New network setup - switch, cables, setup advice.

[LateralusArt]

I am buying a new NAS to office. Probably one of these:

Synology DS3615xd
Synology DS2015xs
QNAP TVS-EC-1080

which are expandable with expansion units.

And i have question regarding setup of new networking stuff.

For now i will be using 1Gb network.

NAS with WD Reds (8TB,6TB,6TB,5TB,4TB,4TB,3TB,3TB - half of this is for backup) will be connected to 3-5 workstations with Asus Z10PE-D8 WS motherboards using Cat.6A cables. Into switch there also will be plug in 3x RJ45 printers.

1.And i have question which 1Gb switch should i buy for this setup to get best speeds. I don't want buy 10Gbe switch for future because of price. I will go probably with switch which have about 12 ports.

2.And i am wondering if should use link aggregation? How setup like this looks like? Nas is connected to switch with 4 cables but every pc is connected to switch with only one and get max 125mb/sec speed? Or if pc has more than one port for RJ45 can be connected to switch with 2 cables to get higher speed?

3.I still didn't decided which RAID i will use or maybe i will go without raid but with backup/sync software.

Thanks for help!

 

[KenZ71]

Most likely 1 or 2 ethernet cables from NAS to switch will be all you need.

3 to 5 PCs sharing what kind of data and how large are those files? If it is mostly spreadsheets, email, word docs those are small, single gigabit is all you need.

 

[LateralusArt]

This files will have very diffrent size from smallest one up to 1-3 GB files (CG Studio). What would be good setup for this kind of things?

 

[System Error Message]

1 WD red 3TB will saturate a gigabit ethernet link one way. with 2 drives you can fully saturate a gigabit ethernet link on both simultaneous upload and download.

For big files use the hard drives native format but in RAID setup bigger files go better with bigger formats like 128k or higher formats. For lot of small files use smaller formats.

i suggest semi managed switch and multiple NICs for NIC teaming and LACP.

NAS==switch -- clients (NAS connects multiple cables to switch that connect single cables to clients. the more links from NAS to switch the more clients you can handle quickly at a time.

 

[L&LD]

An WD RED 3TB drive will not saturate a GbE Ethernet connection, nor will a 2 drive setup (individually or in an array). Except for maybe the first small section of the drive. If the drive capacity is even 25% used over the whole capacity available, the performance will be far short of what you state.

Not only does the raw drive, the raid (or not) setup, the disk format matter and the client device's os matter in how close to saturating the GbE link will actually occur, it will also not happen if testing on the same drive/array the concurrent write/read performance either.

 

[sfx2000]

I am buying a new NAS to office. Probably one of these:

Synology DS3615xd
Synology DS2015xs
QNAP TVS-EC-1080

Talk with the pre-Sales teams at QNAP and Synology - have a clear understand of your requirements before-hand...

Don't over-buy, and understand the demands on a NAS and it's capacity to serve those demands...

It's about right-sizing... don't just throw money at things...

 

[LoneWolf]

How much large simultaneous copying (that is, copies of large files from multiple systems to the NAS at the same time) will you be doing?

It may make sense to get a little more performance going to WD Red Pro drives due to their faster performance. Also, you get five-year warranties instead of three.