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RAID5 NAS Recommendations?

hayduke

hayduke

macrumors 65816
Original poster
I'm about to pull the trigger on a RAID5 card for my MacPro (4x750GB) and I want an external (different building) RAID5 for network backups. I'm not quite in the market for a full >4TB RAID system as the price points still seem quite high. I was thinking of this system:

http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-RNR4410-ReadyNAS-Gigabit-Rackmount/dp/B000Z2FVIE/ref=pd_sbs_e_4

Any thoughts? Would 4TB RAID5 be a good Time Machine back-up for my 3TB RAID5 MacPro in terms of space?

Can anyone recommend a better system? We can afford to spend more, but I'm hesitant to pull the trigger on a ~$15k 16-drive RAID system. Part of my was thinking (hoping!) the Netgear system may support 2TB drives if they become available and that system would continue to support our needs for many years.
 
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Capacity is all dependent on how often you will be backing up, and the size of the file changes.

Do you expect your daily file changes to be close to your MPro drive capacity?
 
iShater said:
Capacity is all dependent on how often you will be backing up, and the size of the file changes.

Do you expect your daily file changes to be close to your MPro drive capacity?
Click to expand...

File changes are, in general, small. One foreseeable problem, however, is that an entire directory of data might get moved or renamed. This change effectively results in the data being stored twice on the back-up machine if you are doing incremental back-ups. That is more my problem though, and I don't think any system has that resolved.

Is there any way to know if the Netgear systems could support larger drives when they are available? Is there a common chip limitation that prevents machines, in general, from supporting >1TB drives?
 
I can't answer to the expandability of this specific NAS as I am not familiar with it.

You need to calculate what the size of your initial backup will be (Full backup), and add to it the average size of changes you do a day, lets assume the worst where you will move one or two directories.

Add up the total for 30 daily backups+the full backup and that is the minimum size you will need.

I strongly believe in a good backup strategy for work, which would include keeping at least one copy of a full backup and archiving it for a period of a few months before erasing it. You might want to look at even tapes. 😱
 
I have Readynas. Vry pleased. Uses RAID X proprietary RAID that can expand when you add bigger disks without breaking existing array. supports 1tb drives and has good support community. Overcame last 2tb limit issue to support 1tb drives so should support new 1.5tb drives when they start shipping i would think
 
hayduke said:
Hot damn. Seems like a nice system at a very good price point.

http://www.eaegis.com/items/data-storage/nas/sata/thecus-n5200pro~n5200b-pro~n5200br-pro-/thecus-n5200bpro-4tb-raid-iscsi-nas-n5200bpro-detail.htm

Any other comments about this or other systems?
Click to expand...

Just remember Raid 5 Is (DriveSize * 4) - 1, so 4 TB setup is really a 3TB array. This will also rebuild arrays larger if you put in larger drives (you have to do it one disk at a time, let it rebuild and then do the next).
 
Mindflux said:
Just remember Raid 5 Is (DriveSize * 4) - 1, so 4 TB setup is really a 3TB array.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that is why I was thinking if I did RAID5 my internal 4x750GB, that an external 4x or 5x1TB might provide reasonable overhead for incremental back-ups.

Mindflux said:
This will also rebuild arrays larger if you put in larger drives (you have to do it one disk at a time, let it rebuild and then do the next).
Click to expand...

Do you mean ReadyNAS will or that Thecus will? I didn't notice that as a Thecus spec.
 
hayduke said:
Yeah, that is why I was thinking if I did RAID5 my internal 4x750GB, that an external 4x or 5x1TB might provide reasonable overhead for incremental back-ups.



Do you mean ReadyNAS will or that Thecus will? I didn't notice that as a Thecus spec.
Click to expand...

Thecus should by all means do larger than 1TB drives when they come out. This might require some software to update it.

Be aware that the 5th bay on the Thecus in RAID5 is nothing more than a spare disk so if one of your drives in the array dies this one picks up right away and starts rebuilding.

Also, you might want to look into setting up a smaller iSCSI target with the Thecus if you go that route. Once you set the array size you can't go back and make it smaller without wiping out your data.

I'm not sure if OSX has an iSCSI initiator though?
 
I have an HP EX475 Mediasmart server that I'm very happy with. Only $600 or so (with no drives), making it one of the cheapest solutions out there. Caveat: I haven't actually tried it with a Mac, but supposedly it works fine (though double check & ask around first).
 
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