OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Storage

NAS and OS/2?

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Dariusz Piatkowski:

--- Quote from: Doug Bissett on February 06, 2015, 05:49:34 am ---
--- Quote ---I'm seeing in general drives with more cache are being recommended for NAS boxes. I've decided to splurge the extra for a 7200 RPM drive.
--- End quote ---

It seems to me, that disk speed (including cache) is a non issue. The 1 Gbps network interface is very much slower than any hard disk, and that will be the limiting factor for speed. It doesn't matter how many clients you use, the limit is still 1 Gbps. All that happens, is that each client slows down since they need to wait their turn for network access. I suppose that a second (third etc.) NIC might speed things up, if you configured the network properly...

--- End quote ---

Doug,

Worst case scenario is that I have my 1Gig pathway saturated with multiple clients all looking for a different piece of data...if that is the case I want to be able to put a HD in that NAS enclosure that will not have a hard time getting the data the client needs, 7200 is faster then 5400, heck, 10K is even better...and SDD is simply awesome.

Here are some benchmarks (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31906-zyxel-nsa325-2-bay-power-plus-media-server-reviewed?start=4) on the NSa325 unit, as you can tell, the sustained xfer rate is pretty high in a number of test cases, we are talking > 75MB/s...so if the network supports this throughput (yes, I agree, we have some challenges in OS/2) I want the storage media to handle multiple requests.

Doug Bissett:

--- Quote ---Worst case scenario is that I have my 1Gig pathway saturated with multiple clients all looking for a different piece of data...if that is the case I want to be able to put a HD in that NAS enclosure that will not have a hard time getting the data the client needs, 7200 is faster then 5400, heck, 10K is even better...and SDD is simply awesome.
--- End quote ---

Well, to put it in perspective: Your 100 Mbs network is like a motorized wheel chair. A 1 Gbs network is about like a 10 speed bicycle. A 5400 rpm disk is about like a standard 6 cylinder car. The 7200 rpm disk is about like a standard high performance street legal sports car. The 10000 rpm disk is like a low end race car. The SDD is like a high end race car. Any one of the disks will be around the block, many times, before the bicycle makes it around once.

One thing that you may want to do, is be sure that you can move the disk(s) into your main box. It would take me about a day to do a complete restore over the network. I figure that I will just move the disk into my main box, and it should only take about 4 hours to do a complete restore, if I ever need to do it. Smaller pieces are okay over the network, and I use RSYNC to do the backups, so that doesn't take very long. I use the same approach for my USB disks, which are only a little slower.

Paul Smedley:
Hey Mark,


--- Quote from: Mark on February 04, 2015, 02:57:28 pm ---Any opinions on choice of disks for these systems?

Green drives for saving money?
Black drives for performance?
Red NAS drives for some other reason?

What makes a good drive for a NAS application?

Security:
Does everyone think those NAS enclosures have or maintain good security?  I would think that NAS systems based on a linux distribution would have regular security updates & fixes.  How does that compare/contrast to the NAS enclosures approach?

--- End quote ---

I'm using Western Digital Red drivers here. I agree that for security, a system based on a linux system like freenas or ubuntu server is the best option. I used to run a Qnap NAS and they were VERY slow to release security updates, and even updates of core applications like samba, etc.

karotlopj:
Personally I would recommend setting up a FreeNAS box

http://www.freenas.org/

It's based on FreeBSD and is extremely scalable. Works well with my OS/2 boxes.

You can set up CIFS (Samba) shares quite easily via the web interface and connect using 'net use'

Olafur Gunnlaugsson:

--- Quote from: Mark on February 04, 2015, 02:57:28 pm ---Any opinions on choice of disks for these systems?

Green drives for saving money?
Black drives for performance?
Red NAS drives for some other reason?

What makes a good drive for a NAS application?

--- End quote ---

Normal 3TB Toshiba drives 7200rpm drives, a number of online hosting companies have come up with data that suggests these are by far the most reliable drives on the market, the 1, 2 and 4 TB versions from the same company have a much better than average reliability, on par with the best WD drives and a class above Seagate.

According to the data 3TB Tosh have around 1+% failure rates over the course of two years constant use (online 24/7), other Tosh drives around 2+%, WD around 2 to 5% depending on model and Segate 5 to 11%, ditto.

As I run OS/2 and Win 2011 HS (for XP compatibility that is not available for newer Win servers) I have bought 2TB version as the OS/2 server cannot use anything bigger and the WHS needs quite a lot of manual work to use the 3TB ones so I have stuck with the 2TB ones, four in each server, one has developed a minor fault after about 14 months that the company swapped out for me even though it was out of warranty.

These replaced a host of drives bought in the period between 2009 and 2011, two Hitachi (Now Toshiba), two Samsung, two WD and about six Seagate drives, all the drives except one Hitachi drive developed some errors during their livetime, the Samsungs and the WD's could be re-used after a low-level format and have been re-purposed for my PC's, the Hitachi could not be fixed as WD (Who owned the Hitachi factory at the time) stopped supplying disk repair software that worked with that specific model but otherwise that drive only had surface errors so should have been recoverable, and it and all the Seagate drives have been thrown away. The only working Seagate drive left in the house is a 35 year old 506 .... so you can guess which drive manufacturer I am not recommending.

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