How to build a spectacularly fast network and server for small engineering dept.

To distill it down...

Link Aggregation will only increase aggregate bandwidth, it does NOT increase single user bandwidth one iota.

You'll have to rely on Windows 8+/Server 2013 and SMB Multichannel (which is supported on those products) to get higher single user bandwidth. This does NOT require a managed switch.

It also only works with SMB. If you are connecting to the server through a different means, it does not increase bandwidth (the good news is, if you are attempting to load a file from a network share in just about any program, it is connecting through SMB, unless of course you are using an iSCSI or NFS share, which is not a default network share configuration in windows).

The other downside is that most laptops have a single network ports, which means SMB Multichannel won't do a thing for you. However, if you can add on a second port through some means, that might work for you. I haven't tried it and they are RARE, but a dual port USB3 network adapter MAY work with SMB Multichannel. It also may not. SMB Multichannel can be slightly finicky from what I have found (best odds of working, same adapters. I have NOT been able to get it working with a PCIe NIC combined with a USB3 NIC).

That said, with an SSD in the server hosting the files, and a good GbE link between the laptop and the server, it shouldn't load appreciably slower than if it is stored locally in most cases. So long as you don't have any networking issues or really crappy adapters in the laptops, you should be able to get 105-118MB/sec transfer speeds. That is slower than internal storage (unless it is a rather old/slow 2.5" HDD, and it is a LOT slower than an internal SSD in the laptops), but often not a lot slower.

note SMB3 Multichannel IS in Win Server 2012, which could also be a user

azazel1024 said:

does NOT increase single user bandwidth one iota.

You'll have to rely on Windows 8+/Server 2013 and SMB Multichannel (which is supported on those products) to get higher single user bandwidth.

Click to expand...

A tiny error here, let's note that not only Windows 8.1, but even Windows Server 2012 supports SMB Multichannel. As do Qnap NAS's running QTS 4.1 or higher.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/05/13/the-basics-of-smb-multichannel-a-feature-of-windows-server-2012-and-smb-3-0.aspx
Azazel you have forgotten discussing Server 2012 Multichannel some time ago.
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=15173

azazel1024 said:

This does NOT require a managed switch.

Click to expand...

Sure, which leads to the interesting possibility of using SMB3 Multichannel over twin Internet connections between remote sites. Wonder how that would work in practice, have not tried it at 2 sites with 2 independent cable modems and Win 8.1 on both sides.

A neat thing about SMB3 Multichannel is that you "for free" get some communication link fault tolerance. In that if you had, say 2 channels in use at one time for a single SMB3 file sharing client, and then one of the channels fails, the SMB3 link merely slows down to half speed.

This is all making the performance case for using Qnap (am assuming they are the only low-end NAS maker to support multichannel). Or Win Server 2012 Essential etc, or Windows 8.1 if there are only a few users, to build you own NAS box. Credit Microsoft has certainly earned, by getting SMB3 Multichannel implemented some time ago for any ordinary PC.

azazel1024 said:

It also only works with SMB. If you are connecting to the server through a different means, it does not increase bandwidth (the good news is, if you are attempting to load a file from a network share in just about any program, it is connecting through SMB, unless of course you are using an iSCSI or NFS share, which is not a default network share configuration in windows).

Click to expand...

The original post on this thread implies the predominant use of the network will indeed be ordinary SMB file sharing with laptops, which we all agree will make good use of SMB3 Multichannel adapter teaming if the laptops are Windows 8.1

azazel1024 said:

The other downside is that most laptops have a single network ports, which means SMB Multichannel won't do a thing for you. However, if you can add on a second port through some means, that might work for you...a dual port USB3 network adapter MAY work with SMB Multichannel. It also may not

Click to expand...

We have covered in this thread that the original poster can get a dual-port ExpressCard laptop adapter for less than $150 dollars.

azazel1024 said:

That said, with an SSD in the server hosting the files, and a good GbE link between the laptop and the server, it shouldn't load appreciably slower than if it is stored locally in most cases.

Click to expand...

Yes, thus making an argument for a simple Synology diskless NAS that you throw an SSD (and maybe a huge hard drive) into. Even though Synology does not yet support SMB Multichannel as does Qnap, Win Server 2012 or Win 8.1.

Hmm when is Synology going to support SMB3 Multichannel to stay in good competition with Qnap and low-end Windows servers? Anyone know if the very latest Synology releases support Multichannel yet?

