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New to NAS world
Hello all - New to this NAS stuff. I'm a detail guy - so I've spent this past week doing some deep diving into NAS stuff on the net.
My technical background: Retired 2nd time. I have an IT background - IBM DB2 Systems Programmer for z/OS - on IBM zSeries zEC12 and zBC13 Mainframes. Have experience with large scale IBM attached storage boxes (IBM 87xx and 88xx Storage Arrays). So managing DASD devices is a familar exercise to me. I understand the terminology. Flash Copy v1 & v2.
I have a few questions please...
1 - I haven't purchased a NAS unit just yet. I'm close to pulling the trigger… Narrowed it down to Netgear.
2 - Background - rounded up - have 25TB total capacity (used+unused) - on 6 Win & 2 Mac machines - across about 23 drives (internal/external). One Win machine is remote about 20 miles away - Netgear Remote PC software will grab that one & bring it to NAS here. Cool. Nice feature-rich gear…
3 - I'm curious as a new NAS user - if I've narrowed my NAS vendor down wisely - to Netgear - from the field of top players like Synology and QNAP?
4 - New NAS config - Empty (diskless) Netgear RN42400 NAS - I've narrowed my choice down to the Netgear High Performance 4 bay diskless box - Model RN42400. Max addressibility of 40TB.
5 - New HDD Config - Two (2) Seagate IronWolf 10TB eSATA 24x7 small business/home office hard drives. These are NOT the high-end Enterprise IronWolf Pro drives, although the cost is only ablout $35 more each for the IronWolf Pro's.
6 - The remaining 2 bays will initiall remain empty for future use.
7 - Since the RN424 has a max of 40TB and a max of 4 bays, I figure it best logically, to populate each of the 4 bays with the same size HDD - hence 4 x 10TB = 40TB total.
Looking forward to getting the NAS to start mucking around.
Thank you for your time and trouble.
Regards - dasd
27 Replies
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dasd wrote:
5 - New HDD Config - Two (2) Seagate IronWolf 10TB eSATA 24x7 small business/home office hard drives. These are NOT the high-end Enterprise IronWolf Pro drives, although the cost is only ablout $35 more each for the IronWolf Pro's.
With RAID-1 (or the default XRAID) that will give you 10 TB of actual storage. 4x10TB XRAID/RAID-5 will give you 30 TB. If you forego RAID redundancy to maximize storage, then I suggest using one volume per disk (jbod).
dasd wrote:
Netgear Remote PC software will grab that one & bring it to NAS here. Cool. Nice feature-rich gear…
Remote is the name of an older VPN service that was discontinued last fall. The successor is ReadyCloud.
dasd wrote:
4 - New NAS config - Empty (diskless) Netgear RN42400 NAS - I've narrowed my choice down to the Netgear High Performance 4 bay diskless box - Model RN42400. Max addressibility of 40TB.
The datasheet uses the largest compatible drives when it is published. 12 TB models on on the hardware compatibility list now, so the RN424 can handle 48 TB. That will go up as larger SATA disks come on the market.
dasd wrote:
3 - I'm curious as a new NAS user - if I've narrowed my NAS vendor down wisely - to Netgear - from the field of top players like Synology and QNAP?
This is of course a Netgear forum. I've never owned a Synology or a QNAP, so I have no first hand experience with either.
What services do you intend to deploy? Just storage with remote access? Or do you want other things (media streaming for example).
All good information. Thank you for your reply. Learned a lot from my 1st reply, especially the 40TB limit is based upon HDD architecture and not RN424xx internal addressibility. If I decide to bump up the HDD size from 10TB to 12TB, nice to know the internal 64-bit architecture can handle greater than 40TB total.
I'm aware that Raid 0 buys zippo protection/redundentcy and Raid 1 provides protection/redundentcy, but good to hear that confirmed. Raid 0 = all of it. Raid 1 = 1/2 of it.
Anywhere I see legacy Remote PC I'll know to reference the fresh RemoteCloud software.
I intend to deploy storage - local & remote, maybe some streaming down the road - not sure how rich in streaming apps are developed for Netgear. Once I have the storage admin under my belt, I might give the streaming side a whirl. Who knows, after all that, I may try as a music server, too, since I see some IOS and Apple iTunes support. Synology and QNAP are rich in music & streaming app software.
Hope this answers your questions and helps.
The stated 40TB capacity is so stated because of the size of currently available drives. There is actually no reasonable known limit as larger drives become available. (The file system limit is 15EiB (16 x 10^18)) BTW, 40TB would be 4 x 10TB but NOT using any redundancy. If you put in two 10TB and use the default RAID redundancy, you'll only have 10TB of space. If you can swing it, you might want to consider a 6-bay unit since you effectively lose one drive to redundancy.
Is the NAS for backups only, archive, or items being worked on? If it's for archival or items being worked on, then you are going to need a backup plan as well. With your IT background, I'm sure you have heard the saying "If you only have one copy of something, you must not think it's important." If it's just backups, you'll have to decide if your backups need backups. Cloud backup is one thing to consider, but how fast you would need the data back is a big factor there.
In addition to ReadyCloud, you may want to have a look at ZeroTier. I find it superior to ReadyCloud...
Good to know there is no reasonable known size limit except for current HDD limitations. As newer and larger HDD are made, nice to know the box can handle them.
NAS will be used for for backups, archive, and items I'm working on. I have HDD's all over the place. My 1st thing is to organize all the HDD's and add them to the NAS to manage these units of work. I will be implementing a backup plan to follow, so I have multiple generations (GDG's) of backups. Once I get my 1st NAS implemented, I plan on acquiring a 2nd NAS to backup the 1st NAS (DR - Disaster Recovery) - offsite at a 2nd location, just in case, have 2 copies minimum.
Thanks for the ZeroTier backup software tip.
Sounds like you have a plan. I, too, first invested in a NAS to organize multiple external drives.
When the time comes for the offsite NAS, definately take a look at ZeroTier as the way to make them talk to each other.
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