Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay 32TB Rackmount NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on March 14, 2014 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- IT Computing
- Seagate
- Enterprise
Introduction
Seagate's acquisition of LaCie in 2012 made quite a bit of sense as most of their product lines were complementary in nature. However, they had a bit of an overlap in the NAS market, particularly in the SOHO ARM-based segment. Early last year, we reviewed the LaCie 5big NAS Pro, a desktop form factor x86 NAS with an embedded Linux OS developed in-house by LaCie. With Seagate not having a presence in this space, it was an ideal segment to target with the help of LaCie's expertise. The result of the attempt is the Business Storage 1U rackmount lineup.
The Seagate Business Storage 1U Rackmounts come in 4-bay and 8-bay varieties. The Business Storage lineup also includes 1-4 bay versions based on a Cavium chipset, but the OS running on those is not based on LaCie's NAS OS. There is also a 4-bay Windows Server. The Cavium-chipset based units as well as the Windows Server come in the desktop tower form factor, while the units based on LaCie's OS are all rackmounts.
The specifications of the Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay Rackmount unit being reviewed today are provided below.
| Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay 32TB Rackmount (STDP32000100) Specifications | |||
| Processor | Intel Celeron G1610T (2C/2T @ 2.3 GHz) | ||
| RAM | 4 GB DDR3 ECC RAM | ||
| Drive Bays | 8x 3.5" SATA 6 Gbps HDD [ Populated with 8x ST4000NM033 Constellation® ES.3 SATA 6Gb/s 4-TB Hard Drives ] | ||
| Network Links | 2x 1 GbE | ||
| USB Slots | 3x USB 2.0 | ||
| eSATA Ports | None | ||
| Maximum Capacity | 8-bays | ||
| VGA / Console / HDMI | VGA | ||
| PSU | Redundant (2x) 250W | ||
| Full Specifications Link | Seagate STDP32000100 Specifications (PDF) | ||
| Suggested Retail Pricing | US $5100 | ||
After taking a brief look at our testbed setup and testing methodology for the unit below, we will move on to the hardware and setup impressions. Following that, we will cover performance in single client scenarios and our usual multi-client tests. The final section will cover rebuild times and power consumption numbers while also providing some closing thoughts.
Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology
Our NAS reviews use either SSDs or hard drives depending on the unit under test. While rackmounts and units equipped with 10GbE capabilities use SSDs, the others use hard drives. Despite being a rackmount, the STDP32000100 was evaluated with the bundled drives because of the vendor's market positioning. Evaluation of NAS performance under both single and multiple client scenarios was done using the SMB / SOHO NAS testbed we described earlier.
| AnandTech NAS Testbed Configuration | |
| Motherboard | Asus Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA2011 SSI-EEB |
| CPU | 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2630L |
| Coolers | 2 x Dynatron R17 |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsZ F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL (8x8GB) CAS 10-10-10-30 |
| OS Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Secondary Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Tertiary Drive | OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid (1TB HDD + 100GB NAND) |
| Other Drives | 12 x OCZ Technology Vertex 4 64GB (Offline in the Host OS) |
| Network Cards | 6 x Intel ESA I-340 Quad-GbE Port Network Adapter |
| Chassis | SilverStoneTek Raven RV03 |
| PSU | SilverStoneTek Strider Plus Gold Evoluion 850W |
| OS | Windows Server 2008 R2 |
| Network Switch | Netgear ProSafe GSM7352S-200 |
Thank You!
We thank the following companies for helping us out with our NAS testbed:
- Thanks to Intel for the Xeon E5-2630L CPUs and the ESA I-340 quad port network adapters
- Thanks to Asus for the Z9PE-D8 WS dual LGA 2011 workstation motherboard
- Thanks to Dynatron for the R17 coolers
- Thanks to G.Skill for the RipjawsZ 64GB DDR3 DRAM kit
- Thanks to OCZ Technology for the two 128GB Vertex 4 SSDs, twelve 64GB Vertex 4 SSDs and the RevoDrive Hybrid
- Thanks to SilverStone for the Raven RV03 chassis and the 850W Strider Gold Evolution PSU
- Thanks to Netgear for the ProSafe GSM7352S-200 L3 48-port Gigabit Switch with 10 GbE capabilities.
