| Hi everyone!
I've been trying to get my current workplace to upgrade their storage and network, and now I got a Go for doing something. I'm trying to help them choose, but without much success. We've got several offers, that they shut down because money-reasons, but somehow got one they like.
Recently they got an suggestion (from someone else) that's based on synology hardware. It's an DS2015xs (https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS2015xs#spec), offered to run with 8 WD RED at 4 TB with synologys hybrid raid 2 (raid 6 equivalent). They loved it, since they can run an FTPserver on it, a DNSserver, synologys cloudstorage (like dropbox) and a few other mobile services. All in all, it will cost about $3k plus installation. They love it because the cloudstorage stuff, and the pricepoint, and the guy said the performance should be around 900MB/s (read).
Another solution that they shut down before, is a Dell Poweredge R720 (2x Xeon E5-2630v2,128 GB RAM, 4 x 480 GB SSD, 2x146 15Krpm SAS drives, 2x 10gbe) and a powerVault MD1200 with 12x4TB Nearline SAS. Would run Windows storage spaces, with the SSD's as cache and a Raid 10. A total of $17k with installation and support. Would go down in cost since I see no need too have that much ram or even two cpu's, so I'm thinking it will end around $10-12k
Short about us (or them, I've put in my notice to quit and my last day is in 3 weeks), it's 11 employees, 3 administrative, 6 2d/3d-vfx artists, 1 editors and 1 colorist. Sometimes up to 6 freelancers doing vfx-work. Working mostly with Maya, Adobe CC, Final Cut and Resolve. Pretty standard workflow, mostly DPX's, TIFs and ProRes. They also want to be able to edit directly on the storage. A small renderfarm with 10 nodes, soon-to-be 20, rendering 75% of the time. (75% windows, 25% osx)
I've been trying to explain the differences between the DELL solution and Synology, why there's a price difference, about redundancy etc, but always get stuck on first step since the spec on paper looks the same, 24TB usable space, 10GBe connection, around 900MB/s from synology, 1200MB/s from the DELL (according to a real-world test our vendor did inhouse). My concerns are more about redundancy, rebuild-times, type of drives, the CPU of synology, support etc.
Do any of you have any experience with either solution, or can see a problem with either one? maybe something positive? Or what they should get? They do have a trust-issue with me, and whatever I think, they won't really listen to me, unless someone externally can confirm my thoughts.
I have no real experience with synology except their home-consumer stuff, which I like, but don't really know what I'm thinking about the DS2015xs. And I can't get the decision-makers to understand why there is a price-difference like that between this synology and every other solution they've got. They are people who never invested in IT at all during their 7 running a company.
P.S. Our current solutions is an Yotta SAN, connected with Fiber to a PC running Nas4Free and shared out with 1 Gbit ethernet connection (the only upgrade I got to do, from the old crappy Hackintosh solutions they used).
Thanks in advance for any thoughts and or questions.
//Gustaf | |