Help with building a fast NAS for small business?

[Dave R]

Hey folks,

I work for a small business that is having some issues with data storage and their network in general. It can be quite a pain for the guys in the trenches actually getting the work we do done, so I am looking into what I can do to correct the issue(s).

I'll give you an idea of what we are doing, what we are doing it with, and the problems I am looking to correct so you'll have an idea what I am trying to accomplish...

The main "meat" of our work is done on 4 PC's (Win7 Pro) running an engineering/cad/cam suite to create and manipulate fairly large and involved 3D cad models and assemblies as wells as generating NC code for manufacturing purposes.

Our "network", as it stands consists of what basically amounts to a rats nest haphazardly strung Cat5 cable that is in poor condition at best. This all connects our 4 workstations through a few fast ethernet swithces to the rest of our network including our current "server". The server in question is a 6 or 8 year old machine running XP and hosting the software license manager for the aforementioned CAD programs. Also connected to this PC (via USB) is our "Master Tape", a 1TB external HD containing all of our work files. Clearly, this is not ideal, and performance reflects this. While it has been the norm in the past for the guys to work off the files on the "Master Tape", ever increasing amounts of lag at the workstations has prompted them to transfer the files locally, work on them there, then transfer them back. This helps, but neither completely alleviates the problems, nor addresses the root issue as I see it.

Here is my plan (so far) to fix the issues, I'd appreciate any input any of you might have...

First, I plan to rip out all of the current cabling and switches connected to the workstations and leading to our current server and replace them with Cat6 cabling and an 8 port Gigabit switch. I was thinking this one should do.

Second is figuring out what to do about this server. I have been doing a lot of reading on the subject of NAS and server building, and have decided to build something to suit our needs. (I enjoy playing with this stuff, want to learn, and they will pay me for my time to do it, so I don't plan to purchase a pre-fab unit.) this is where my real questions start, I have no idea where to start, mainly, I am unsure of how to nail down what my requirements are in solid terms. There are plenty of builds out there and I am confident in my ability to throw one together and get it running and networked, but I am having a hard time determining what would be appropriate for our use. I have built several PC's with good success, and I am starting to get a good handle on networking, but servers and DNS devices are still pretty fuzzy. Would one of the myriad of Atom based solutions out there amply cover the needs of 4 such worstations? I have an ASUS Striker Extreme MoBo that is essentially brand new laying around, would that be an appropriate candidate for building a higher performance file storage and license serving system? I realize it would not be as efficient as an Atom based system, but I am more interested in performance than power usage.

I was looking at using that MoBo, plus a few odds an ends I have hanging around like a PS, and old video card, and a Mid Tower case, plus the following components to build my new server...

Here are the components I was looking at...
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 Processor
2x Western Digital 1TB drives (not sure of specific drives yet)
4x Crucial BL25664AA80E Ballistix Sport

Am I even remotely on track? If not what would you recommend? I have a budget of about $1000 for the whole deal, I might be able to stretch it to $1500, but that would be max.

Something I had forgot to mention was that our Master Tape does get backed up off site weekly in addition to the daily local backups.

Thank you in advance for any input you may give.

 

[stevech]

I'd leave the cat5 cables alone. And if the PCs lack gigabit Ethernet, leave the switch(es) alone. Changing to gigaBit switches is low cost and will be OK with most cat5 wiring as long as it isn't too lengthy. Few users will notice the difference between 100BT and 1000BT in the applications, in my experience.

The server is another issue. Since it runs the floating license manager, you can't retire the XP system and change to a NAS. If you don't compute on the server, then a low cost, low power consumption small form factor computer might do just fine. Well under $1000. Spend the rest on disk drives in a proper enclosure attached to this new PC.

Perhaps you want to go mini-ITX with the AMD E350 based motherboard (Gigabyte or ASUS). The one I have does 80+ MBytes/sec on the LAN, for a big file. Moving lots of small files is not constrained by the disk or LAN of course.

I'd run two drives in RAID1 and buy a third drive of the same size and have it on USB or eSATA so you can do backups (RAID is not a backup), and take the drive off site as the norm.


Or a small tower with a micro-ATX motherboard.

USB3 is nice - mine's showing (mini-ITX) 60-80MB/sec.

For a 4 PC setting, if I were doing this, since you're coming from an adequate if aging XP computer, perhaps you can just use Win7 Professional (not server), and setup folder shares rather than all the yadda-yadda to manage a full-up NAS. And hopefully that license server will run on Win7.

lots of options.