TS-509 as a fileserver for 30 users?

[Lybbe]

Hi,

Is it possible to use TS-509 as a fileserver for about 30 users. We're working with files directly on the server, ie: InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop-files etc.

People at our company opens and saves files directly on our fileserver today, and we want a similar setup with a NAS.

Will the performance be enough or should i look at something else?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dennis Wood]

What's your setup now? Switch? Is everything gigabit?

 

[Lybbe]

Dennis,

Our current setup is 100mbit switches with a 4 year old IDE Raid-5 fileserver. So it's quite old and the performance is quite poor.

Eventually we will upgrade our network to gigabit. Not yet decided though. We need to replace our Cat5 in this case.

Thank you

 

[corndog]

Well, you might be able to go SOME of the way by getting one of those 48 port switches that have 46 10/100 ports and 2 gigabit ports.

Plug the TS-509Pro into the two gigabit ports, and then at least several people should be able to experience full 100megabit at the same time, and you don't have to replace your wiring. Right now, even though you have 100megabit at every port, everyone has to squeeze through the 100megabit connection to your old server, which slows everyone down. This will mitigate that bottleneck...

 

[Lybbe]

corndog,

Good point. That would be a good start. I still don't own a TS-509 yet, but what about the performance as a fileserver? Would it handle about 30 simult. users working directly on it?

Thanks

 

[corndog]

Hello again,

There is another guy on here, Dennis Wood I believe, who has posted concerns about multiple simultaneous users connecting to the 509 and reading or writing large files simultaneously. However, it should be borne in mind that his tests all involved Gigabit connections, where each single user had the potential to nearly saturate the NAS.

In your case, we are talking about 30 users all on 10/100 megabit connections, which means they are all "held back" a bit, so they won't be able to have such an impact individually on the NAS, which means more of them should be able to work at the same time.

Further, your users seem to be working mostly on raster and vector images, which are much smaller than video files that Dennis' people were working on. So a lot of your 30 users' traffic will be rather bursty (saving and loading, etc) instead of big sustained streams of video which resulted in Dennis' problems.

So, I'd expect you would be quite happy with the 509 in your situation. Even more so if you take a deep breath, throw your warranty to the wind, and upgrade it to 4G of RAM.

Corndog

 

[Dennis Wood]

Given that situation, the TS509 (or any of the 5 or 6 drive NAS units with dual load balancing ports) would be just fine. It's basically a Linux box with a RAID 5 array and 1.8GHz processor running SAMBA. Budget depending, here's what I'd suggest in decreasing order of speed. Use 5 x 1TB drives in RAID 5 making sure they're 7200 RPM with 16 to 32MB of cache. At $145 or so each, 1TB drives are at a nice price point right now.

1. Install the TS509 and purchase a LAG capable switch. The only one I can recommend under $400 is the 24 port HP Procurve 1800-24G I've made a few comments on in anther thread. Connect the NAS to this switch with two LAN cables, enable LACP on the two ports and I'd pretty much guarantee your users will notice an immediate improvement over what they have right now. Upgrade the NAS ram to 2GB, or 4GB if you're interested in really improving small file writes to the NAS.

2. Just plug the NAS in using one port on your existing switch...again, big improvement almost guaranteed over a 5 year old IDE based box...taking into consideration what I've written below.

Over 2 ports in load balancing mode (gigabit), we've shown the QNAP box capable of delivering 120MB/s aggregate read, and something in the order of 50MB/s writes. So theoretically 30 users should be able to sustain a constant read rate ~4MB/s each assuming you're on a gigabit switch and the NAS is connected in load balancing mode. Your current server is saturating its 10/100 pipe at about 12 MB/s aggregate load so the best you'd be seeing right now is 0.4 MB/s per user assuming they were all equally loading your current server.

Add a gigabit switch (even you don't touch the workstations) and the NAS and your crew will love you. If you've got a pile of print queues, licensing services etc on your existing box, just leave it alone and move your file serving chores over to the NAS.

 

[David Madison]

Dennis,

Maybe a dumb question, but to gain the advantages of the Procurve switch, do ALL the switches in the network between QNAP and workstation have to be the Procurve, or only the one attached to the QNAP?

In our current setup we have two Netgear Gigabit GS608 switches between the QNAP and the workstation.

I just received a TS509 yesterday and first indications are it really is a good bit snappier than our Windows XP file storage box is; and I'm looking to optimize that even more.

