Need advice NAS acquisition advice for paulnye: medium biz, 6000 USD

[paulnye]

Usage type: medium biz

Preferred form factor RS (RackStation)

Number of bays: 6-bays or more

Do you have any existing drives that you plan on using? No

Prefered RAID array setup for this NAS: RAID 5

This NAS will be used for: business (virtual machines, mail, office, etc.)

Max budget for this setup: 6000 USD

Number of users that will utilize this NAS: 80

Any preferred network connectivity? 10G

Where will this NAS be used: LAN only

Any special network requirements: LAG, failover, 10G

Special cloud provider connectivity: /

Additional information:
I have a DS1812+ running for 9 years. Its an 8 Bay with Intel Atom Dual Core 2.13GH and 3GB Ram, single power supply. I use it for a VMware datastore for several VMs. It works well and access speed is not bad, but I would like some practical advice on when to upgrade to something faster & better, and by what way can I measure if its even worth doing?

I occasionally look at the current resource monitor and Im skeptical if upgrading will make performance improvements, if any.

I did take a look at the RS2421RP+ which does have redundant power supply (which I really like), and supports a 10Gb SFP network card, has a faster quad core CPU and 4GB ram etc... but when I look at the resource monitor will my investment go underutilized? If the utilization was often at 60-80% then I think it would be an easy decision, but its not.

Has anyone had the same skepticism and after the upgrade can share their story?

 

[Rusty]

If your current NAS is using VMM mail etc then by looking at the utilization I would say its not the same machine at all. If its not, then ok, but looking again at your functional requirements, it raises a bit more questions, so maybe you could share a bit more info on exactly what VMs are you planing on running and how many.

Maybe a separate hypervisor with Syno only as storage (10G) would be a better option. In that case you will probably not need a very powerful and expensive NAS to begin with, and still have better performance outcome then to use its own VMM as a hypervisor.

I recently had SA3400 on my hands for testing, and running VMs over it, compared to running them on a hypervisor with SA as pure storage made a difference in some cases. It will also depend on the array type, drives etc.

Synology SA3400 - Part 3 - virtualization

The third part of the SA3400 series of articles talks about virtualization via VMM and ESXi platforms and contains tests of Win 10 virtual machines as well as 10G network transfers.

www.blackvoid.club

 

[paulnye]

If your current NAS is using VMM mail etc then by looking at the utilization I would say its not the same machine at all. If its not, then ok, but looking again at your functional requirements, it raises a bit more questions, so maybe you could share a bit more info on exactly what VMs are you planing on running and how many.

Maybe a separate hypervisor with Syno only as storage (10G) would be a better option. In that case you will probably not need a very powerful and expensive NAS to begin with, and still have better performance outcome then to use its own VMM as a hypervisor.

I recently had SA3400 on my hands for testing, and running VMs over it, compared to running them on a hypervisor with SA as pure storage made a difference in some cases. It will also depend on the array type, drives etc.

Synology SA3400 - Part 3 - virtualization

The third part of the SA3400 series of articles talks about virtualization via VMM and ESXi platforms and contains tests of Win 10 virtual machines as well as 10G network transfers.

www.blackvoid.club

So I have 2 hosts (HP DL380 Gen9) which host approx 8 VMs. 2 AD Domain controllers, 4 file Servers, 1 Webserver, 1 PBX
They run Vmware 6.7. The Synology NAS is connected to 2 network ports at 1GB and is bonded
A couple of terms I am not familiar to:
'separate hypervisor with Syno only as storage (10G)'
'use its own VMM as a hypervisor'
'a hypervisor with SA as pure storage'

 

[Rusty]

separate hypervisor with Syno only as storage (10G)

Well you obviously have a separate hypervisor

use its own VMM as a hypervisor

Virtual Machine Manager, DSM's level 2 hypervisor

a hypervisor with SA as pure storage

NAS being used only as VM storage, as oppose to be running as a hypervisor as well (VMM)