UCS as fileserver with fast and lot's of data

#1

Hello everyone,
I’m currently preparing a new storage server setup.
The general idea: Storage server with 192-256GB RAM, Proxmox as OS, UCS as VM, most likely with a HBA controller pass-through for more/better configuration options of the actual storage system. Onboard Raid-Controller with RAID1 and 2x 1TB SSD for Proxmox itself and 3-5 VMs for different purpose.

I was thinking of UCS as storage VM since it allows us to integrated with a Windows DC (or even act as the main DC) and still give is plenty of options for the storage system.
The necessary shares will be 3x 50TB and 1x 100TB, scalable for future. We have (have guess, have experience) about 50TB of data coming and going to the storage per month. In our current aweful Windows Server setup that leads to a lot of fragmentation and seriously slow speeds. In future we want to be able to push 10-20TB with 1GByte/s speeds - that’s our limit from the network.

I’m not sure yet about what storage concept and filesystem we can/should use with UCS. Do you guys have any suggestions?
ZFS would be one way to go, but I’m a bit afraid of the necessary clock speed for checksum and the fragmentation question. BTRFS might be an option since it is considered stable in Debian by now.

Any feedback appreciated.

#2

If you just want storage then I would probably go with something like TrueNAS. I run it on Proxmox alongside UCS as my directory, but you could hook it up to the Windows directory if that’s what you use as your directory system.

There are other options for file storage specifically if TrueNAS doesn’t fit the bill, but UCS is not really targeted at file storage as much as those other systems.

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#3

I agree to @Kevo
UCS is fine. Just for storage I would consider different OS. I know the current QNAP Hero OS offers the possibility to use m2-SSDs as RAID cache which is really, really fast! I have the TS-473A here and it appears it can easily saturate both 2,5Gbit NICs. See test in c’t (sorry, paywall).

And just as an additional note: use (if possible) network bonding so you might get more than just 1Gbit/s by using multiple adapters. Better use a NAS device with at least 2,5Gbit NICs and a switch doing this speed. So you will have EVERY client have 1Gbit/s instead of all sharing…

And regarding RAID. Use RAID10 if speed is your most concern!

Fragmentation will occur anyways, not matter what filesystem you use. All COW FS have fragmentation but this might not be an issue with more modern FS than NTFS (like ZFS or BTRFS).

Good look!

/KNEBB

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