal on them if you're patient.

They use cheap disks though, so you have to keep an eye on the array status, and be prepared to replace a disk every now and then.

[awsilver]

We're running two of the Terrastation Pro 2TB boxes (1.5 RAID5), although we're running them for Windows platform(s), when configuring you can setup for Appletalk, as well they have fully functional FTP service if you opt to turn it on. Been pretty good storage too...at least no complaints.

AW

I did have to call tech support on one of the units (just remembered), and the tech support was actually (and maybe surprisingly) excellent -- just an extra FYI.

[zeroendless]

Avoid any external Network drive if you can. They are slow and a real challenge when it comes to recovery.

[srwatters]

Originally Posted by zeroendless

Avoid any external Network drive if you can. They are slow and a real challenge when it comes to recovery.

I would be interested in your research that shows this to be accepted fact or is this just your opinion?

I completely disagree with your statement. In the IT world, this type of storage is widely deployed and used. My company has several locations that use NAS devices including a 3TB unit at my facility.

[petert]

Originally Posted by zeroendless

Avoid any external Network drive if you can. They are slow and a real challenge when it comes to recovery.

I have an external drive on FireWire now and if it weren't for the fact that it's used exclusively for "old", rarely used data, I'd be quite displeased with the throughput performance. My thought was a networked drive should perform better than a USB or FireWire just based on the protocol alone. Plus, with the Gig port on my Mac, it should scream...

I've got one lead (just got this and am reading it now) - a review on the unit:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1917912,00.asp

[Tapper]

Originally Posted by srwatters

I would be interested in your research that shows this to be accepted fact or is this just your opinion?

I completely disagree with your statement. In the IT world, this type of storage is widely deployed and used. My company has several locations that use NAS devices including a 3TB unit at my facility.

+1

[Tapper]

Originally Posted by petert

I have an external drive on FireWire now and if it weren't for the fact that it's used exclusively for "old", rarely used data, I'd be quite displeased with the throughput performance. My thought was a networked drive should perform better than a USB or FireWire just based on the protocol alone. Plus, with the Gig port on my Mac, it should scream...

I've got one lead (just got this and am reading it now) - a review on the unit:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1917912,00.asp

It all depends on how it's hooked up. There's nothing magical about a network - it's still just another way of pushing bits over a wire.

The data throughput you'll get from your drive controller is always going to be significantly higher than that which can be achieved over narrowband cables like firewire, USB, or even the various network standards. Too, most of the speeds you see advertised are the theoretical maximum rate which is seldom achieved by the hardware implementing the service. 40%-60% is pretty common.

NAS units benefit greatly by using GigE networking, but even then you need to take a few additional steps get get the maximum rates possible. Start by enabling jumbo frames on all interfaces the traffic transits. Increase the buffer sizes on the client and nas box. Set your RWIN sizes correctly. All these have a pronounced effect on the throughput you can get on GigE.

Transfer rates on modern nas systems are getting pretty darn fast, but you have to have your expectations in a range that's realistic for the technology.

[petert]

Originally Posted by petert

I've got one lead (just got this and am reading it now) - a review on the unit:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1917912,00.asp

After finishing the article, it gave the unit an 8 (on a scale of 1 to 10). What's interesting is that the example diagrams for the interface s/w was all Windows-based (no native Mac that I saw), but there was a web-based interface as well.

As the article also said, it has me wondering about "rolling my own" with some of the old Linux hardware laying around unused since my Mac arrived. I could easily get a GigE card for it and buy large capacity drives for it and try that out... they say you can't get all the bells and whistles with a home-grown system - I'm just after raw storage and not really interested in RAID capabilities.

[adirty1]

Originally Posted by Tapper

It all depends on how it's hooked up. There's nothing magical about a network - it's still just another way of pushing bits over a wire.

The data throughput you'll get from your drive controller is always going to be significantly higher than that which can be achieved over narrowband cables like firewire, USB, or even the various network standards. Too, most of the speeds you see advertised are the theoretical maximum rate which is seldom achieved by the hardware implementing the service. 40%-60% is pretty common.

NAS units benefit greatly by using GigE networking, but even then you need to take a few additional steps get get the maximum rates possible. Start by enabling jumbo frames on all interfaces the traffic transits. Increase the buffer sizes on the client and nas box. Set your RWIN sizes correctly. All these have a pronounced effect on the throughput you can get on GigE.

Transfer rates on modern nas systems are getting pretty darn fast, but you have to have your expectations in a range that's realistic for the technology.

well done, kept me from writing... We have fiber from the server to the NAS and that really helps out with moving data. most offices wont have fiber to the work station so everyone is still looking at the speed of their network to move data. If i had the money i would run a NAS on fiber at the house. Back ups at work have been a pain on the NAS but that was the system not the NAS or networks fault.

[zeroendless]

Danm, even a common j6p like me need to have proof :). I should thanks those take my words seriously.

No doubt NAS is perfering in Business or large corporation. NAS appliance allow Multiplatforms accessibility without dedicated file servers. Not to mention web access, users confirgiuration and premission and many others feature a common external hdd doesn't have. I am sure it's much much faster to set up NAS in the network than a server.

