NAS or SAM-SD?
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@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
In no way is a Dell PowerEdge R830 a black box appliance.
- It is just a server, the OS and the applications are not part of the system. They are user defined.
- The server itself is not an appliance even at the hardware level, it is a collection of user serviceable parts that can be openly modified at any time.
- Defined usage of the device is for the end user to set it up themselves. Any OEM setup is purely for testing (RAID, OS install, etc.)
- It is not an appliance, all needed or possible configurations are not included by the manufacturer.)
- It lacks a single point of contact. Your options for OS, applications, extra parts, etc. all define their own support agreements as you see fit.
I thought a black box had to be an enterprise appliance, not something like Synology/QNAP/ReadyNAS/etc that you'd find in much smaller environments like SMB.
No, black box or white box have nothing to do with the enterprise nature. No enterprise white box parts or processes exist on the market so white boxing cannot be enterprise, but that in no way implies that black boxes are enterprise. Black boxes include things like.. airplane black boxes (hence the name), your cable company's DVR, a normal home router, ANYTHING labeled as an appliance, etc.
Black box = appliance. NAS are by definition appliances / black boxes.
Maybe I overthought which Synology box, or does it even matter? The smaller ones like a 2-bay, you only replace the drives, but the larger rack mount ones, Synology had me replace the HDD back plane & power supplies. Are those rack mount ones still considered black boxes?
If the term NAS exists, it is a black box. That they are making you do the service work isn't a factor. They supply all parts and directions. Black box doesn't mean that you can't physically touch it, but it means you don't have control or know what anything does. That you can figure out what the parts do is ancillary. SOmeone with zero IT knowledge could do the work just as easily.
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@coliver said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@coliver said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@coliver said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
White box is not the counter to black box.
So then this falls into the category of a black box? By simply spec'ing it out myself and having a single point of contact... http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=pe_r830_1190&model_id=poweredge-r830&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04
Not in the least. Since you know that black box and white box are not each other's counterpoints AND that all normal servers are not black box or white box, why would you assume that this became one or the other?
Because I thought it fit the bill for what is defined as a "black box"...
*One that is not necessarily pre-built. You talk to sales or go online and spec it out specifically to fit your needs. <-- this alone makes it not a black box
*It has a single point of contact for support. <-- this isn't clear, why would it be a single point of contact? I don't see that as an option.
*The parts, while spec'd by you, are not accessible, or the software, so you rely on support to help. <-- this is not the case with this unit, so doesn't qualifyI've completely lost sense what a black box vs. enterprise server is then. White box I understand, you build it from whatever parts vendors you choose and load up whatever OS you want.
Do you consider a desktop purchased from CyberPC, Dell, or HP a blackbox?
Haha now I'm not even sure, since I've completely lost sense of what the term black box really means.
An Xbox would be a blackbox. A PC bought from CyberPC or Dell would be neither a blackbox nor a whitebox. They are PCs.
Good desktop comparison.
iPhones, XBox, PS4... all black box. If you need to "root" something to gain control, it was a black box that you broke into. They are all appliances.
I'm trying to think of a home comparison but I do service most of my appliances myself so that makes it difficult.
Self driving cars.
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@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@BBigford said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
White box is not the counter to black box.
So then this falls into the category of a black box? By simply spec'ing it out myself and having a single point of contact... http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=pe_r830_1190&model_id=poweredge-r830&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04
Not in the least. Since you know that black box and white box are not each other's counterpoints AND that all normal servers are not black box or white box, why would you assume that this became one or the other?
Because I thought it fit the bill for what is defined as a "black box"...
*One that is not necessarily pre-built. You talk to sales or go online and spec it out specifically to fit your needs. <-- this alone makes it not a black box
*It has a single point of contact for support. <-- this isn't clear, why would it be a single point of contact? I don't see that as an option.
*The parts, while spec'd by you, are not accessible, or the software, so you rely on support to help. <-- this is not the case with this unit, so doesn't qualifyI've completely lost sense what a black box vs. enterprise server is then. White box I understand, you build it from whatever parts vendors you choose and load up whatever OS you want.
A black box means you don't know anything about it, and don't care.
Scotts trying to tell us what to care about. What OS should I install to deal with these feelings?
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I would be interested to see a DOM and pricing on a simple SAM-SD with say 12TB of usable capacity (RAID10)
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@hobbit666 said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
I would be interested to see a DOM and pricing on a simple SAM-SD with say 12TB of usable capacity (RAID10)
You leave out any talk of performance so this leaves a really broad scope. You can do a super cheap SAM-SD with RAID 10 12TB using a 1U xbyte Dell server, 4x WD Red 6TB drives and using software RAID. Will work just fine and be super functional, if not fast and without blind swap support. But I'd guess around $1,100.