Arguing for the build-your-own Win NAS: we can also note that if the original poster sets up a file server with Win Server 2012 R2 or higher, or Win 8.1, they have the luxury of having at least one of the "laptop users" also make use of that fileserver as a workstation when they are "in the office" where the fileserver is. Heck that file server wouldn't need a monitor bigger than 17 inches to be at least as engineer-friendly as a laptop...

That should be attractive, one of the users gets a super fast (file system) workstation, and/or one of the users doesn't even have to bother lugging in their laptop for when they're "at the office". Am thinking this is reasonable to have an ordinary user on the server, since the server sounds like it's not really doing time-sensitive transaction processing but is rather doing simple episodic document transfers.

RussellInCincinnati said:

Even though Synology does not yet support SMB Multichannel as does Qnap, Win Server 2012 or Win 8.1.

Hmm when is Synology going to support SMB3 Multichannel to stay in good competition with Qnap and low-end Windows servers? Anyone know if the very latest Synology releases support Multichannel yet?

Click to expand...

Huh? I thought you were recommending the Synology DS214+ ?

RussellInCincinnati said:

pull the tera-SSD out of the server laptop and stick it in a teaming-supporting NAS with dual ethernet ports such as a Synology DS214+ for all of $365 dollars. You'll get 200 megs per second out of a DS214+

Click to expand...

Does it support just Link Aggregation but not Multichannel?

https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS214+

Dual LAN with failover and Link Aggregation support

Equipped with dual LAN ports, DS214+ ensures continual network service in case one LAN connection fails, decreasing the risk of network downtime. Link Aggregation takes advantage of the dual LAN ports to enhance connection speeds beyond the limits of a single cable or port.

Click to expand...

I submit that talking about NASes with multi-port link aggregation and mutiple NICs and so on is wishful thinking, given commonplace desktop computers' capabilities.

I hope someone can show I'm wrong.

Well I guess QNap 251 is cheapest SMB3 Multichannel out of the box

infotime said:

Huh? I thought you were recommending the Synology DS214+ ?

Click to expand...

Oops, forgot that Synology needs managed switch help for link aggregation. Maybe the cheapest SMB3-out-of-the-box Nas with above-minimum CPU power would be the (no eSata) QNap 251 for $290 dollars:
http://www.simplynas.com/qnap-ts-251-diskless-2-bay-turbo-nas.aspx?gclid=CP2py4f3ssMCFQUNaQodl4EA0Q

OK, I screwed up, it will cost you another $235 dollars for an HP 2530-series 8-port managed switch
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1683331684
to do link aggregation on Synology. Was recommending the Synology because their overall software feature suite is on the average a bit nicer than Qnap, it has eSata, and could see that the thing is capable of 212 megs/second read throughput. Darn it, see the tiny print at the bottom of this Synology benchmark page referring to the HP managed switch they used to get their nice 212 megs/second benchmarks:
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/performance#2_bay

In summary, not sure what besides Windows 2012/8.1 and QNap offers an immediate dual-gigabit-cable upgrade path to SMB3 Multichannel, out of the box. Upon reflection you are getting a decent bit of hardware for the money with the Qnap, if plugging in a removable backup device via USB3 instead of the tends-to-be-faster eSata is OK.

Are you sure QNAP supports SMB Multichannel? I am aware of SMB3 support, but to the best of my knowledge, it does NOT include SMB Multichannel, which is not a standard of SMB3, it is an extension that is proprietary (to the best of my knowledge) to Microsoft.

Also, yeah, mild mistake, I mean Server 2012, not 2013. Windows 8, 8.1, 10 and Server 2012 all support SMB3 or 3.01 (not sure if 10 has something newer than 3.01) and also SMB Multichannel.

I would confirm with QNAP that their SMB3 support includes SMB Multichannel, as I am pretty sure it does not. Samba has SMB3 support, but it does NOT include SMB multichannel at this time (unless that has changed pretty recently) and QTS4.1 (actually, all of QTS releases) use Samba, not something proprietary.

I don't think there is anything actually stopping someone from using SMB Multichannel for an implementation, it is just that Samba does not include all of SMB3 (mostly just SMB direct, which is still a useful feature of SMB3).

Just keep in mind, if you do link aggregation, SMB multichannel DOES NOT WORK!!!

I guess if you had ENOUGH ports, you could do it and have SMB Multichannel, but since SMB multichannel provides most of the advantages of aggregation/teaming, I don't see the point.

