Switch recommendation for file server

[svt11]

Hi, I'm setting up new environment with Active Directory. There will be 30 computers which will have roaming profiles setup on the file server. Profiles are big 4-5 GB maximum each. I will use folder redirection for some folders, so it will be a hybrid one. So, my task is when someone comes at morning - at 9:00 am all the users come and for example 10 of them change their computers they will have to doanload 2GB of data for example. So I'm thinking now to make this with server which will have PCI-E network adapter with 4 ports x 1Gbit and buy switch HP 2530-48G. Seller said this is non-blocking switch. I'm going to configure it with aggregation. Server will be setup with NAS4Free. Can you recommend me other variant to make this possible. Thank you.

 

[Samir]

If you're going to have 30 users all hitting the file server at once, you're going to have 30 x whatever network bandwidth all hitting the server at once. 30 x gigabit would be 30Gps, which is 3.75GBs, which is the transfer speed at which all users would have their files downloaded in about 1-2 seconds. The problem is that 3.75GBs is a very high transfer rate for the storage medium, moreless the network.

If you're going to use a 4x gigabit card, the maximum it will be able to transfer (in aggregate) is 500MB/s. This means that to transfer 120-150GB of data (30 x 4-5GB) would be around 4-5 minutes at best assuming you have a storage device that can transfer at 500MB/s to the network.

Now, this is the worst case highest load scenario. For 10 users, you can divide the time by 3, so 1.33 to 1.66 minutes. Still a chunk of time since there is more than just the file copying involved to get fully loaded and ready for use.

 

[Xelas]

I would NOT run nas4free or freenas unless you have VERY beefy hardware AND you know all of the intricacies on how to configure ZFS for good performance. It's not as easy as just tossing some SSDs into a box.

Regarding what Samir said - roaming profiles absolutely HAMMER file servers. Profiles are made up of zillions of small files, AND you have multiple competing users hammering on it at once - I guarantee you that you won't get anywhere remotely close to 500 MB/s out of a whitebox server with nas4free if you use ZFS, and possibly not even if you use another file system, and that's assuming you load up with SSD drives for bulk storage to brute-force the issue.