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New File Server - Drive Speed Recommendation!

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darkmagex

Member
I'm working on quoting a new file server for our company and I'm weighing the options for drives (RAID 5).

These are some base prices from Dell just to give a range of the cost per GB.

7.2k RPM SATA ($0.35/GB)
7.2k RPM Near-Line SAS ($0.41/GB)
10k RPM SAS ($0.90/GB)
15k RPM SAS ($1.07/GB)

I'm leaning toward the 7.2k RPM Near-Lines, our Dell rep says they are around 30% faster than SATA drives for not much more.

I'd like the faster drives but I really can't justify the cost increase. Does anyone have any benchmarks or experience that would indicate it's worth the cost to spend the extra money? This is just going to be a static file server (mainly storing word documents and photos), no databases or web content.

Small file transfers, 200 employees (although probably closer to 75-100 accessing the server). No gig wiring, maybe max 100mb/s ethernet but the wiring is old so probably no where close to that in real world throughput.
 
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You didn't say how many employees or what size of files you are dealing with, or what type of network you have or what type of disk array is being used.

But, in general, for a small company (say less than 50 employees), the employees will never be able to tell the difference on a file server with any of those drives. If you have 1000 employees, that'd be different.
 
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My experience with file servers is limited to home and small office stuff, but it sounds like the Near-Line is the best bang for your buck.
 
Near-line is the way to go. If you aren't on GigE, you can saturate a 100Mbit/s link with a USB flash drive, so even a two 7,200rpm drive Raid 1 will be fine speed wise (forgetting random access) for a file server. Even "small" word docs and photos in fileserver mode isn't something you would really need 10k/15k drives for, especially if you didn't mind small 1s waits.
 
Will the user base for the file server increase? Will you ever upgrade to Gb ethernet? Might they start using bigger/more files?

I'd go with a Near-Line RAID 5 array for a little bit of future proofing. If you don't think the hardware will ever need to do more than it does now, you'd be safe with SATA.
 
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