Between switches, SMB Multichannel works through aggregated ports (example, I have a pair of switches with two ports utilized as an uplink on each switch and aggregated for 2Gbps of aggregated bandwidth, if I have my server and switch on seperate switches, I can still get 2Gbps of throughput to each machine with SMB Multichannel). If you aggregate the NICs from the machine to the switch (which means you have to enable teaming on the adapters within windows, or the NAS), no Multichannel. You could team two groups of adapters however and have SMB Multichannel, but only at the teamed level.

So if you have 2 GbE NICs, with teaming you are limited to 1Gbps per client and 2Gbps aggregate. With SMB Multichannel you get 2Gbps per client and 2Gbps aggregate. If you had 4GbE NICs you could create two teams of two adapters. That would provide 2Gbps per client and 4Gbps aggregate, or with SMB multichannel you'd get 4Gbps per client or 4Gbps aggregate.

Teaming has some SMALL advantages over SMB multichannel (there is better fail over, but SMB Multichannel DOES provide fail over).

As for SMB Multichannel over multiple WAN, it likely won't work, but I would be intrigued if it would. One of these years I hope to be in a position for multiple WAN as well as a remote location with multiple WAN and setup VPN tunneling to see if it would work.

One issue you DO have is that SMB multichannel does not work across differing connection speeds. You have a 10GbE and a 1GbE adapter, or a 100MbE and a 1GbE adapter it won't give you 11Gbps or 1.1Gbps, it just works at the faster adapter speed.

azazel 1024 you are right, only sure path to Multichannel is a Windows server

azazel1024 said:

Are you sure QNAP supports SMB Multichannel?

...One issue you DO have is that SMB multichannel does not work across differing connection speeds.

Click to expand...

Yes, you are right Azazel, my error, the QNap supports SMB3 but not the multichannel network adapter combining.

So the only way to for sure have network adapter "teaming" is to use a Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8.1 as your server.

My personal preference would be to save money with a memory-upgradeable QNap TS251 ($282 dollars at SimplyNas, also saw an open box one on Newegg for $268), tricked out to 8 megs RAM, with two drives in it. One a $70 dollar 128 gigabyte SSD, serving as the "cache drive" for a huge cheap hard drive. You can get 100 megs a second out of the thing, which is probably not noticeably slower than a spinning hard drive in a laptop.

Or go the higher-end route and just spend $360 on a Mushkin 960 gig SSD and skip the disk caching/memory upgrade.

The hint here is that there other things to spend your money on besides increasing the Ethernet speed to get a fast NAS. I'd rather have an all-SSD single-gigabit-cable Nas for the same money as a dual-cable (say Windows) Nas that only has a physical hard drive. I'd also want to spend money on upgrading the server RAM before looking at dual gigabit ethernet etc.

Having said all that there is no arguing that the highest peak transfer rates to laptops would be with a dual-cable NAS connection. And if the server was a Windows machine it could double as a fastest-of-all workstation for the original poster.

RussellInCincinnati said:

Yes, you are right Azazel, my error, the QNap supports SMB3 but not the multichannel network adapter combining.

So the only way to for sure have network adapter "teaming" is to use a Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8.1 as your server.

My personal preference would be to save money with a memory-upgradeable QNap TS251 ($282 dollars at SimplyNas, also saw an open box one on Newegg for $268), tricked out to 8 megs RAM, with two drives in it. One a $70 dollar 128 gigabyte SSD, serving as the "cache drive" for a huge cheap hard drive. You can get 100 megs a second out of the thing, which is probably not noticeably slower than a spinning hard drive in a laptop.

Or go the higher-end route and just spend $360 on a Mushkin 960 gig SSD and skip the disk caching/memory upgrade.

The hint here is that there other things to spend your money on besides increasing the Ethernet speed to get a fast NAS. I'd rather have an all-SSD single-gigabit-cable Nas for the same money as a dual-cable (say Windows) Nas that only has a physical hard drive. I'd also want to spend money on upgrading the server RAM before looking at dual gigabit ethernet etc.

Having said all that there is no arguing that the highest peak transfer rates to laptops would be with a dual-cable NAS connection. And if the server was a Windows machine it could double as a fastest-of-all workstation for the original poster.

Click to expand...

Or Windows 8. Not really a reason to run 8 instead of 8.1, but it will work on 8 (my server is on 8 only because I am lazy and don't have a lot of free time and it currently works great, so I haven't bothered updating to 8.1 and worrying about any of the "fixes" I might need to do to get everything running honky dory again. I'll migrate, but it isn't going to be all that soon, maybe/probably when I move to a Broadwell based i3, or a Skylake based Celeron/Pentium/i3 instead of an Ivy Celeron).

