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Storage budget setup for an education class setting
Hello Community,
After switching jobs I’ve lost track of current developments in storage. I’ve always been a Terrablock user, but here in secondary education there is no Terrablock budget available.
I did my research in Qnap and Synology, but no brand gives a benchmark what to expect speed wise. I’m feeling a bit in the blind what to pursue.
A little explanation of the setup will help:
30 PC’s with 10GbE connection
Dedicated 10GbE Switch
The most network/storage demanding job to expect are the first steps in Adobe Premiere or Resolve with a maximum timeline depth of 2x 1080p Prores422 @25. In most cases, it will be even less. And this is not a news network where 30 editors need full speed, but a class of youngsters.
But the largest theoretical draw on the storage would bybe 60x Prores422@25 (15MB/S) = 900MB/second.
To accommodate this well, a storage with 2x 10GbE connection is desired.
The Facilis Hub 16 states 2.0GB/s and 36 streams of Prores422@29.97. So with sixteen disks they manage 36 streams in 2.0GB/s, which is interesting to see.
Does anyone has a good hunch, or experience with a certain type of brand, nr of Disks to accommodate this class for this case with 900MB Sustained?
Many thanks and all info is welcome,
Thanks Michel
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2 Replies
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Hello Michel –
30 editors is a lot of editors on a single system, even for a Terrablock Hub 16. You want to do Apple ProRes 1080 HD at 25 fps. That is 17.27 MB/sec (AJA Data Calc). So that is 1036 MB/sec total bandwidth.
With a 16 bay NAS, you get about 1800 MB/sec total aggregate bandwidth. So for QNAP, you would choose a QNAP TS-h1683XU-RP. You put in 16 Seagate EXOS drives, all in a single RAID group. This is one of the new models that runs ZFS, so for this model you need a QNAP QM2 card with 2 480 Gig M.2 SATA drives to hold the operating system. It’s $6700 for the empty chassis. 16TB Seagate EXOS drives run about $330 each today. And you need 16 of those.
If you choose a Synology, I suggest the new Synology RS4021xs+. This does not need a separate card to run the operating system (BTRFS). Both the Synology and QNAP come complete with enough RAM and the 10G ports that you need, so no options are necessary here. You will link aggregate the 2 10G ports to your 10G switch. This model is $5400
The switch you need is a Netgear XS748T. This is a 44 port 10G switch (all copper Cat 6 connection) with 4 additional SFP+ ports for connection to your NAS, where you will do your LACP to the 10G ports. It’s $3200 on Amazon.
Obviously, the cost of 30 computers with 10G ports will cost a lot more money than either of these 2 NAS systems.
They will work perfectly fine for your application. I do this stuff every day.
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Hi Bob,
Thanks for the elaborate reply. During my research I bumped into your name frequently with replies to the communities.
I guess it’s a bit of a challenge indeed with 30 kids.
I had already set my eye on Synology, but after validating your input on the website I noticed that the benchmark nrs from Synology where based on SSD instead of HDD.
So the RS3621RPxs with 12 disks does 4718MB/s (with SSD’s) in RAID 5 so with HDD’s with a single transfer speed pf 150MB/s I estimate a speed of around 1188MB/s for 12 HDD’s in Raid 5.
But you are right, 16 disks is the bare minimum and with HDD’s I expect a throughput of 1585MB/s with this RS4021xs+.
I’m also rethinking my strategie concerning the gigabit connection per workstation.
Thanks for the generous valuable insights, very well appreciated
Best regards,
Michel
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