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Base R410 is $799. Each 6TB drive is $240 new on Amazon. So $1,760 would do it for sure.
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Now if you wanted only 8TB usable on RAID 10, you could drop to 4TB SAS drives, though xByte directly and got a small increase in performance and a small decrease in price. Shaving about $80 off of the price tag to $1,680 for a faster system with total xbyte support.
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SAM-SD increase in relative value as you move into the 2U realm and larger storage sizes. At the smallest sizes the cost benefits, while they exist, are not so large.
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I am building this box for reliability... so RAID10 is a given... Which is better in RAID10 to improve the reliability? A few big drives, or several smaller ones?
IE: 4 x 8TB drives... vs 8 x 4TB drives?
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@dafyre said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
I am building this box for reliability... so RAID10 is a given... Which is better in RAID10 to improve the reliability? A few big drives, or several smaller ones?
IE: 4 x 8TB drives... vs 8 x 4TB drives?
All other things being equal, larger drives are almost always better than more drives. Each additional set of drives that you add increases risk. Bigger drives adds risk, too. But not as quickly. More drives means more failures and higher risk of double failure. Larger disks causes longer rebuild times. But the later is generally safer than the former.
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Of course there are weird thresholds. For you, you are in small numbers so bigger drives gives you the granularity to minimize unnecessary risk. If you were in huge numbers, the opposite might be true.
Example:
You have 24 2TB drives in RAID 10 for 24TB usable. You need 25TB usable. Going to 26 2TB drives is probably a lot safer than increasing all drives to 3TB.
But if you have two 6TB drives in RAID 1 and you need 8TB. It's safer to go to two 8TB drives than to go to four drives.
You are on the later side of the scale.
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For the Build we are going for, it will likely be the Synology DS1515 and 4 x 8TB drives, if it's not required for us to have a Rackmounted system...
If it has to be rack mounted, the R510 kills on pricing, so I'd probably build that with 4 x 8TB drives...
For a system like this, what brand of drive should I go with? I know the WD Red Pros are out there, but those things are $550 a pop.
Any reason to not use a Seagate 8TB drive, for instance?
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WD Red are not bad. They are $326. Still a lot more than the Seagates.
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@scottalanmiller https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/
Higher capacity drives seem to have a lower failure rate. Do you know why?
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@wirestyle22 said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/
Higher capacity drives seem to have a lower failure rate. Do you know why?
Newer engineering. They are more mature designs, so that is expected. Nothing, or nearly nothing, in a higher capacity drive would result in higher failure rates and really high capacity drives with helium would lower it.
You expect newer cars and aeroplanes to be more reliable than those designed years ago, same thing here. We get better at making drives over time and so the biggest drives with the latest designs have the best reliability.
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@wirestyle22 said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@scottalanmiller https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/
Higher capacity drives seem to have a lower failure rate. Do you know why?
Funny... one billion hours and counting. The RAID study that I did was nearly 3 billion drive hours! I had no idea that my study was three times the size of Backblazes to date!
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Also, their larger drives are newer, so less opportunity for failures.
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Their smallest drives also have 0% failures. Small sample sizes aren't useful. One failure would throw it all off.
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@scottalanmiller said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@dafyre said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
@Breffni-Potter said in NAS or SAM-SD?:
What do you need for recovery time for that box if there is a hardware fault.
Also, I bet you can get a better performing server chassis for that money.
The trade off is, time to build and configure a server, versus an out of the box Synology with a higher risk factor.
This is only going to be for a Photo Archive, so recovery time is not a huge concern as far as I am aware.
Building a server is easy.
Not for people who buy NAS. People buy NAS because they believe that building or managing a super generic file server is somehow super hard. That's why NAS exists. You would not believe how many people think that "right click and say 'share' is hard."
I chose a ReadyNAS for home use over building out a SAM-SD simply because of the ROI for 'Personal Use'.
Business use is something different.
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Well, it looks like I settled on a Build for this...
Consdering list prices with no discounts, it'll run me about $3,800 to build:
Synology RS2416RP+
8 x 4TB Seagate Drives (32TB Raw, 16TB Usable in RAID10).Or...
For ~$2,600 build...ReadyNAS 3138
4 x 8TB Drives (32TB RAW, 16TB Usable in RAID10)Then I have to explain to the users that this is NOT a backup, lol.
Edit: Added the ReadyNAS build.