I'd agree, depending on budget, I'd just go a dual bay NAS with a couple of fast 7200rpm HDDs in RAID0, with a USB3 backup enclosure attached to it running hourly/daily differential back-ups. If more performance is needed for smaller files, as suggested run a single drive + SSD as a caching drive (or if you don't need huge storage, but want huge random performance, a couple of 256/512GB SSDs in RAID0).

Want more performance, build a windows box with a couple of NICs, upgrade the laptops to express card dual NICs and Windows 8.1 and slap as many HDDs or SSDs as you need to in the server. That'll get pricey fast though. I can't speak to the express card dual NICs (I'd think not cheap), but an inexpensive windows box with a couple of 7200rpm HDDs in RAID0 + backup USB3/eSATA drive/enclosure to mirror it, 8GB of RAM, low end core processor, etc. doesn't run too much. Probably $600-1,000 full up with storage included. Obviously you can go MUCH higher in terms of pricing on that, but it isn't really needed (my currently build with an H67 board, G1610, PSU, 8GB of RAM, 60GB SSD and 3TB 7200rpm drive (will shortly toss another 3TB in there in RAID0), case and dual intel GbE NICs ran a total of about $500 +/-40. Add another $80-100 for a second 3TB drive.

As is, it can easily rip out 230MB/sec if the stuff is resident in RAM or 140-175MB/sec if it has to pull it from the HDD. A second HDD would easily make sure that both GbE links are stuffed and random performance, so long as it isn't really small files is also pretty darned good (I doubt you are loading applications across the network, or dealing with itty bitty files, probably more like files in the hundreds of KB to MB sizes, which means spinning drives have pretty good performance, if not up to the standards of an SSD, at least not several orders of magnitude less, like 4KB performance is). I know with a single drive, performance with 400KB-3MB file directory copies is generally in the 70-100MB/sec or so range from that single drive.

I'd just go a dual bay NAS with a couple of fast 7200rpm HDDs in RAID0,

Click to expand...

I chose to NOT use RAID 0 becuase...

One MUST have a 2nd media backup anyway, such as a big USB3 drive.

If a RAID0 file system is corrupted or malwared, you have no prior clean version

By human error a file's contents gets hosed up (editing error), or files get deleted, etc., you have just one file system.

I run the 2 bay as two volumes, with the 2nd volume being a version history of VIP folders on the first volume. This, with the NAS sofware tools, automated.

For me, RAID0 provides no protection from the above.

stevech said:

I chose to NOT use RAID 0 becuase...

One MUST have a 2nd media backup anyway, such as a big USB3 drive.

If a RAID0 file system is corrupted or malwared, you have no prior clean version

By human error a file's contents gets hosed up (editing error), or files get deleted, etc., you have just one file system.

I run the 2 bay as two volumes, with the 2nd volume being a version history of VIP folders on the first volume. This, with the NAS sofware tools, automated.

For me, RAID0 provides no protection from the above.

Click to expand...

No, RAID0 provides no protection, but it does provide performance. I prefer to have more seperation on backup volumes than internal seperate disks. At a minimum I want one hanging off a USB enclosure, as it reduces the odds that a bad SATA/SAS controller or electrical fault is going to hose both volumes/drives.

So external USB backup is a requirement to start with. I'd rather have a couple of drives in RAID0 for performance and a slower external backup volume.

For the suspenders (already got the belt with the external drive), I'd prefer a 2nd backup target that is an entirely seperate machine that is pulling backups periodically.

Offsite backups for the bungie cords keeping your data pants from falling down, but that can get expensive.

To me the ONLY RAID that is worth anything is RAID0 because it can provide significant performance increases. None of the other RAID levels provide anything except uptime, they don't provide real data resiliance, at best they provide some soft data resiliance. RAID5/6 in most cases only provides modest read speed increases, but write speed generally isn't increased much, even with a really great controller. Nothing like RAID0 performance increases.

I remember reading an article on SMB about not relying on RAID for backup and reliability rather to use multiple NAS as a backup solution and RAID only for performance with some reliability. If the NAS fails you lose your entire data if you only had 1 NAS.

I wholeheartedly agree with the above post.

Overkill in the LAN capacity versus the overhead in file systems and SMB with normal user file sizes.
People doing lots of large file work (video, movies, photos) use fast locally connected storage and somehow back that up.

