Buy or build a fast NAS/Storage Server?

[PeBi]

Hello all,


I want to get a new NAS Server which should accomplish the following:

1. more than 750MB/s ( better 1GB/s ) data throughput
2. more than 20TB of dataspace
3. thus Thunderbolt and/or 10Git ethernet ( -> is there a 10gbit ethernet-thunderbolt "converter"? )

Devices which come near this range would be:
Something like the TS-EC879U-RP by QNAP
or Promise Pegasus R6 ( ok not exactly a Nas )

So my Questions:
Does anyone know other available devices which suffice the above criteria?
Has anyone experience in building such a machine himself or does know a place to get information about it?


Thank you all.
Regards,
P

 

[thiggins]

Achieving 750 MB/s will be very difficult and you'll get it only with large file copies and 10 GbE interface.

 

[PeBi]

Thank you, yes one needs 10Gbit ethernet or thunderbolt.
But with ivy bridge mainboards including thunderbolt that will not be a problem.

The Pegasus R6 in Raid0 with conventional Hdds was able to put out 780 MB/s according to this anandtech test in 2011:

http://www.anandtech.com/print/4489


Has anyone built a server themseves similar to my planned one?

Is it possible to stripe two Pegasus R6 together?


Thanks!
Regards,
P

 

[GregN]

Though quite sweet, the price of the Pegasus is also quite dear - coming in at like 2400 bucks. That is like $400/drive.

I haven't built anything with thunderbolt, yet, I have built a SAN with 4GB Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter, which hit $150/drive ( at 20 drives ), and in some tests achieve 365MB/s using Intel's NASPT test suite, not IOMeter - NASPT produces numbers that are much closer to real world performance.

What I learned was that under different read/write scenarios speeds vary wildly.

There are two thunderbolt ports on the Pegasus, this is there to allow you to daisy chain several pegasus boxes off your host machine.

Should also point out, that the Pegasus provides Direct Attached Storage (DAS) and at this time is not reachable from the network without traveling through a server, which means you'll only get that 780MB speed on one machine.