NAS Boxes - What on Earth are they on about?

[sarahecho]

I really really need some help, in as plain/simple English as possible. I have been asked to solve our server issues here at work - but I have no idea (I am no way a Techie!). We (as a business) are looking for a central storage system, and have been supplied with the following 3 quotes from 3 different "computer Solutions" companies.

I have asked them to help - but naturally they want to sell me their own solution and not necessarily the best one for "us". I understand that each of the items quoted do similar things but for all I know one could be a top of the range Mercedes, one could be a good reliable run around and another could be the equivalent of a Lada! We are only a small company, with 10 users, and our data requirements are approx 50Gb/year currently expected to increase over the next few years (estimated at 20-30Gb/year). All we want is something that will store our data (currently approx 200Gb) and be able to hold our future data, be pretty robust, last at least 5 years but preferably longer.

Quote 1:
NETGEAR ReadyNAS 1100 RNR4410 - NAS - 4 TB - rack-mountable - Serial ATA-150 - HD 1 TB x 4 - RAID 0, 1, 5 - Gigabit Ethernet - 1U

This device will give you a raid 5 volume of around 750GB in size.

Quote 2 :
Netapps Storevault S500 1Tb

Quote 3:
1 off HP NAS DL100 Storage Server Providing 640Gb Raw storage

Thanks

 

[Trotter]

NAS = network attached storage. Network-attached storage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RAID is a way the drives can be set up. RAID0 is data striping, splitting up the data between drives to increase speed (reading from all drives at one time). RAID1 is mirroring, writing the same data to separate drives as backups.RAID5 is basically a mix of the two (much more involved, but that's it in a nutshell).

The first solution offers the most storage. If set up as a RAID5, it would equate to a TB, but be very well protected against drive failure.

The second is a flat TB. If it offers RAID, it would cut the storage by the type of RADI used (RAID0 = 500GB, RAID5 = 250GB).

The third is 640GB, but is a HP(?). You would have to look up the specs on it to see what it is for sure.

Without complete or mostly complete specs, that's all I can do... recap the options. From what I see, option 1 looks the best to me storage-wise.

 

[veedubfreak]

4TB drives in raid 5 would give you 3TB storage. Because you lose 1 drive to parity. (option 1 up there that is)

 

[Trotter]

My bad. VW is right.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Since it is a company, go with which ever has Raid 5 on it...