My comments on recovery and slower performance upset some IT guys here i see. I believed some of your do know the differences between business used and home based NAS. Don't think Fiber channel cluster NAS storage because the OP or me can't afford one. :) I shouldn't have say "ANY" and that my fault. That's too general but i was thinking home based devices or one we could managed anyway or aren't we?? :)

Here's one recent test by anadtech, dec 5 2006. Severals pages with benchmark if you have the time...
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2881

"With Gigabit networking and multiple drives on all these devices we went into this article with the hope of high throughput. Unfortunately this was short lived once we dived into the benchmarks. Most of these devices are running tiny processors and software-based RAID. The result is transfer rates that average 10MByte/second, which is quite slow if you're used to copying data off of a hardware based RAID array. However, the purpose of these devices isn't necessarily to be able to read and write at theoretical gigabit line-speeds. These devices are designed to provide long term shared storage, backup a few machines on a network, or stream a few DVDs to a media device."

I still have my Raid 5 SW based raid controller running 1.6TB in pic-32 for backup, they are much faster that 10m/s if you ask and CPU utilization is less than 15%. One major drawback of NAS i once read is it shifts storage transactions from parallel scsi connections to the production network. The network has to handle both normal end users traffic as well as disk requests. Like most eletronic, the more the workload.... the slower it gets.

If you ask my personal experiences, i don't own one NAS just because i said so in my original post. They are slower and pain in the you-know-what when it comes to recovery. I have one 1.6TB, 2TB raid 5 dedicated server, may be 4-5 TB of external drives in affordable home G-network. Those are all personal uses and i tested them for speed just because i am bored. :) Last week friend of mine try to recovery his 250GB NAS, missing files but whole drive still working as new. I have severals SW i could tried but can't find one that's suitable for linux based file systems. Most of them were able to read the missing folder but none of them able to pick up the missing file. It took him days to find a sw and scanning. Last time i talked him he said it's been scanning for 24 hours but he did found one that's able to read the files. I hope he got it back, only 10GB of images but he wants it all back.

So you know what speed i got out of my external drives by Matrox 1TB raid 0. That article tested raid 5 as well as raid 0 for maxinium throuhput, so i have mine here for quick reference.

With USB, i get average of real world 23mb/s and fire800 34.25m/s (write speed, transfer 800m files, average with timer for 3 times) it was tested in macbook pro ( some of your favorite OS), i lost 2-3m/s in windows enviroment. The test run by most review site is average at 40m/s via firewire(just search, don't ask for proof...LOL). Most NAS from the articles average at 10m/s so they said. I love speed, i brought the most faster card firewire reader in the world, why not better equipped storage to match it? Yap, it start to sounds unfair because i compare one of the fastest external drive to home based NAS, but so you know it's costs less than 1Tb of bare drives.

Just because it's widely used in Business enviroment, doesn't mean it's better for end users.

[adirty1]

Originally Posted by petert

Anyone have any experience with one of these units?

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...e/terastation/

I want to get one for use with my Mac Pro system... any help/comments would be appreciated...

Peter

I am building a raid in my new workstation on a Ausu board... more main boards are running raid 5 and come with dual controllers so you can have raid 10 running at the same time and just use the 5 for backup ...
I am right at 1100.00 with a TB of space on the raid5 and 250gig on the raid10

[Tapper]

Originally Posted by petert

After finishing the article, it gave the unit an 8 (on a scale of 1 to 10). What's interesting is that the example diagrams for the interface s/w was all Windows-based (no native Mac that I saw), but there was a web-based interface as well.

As the article also said, it has me wondering about "rolling my own" with some of the old Linux hardware laying around unused since my Mac arrived. I could easily get a GigE card for it and buy large capacity drives for it and try that out... they say you can't get all the bells and whistles with a home-grown system - I'm just after raw storage and not really interested in RAID capabilities.

It be doable.

Take a look at Openfiler. It's an open source NAS appliance software, that supports iSCSI, windows SMB, NFS, and a couple of others. I took an old quad pIII box I had leftover with a bunch of 72g u360 scsi disks in it, slapped on openfiler, created the software raid and volumes, setup the iscsi target, and hey presto. It really does work pretty well. I also tweaked the ip and interface settings to support jumbos, ran a crossover cat6 cable to a second interface in my workstatiion, and now my workstation has a second iSCSI disk array on it with 1/2 of a terrabyte, in addition to the 500g RAID1 array. I waste disk space like mad, and I don't care :)

Total cost - nada. Saved a machine from the dump.

[Tapper]

Zero - interesting link, Anand always does a good article. He's an interesting guy in person as well, if a bit focused on his work. He used to come to Dallas for Quakecon pretty frequently, and I had the opportunity to break bread with him. Good guy.

These are all consumer class appliances, but even so - no NAS box is going to approach the speed of directly attached storage. That's why you do your work local, then copy it to the nas - the nas is there to give you multiple copies - not serve as direct storage.

Raid 0 makes baby Jesus cry. Just say no bro.