David

 

[Dennis Wood]

Just the Procurve connected to the TS509 would need to fully support link aggregation. That said, you'd definitely want your high bandwidth consumers on the same switch as the TS509 so they wouldn't be limited by the 2nd and 3rd switch uplink.

 

[Lybbe]

Given that situation, the TS509 (or any of the 5 or 6 drive NAS units with dual load balancing ports) would be just fine. It's basically a Linux box with a RAID 5 array and 1.8GHz processor running SAMBA. Budget depending, here's what I'd suggest in decreasing order of speed. Use 5 x 1TB drives in RAID 5 making sure they're 7200 RPM with 16 to 32MB of cache. At $145 or so each, 1TB drives are at a nice price point right now.

1. Install the TS509 and purchase a LAG capable switch. The only one I can recommend under $400 is the 24 port HP Procurve 1800-24G I've made a few comments on in anther thread. Connect the NAS to this switch with two LAN cables, enable LACP on the two ports and I'd pretty much guarantee your users will notice an immediate improvement over what they have right now. Upgrade the NAS ram to 2GB, or 4GB if you're interested in really improving small file writes to the NAS.

2. Just plug the NAS in using one port on your existing switch...again, big improvement almost guaranteed over a 5 year old IDE based box...taking into consideration what I've written below.

Over 2 ports in load balancing mode (gigabit), we've shown the QNAP box capable of delivering 120MB/s aggregate read, and something in the order of 50MB/s writes. So theoretically 30 users should be able to sustain a constant read rate ~4MB/s each assuming you're on a gigabit switch and the NAS is connected in load balancing mode. Your current server is saturating its 10/100 pipe at about 12 MB/s aggregate load so the best you'd be seeing right now is 0.4 MB/s per user assuming they were all equally loading your current server.

Add a gigabit switch (even you don't touch the workstations) and the NAS and your crew will love you. If you've got a pile of print queues, licensing services etc on your existing box, just leave it alone and move your file serving chores over to the NAS.

Dennis, sorry for late reply.

This sounds really good. Actually we've moved our company during the holiday, and i got a new HP PROCURVE SWITCH 2810-48G. Hopefully this switch is LAG-capable too. Haven't checked this yet though.

Now i'm really thinking of replacing our old fileserver with a TS-509. You're still recommending this NAS i'll guess?

Btw, we're all on OSX and not windows. Any tests made from OSX yet? Do i need to worry about performance?

Thanks in advance.

 

[corndog]

I have tested the TS-509 from MacOSX - very fast - comparable to Vista. Mac OSX in later versions is a very capable SAMBA client.

I have not tested AFP.

One caveat though - if you are using or plan to use NFS clients in any way, I would not recommend the 509. QNAP's entire NAS line (at least the 209 and 509, which represent their two main hardware platforms) at this time has a major show-stopping bug in NFS, which makes it so you need to reboot your NAS every 2 to 5 days because NFS segfaults, taking out SSH and the web admin page with it.

 

[Lybbe]

I have tested the TS-509 from MacOSX - very fast - comparable to Vista. Mac OSX in later versions is a very capable SAMBA client.

I have not tested AFP.

One caveat though - if you are using or plan to use NFS clients in any way, I would not recommend the 509. QNAP's entire NAS line (at least the 209 and 509, which represent their two main hardware platforms) at this time has a major show-stopping bug in NFS, which makes it so you need to reboot your NAS every 2 to 5 days because NFS segfaults, taking out SSH and the web admin page with it.

Thanks! Good to know that it works well from OSX. I haven't ordered my TS-509 yet, but i probably will, and will try it with both SMB and AFP.

Thanks for the tip about the NFS troubles, but we're not using NFS atm.

Dennis: Can't find anywhere to enable loadbalancing on any ports on my HP Procurve 2810-48G. Is this a missing feature on this switch, or enabled by default?

Thanks

 

[corndog]

You should be able to configure LACP in your Port Settings for each port

 

[Lybbe]

Corndog, i've checked the settings in the webadmin > Port Configurator, but the only settings available is the following:

Port name
enabled yes/no
Mode Auto, 10, 100, 1000 etc
Flow control

Can't find any settings for LACP anywhere?

 

[Dennis Wood]

Check section 11-19 in the management doc for the 2810. The 1800 series look to have a simpler web based interface. You want to set the two TS509 connected ports to enable Dynamic LACP.