I have a HP Microserver Gen8 Setup with smb multichannel works great and gets 227 MB/s sustained if using drives capable of keeping up ofc
Can be picked up for £150 in the uk atm

I replaced 7 nas's with this and havnt looked back
I now have the 1.6ghz linkstation nas's on auto sleep and have a script to wake them on demand to backup
and use them as backup devices
Is been a great upgrade the nas's do around 80 MB/s smb read and 40 MB/s smb write

The slight stutter in speed was just the hd waking up
and the buffer being filled waiting for the hd to spin up

Shonk said:

I have a HP Microserver Gen8 Setup with smb multichannel works great and gets 227 MB/s sustained if using drives capable of keeping up ofc Can be picked up for £150 in the uk atm

Click to expand...

Shonk, this is so incomplete as to be somewhat misleading.

Firstly, there is no retail outlet that an ordinary person has access to, that sells the lowest-end Gen8 Microserver, new, for less than £256 British pounds, about $385 US dollars. That makes sense, the list price of the machine is about £300 British pounds or $450 US dollars.

Secondly, $385 US dollars is the price of a Gen8 Microserver with absolutely no storage, or even an operating system, and all of TWO GIGABYTES of RAM. Are you running your Windows operating system on your Gen8 with exactly 2 gigs of RAM?

Now the Gen8 is a nice piece of hardware to make an SMB3 Multichannel server, in that it comes with 2 gigabit Ethernet ports and draws a superbly low 8 watts of power at idle with the 2 gigs of RAM.

But if we are going to talk used Windows machines as servers, well you can buy an 8-gig RAM Dell Optiplex 760 for $110 dollars with a nice, efficient power supply http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-OptiPlex-760-Desktop-Core-2-Duo-E8400-3-0GHz-8GB-320GB-DVDRW-NO-OS-02-/351293031459?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item51cab24423
True the Optiplex 760 is not going to be as low power as the Gen8 Microserver. But you can definitely load Windows 10 or 8.1 or Server 2012 R2 on the machine, and for $29 dollars at Newegg you can add a second Intel Ethernet port. Of course there are dual-port Intel LAN cards as well. Heck, for $97 dollars you can put a FOUR (4) PORT ethernet Intel LAN card in it http://www.serversupply.com/products/part_search/pid_query.asp?pid=105814
for a total of FIVE gigabit Intel (SMB3 Multichannel-tested) LAN ports.

A 128 gig SSD is going to cost you maybe $70 dollars? Also there's room in the dell 760 for any one 3.5 inch spinning hard disk you might want. You get a DVD drive in the Dell 760, the machine is perfectly usable as a desktop machine as well as a server, it has a DisplayPort as well as VGA video output, lots of USB 2.0 ports, etc etc. A USB 3.0 card for the Dell is about $12 dollars if you want it http://www.amazon.com/Protronix-2-Port-Profile-PCI-Express-Controller/dp/B00AM32HYW

So, a 5-port Dell 760 with 8 gigs of RAM and 2 USB ports and a 128 gig SSD will be about $300 dollars. The Dells come with a Windows 7 license tag on the outside of the box, you can get a Win 7 disk from Dell for maybe $10-$20 if your Dell comes with no O/S. Then you can immediately upgrade the Win 7 Dell for free to Windows 10 technical preview, which of course supports SMB3 Multichannel and up to 5 users. But the original poster likes Win Server backup features, they could go ahead and buy Windows Server 2012 essentials with 5 user licenses for $150 dollars. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832416559

So if you're going to talk about used machines that come with no operating system or hard drives to do SMB3 Multichannel, a Dell 760 is a lot more flexible to configure with lots of dirt cheap RAM, than the low-end HP Gen8 Microserver you refer to. Both with roughly equivalent CPUs. Of course there are a zillion other ways to buy any old desktop box and use it as a highly configurable Windows server, I mention the Dell 760 because they are so easily available used and have verified that it runs the latest, somewhat demanding Windows 10 operating system in 64-bit mode.

Shonk please let me know if there is some way to get a free copy of Windows Server or whatever for the Gen8 Microserver.

1) £139.99

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-...r-174-99-139-99-after-cashback-ebuyer-2130064

2) Clearly its upto the individual on specs of the machine ram etc..

Mine is fully upgraded but you dont have too the cpu and ram will run windows 7 / 8 just fine

Xeon E3-1265L v2
16 GB ECC DDR3 1600
25TB of storage

I have not read all the above so my apologies if this is redundant but a cheap speed up is to connect all the laptops to a gig wired connection and not use wireless.