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lorribot - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
Sorry but the comment "Most users looking for a balance between performance and redundancy are going to choose RAID-5" is just plain stupid if you value your data at all. Look at anyone serious in enterprise storage and they will tell you Raid 6 is a must with SATA disks over 1TB. SATA is just pants when it comes to error detection and the likelyhood of one disk failling and then finding a second one fail with previously undetected errors when you try a rebuild is quite high.Rebuild times are often longer, I have seen 3TB drives stretch in to a third day.
So on an 8 disk system you are now looking at only 6 disks and you really want a hot spare so now you are down to just 5 disks and 20TB raw, formated this is going to be down to 19TB. Where has that 32TB storage system gone?
If you are doing SATA drive you need shelves of them, the more the merrier to make any kind of sense in the business world.
Penti - Saturday, March 15, 2014 - link
Audience?I don't quite get who's the target audience for this, surely an rack mount NAS must mean SMB/Enterprise. But can't really see this fit here. Lack of encryption is just one point there, but at this price it surely lacks in many other regards, it has no 10GbE, no raid-controller (rebuild time seems to be ridiculous). Software doesn't really seem up for small enterprises. What is this appliance supposed to be used against? iSCSI is it's main feature but what use is it at this speed? No proper remote management of hardware that costs around 2500 USD? That is using a 42 dollar processor? I don't get this product, what are you suppose to use it for?
ravib123 - Saturday, March 15, 2014 - link
We often use open filer or other linux based NAS/SAN platforms.Looking at this configuration I agree that most with an 8 disk array who are looking for maximum storage space would use RAID5, normally we use more disks and RAID10 for improved performance.
My curiosity is how CPU and Memory bound this thing must be, but I saw no mention of these being limiting factors. The performance is far below most configurations I've used with 8 disks in RAID5 (with a traditional RAID card).
Penti - Saturday, March 15, 2014 - link
The thing is that you get pretty decent hardware at 2000-2500 USD. Say a barebone Intel/Supermicro with IPMI/IPKVM (BMC), some Xeon-processor in the lower ends, AES-NI and all that and a case with hotswap bays and two PSU's. No problem running 10GbE, fiberchannel or 8 disks (you might need an add-on card or two). I would expect them to at least spend more then 500 for CPU, ram and board on appliances in this price range. It's not like the software and case itself is worth 2500 USD, plus whatever markup they have on their drives.SirGCal - Sunday, March 16, 2014 - link
Well, I used retired hardware and built a RAID6 (RAIDZ2) box with 8 drives, 2TB each, with nothing more then a case to hold them and a $41 internal SATA 4-port controller card. Downloaded Ubuntu, installed the ZFS packages, configured the array, and setup monitoring. Now I have a fully functional Linux rig with SSH, etc. and ~ 11,464,525,440 1K blocks. (roughly 11TB usable).I have another 23TB array usable using 4TB drives and an actual, very expensive, 6G, 8 port RAID card. The ZFS rig is right there in performance, even using slower (5400 RPM) drives.
So you can do it as cheap as you like and get more functionality then this box offers. Need multiple NIC, throw em in, need ECC, server boards are just as available. Need U-factor, easy enough. I agree with the others, I don't see the $2k+ justification in cost... Even if they had the 'self encrypting' versions for $400 each, that's $3200, leaving $1900 for the hardware... Eww...
alyarb - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
half-assed product. why is it only 30 inches deep? You could fit another row of disks if you use the entire depth of the rack. assuming you have a meter-deep rack of course, but who doesnt?I just want an empty chassis with a backplane for 3 rows of 4 disks. I want to supply the rest of the gear on my own.