NAS vs SAN for backing up data.

SamMantini · Apr 23, 2016

Hello,

I am new to this site and I am sorry if this question has been asked already. If it has, please send me the link to the answer.

I am a videographer who has about 8TB of video on a Mediasonic PRORAID with 4x 5TB hard drives formatted as a RAID 5.

I just accidentally formatted my entire RAID, but luckily I made a backup before I left for vacation last week onto an extern 8TB hard drive. I just got back and bought a new hard drive and when I went to format it in Disk Utility, I accidentally choose my raid and erased everything.

I realized that I can not trust myself or a single storage device to ensure that I will never delete my data again.

I was thinking about adding a seagate NAS and then using my RAID as a local backup but the only issue is that the NAS only comes with 5TB. After watching a video online that describes the difference between NAS and SAN, I like the idea of setting up a SAN so I can easily add more storage later without too much hassle.

My question is, is there a off the shelf SAN that I could buy with around 20TBs of storage?

I am not tech savvy but in a perfect world, I would love to be able to have a system in place so when I am done filming a project, I can copy all the data onto one hard drive which is then automatically backed up and then I would use an offline third hard drive to manually back up the back up either daily or weekly.

Is the below setup possible?

Imac 27" --------> 15TB SAN --------> 15TB RAID (TIME MACHINE for automated backup) --------> 15TB Offline RAID or Hard drive

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time,
Sam

Ember1205 · Apr 23, 2016

A SAN is intended to be connected to compute chassis using very high speed HBAa (Host Bus Adapters). You don't have that option for your MAC. What you want is a NAS (Network-Attached Storage), which is very much like a file server but without running processes and such like a full blown server does.

Take a look here for some guidance on how to build one yourself: http://www.freenas.org/

SamMantini · Apr 23, 2016

Thank you Ember1205. I have read their website but I still have a few questions. Hopefully they get back to me shortly. Here is a part of what I asked them in case you might have the answer as well.

"I would love to use my iMac to copy data on to an expandable SAN that will automatically back up to another external hard drive so I have two copies. Then I want to be able to use a third hard drive that is offline that I will use to manually backup the backup every night.
Lastly, due to my iMac having limited space on its internal hard drive, I need to be able to work off the SAN or another hard drive that will also be linked to the SAN and backup process.
What system would you recommend for me. On acreage I create between 1-2TB's of data a year."

Thanks again for your response,
Sam

lclev · Apr 23, 2016

A SAN is way more than you probably want and is way more complicated to set up - and you need servers and all kinds of other stuff..... This article explains it better than me typing it all out:

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/storage-area-network-SAN

What you want is a NAS and they can be expandable with removable and upgradable drives. You can move data on and off of them.

Lisa

Ember1205 · Apr 23, 2016

If you're in need of automatic backups and such, many NAS systems can be configured to rsync the data from one location to another, effectively eliminating the need for RAID on a primary NAS device. In fact, you could set it up so that all of your data gets stored on your iMac, rsync'ed to a NAS on your network in short intervals (maybe every five minutes), then rsync'ed from the NAS to a secondary NAS every twelve hours. This gives you a cascading backup that ensures that you can recover a deleted file by going to the secondary NAS before the delete is sync'ed to it. And you don't need any of the NAS devices to use RAID because you're keeping additional copies of the data elsewhere.

SamMantini · May 2, 2016

Thanks for all the suggestions, there is still a few things I am not certain about.

1st, I only have a 256gb solid state drive in my mac, so I can't store my video files on there. Can I set it up so that I work off 1 8TB external hard drive that is then backed up to the NAS then automatically backed up to another hard drive such as my RAID. The only reason I would use my raid is so I can have 15TBs of storage for back ups.

Also, can anyone tell me how to set this up properly, like which hard drives I need to buy and how to build a NAS backup? I saw a personal cloud or NAS for sale at best buy, is this what I would need?

Sorry, I am very new to NAS and SAN systems.

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...spx?path=1333886b3bd1bb852ff0c3f23f06c1dfen02

Would using Time Machine from Mac be a good idea if I

Sam

Ember1205 · May 2, 2016

www.freenas.org will provide you with a lot of information into how to create your own NAS. The alternative is to buy something already built / configured / populated, and your budget will significantly impact your choices.

That personal cloud drive from Seagate is nothing more than a NAS with one drive (no redundancy) that provides a means to access it from anywhere (hence, the "cloud" part of the name). If your concern is storage with redundancy, it doesn't do much for you.

Another thing to consider, if your concern is heavily around ensuring no data loss, would be physical location. Placing all of your data within your own home means that you would not be safeguarded against physical theft, flooding, fire, etc. You would want to look at how you could add a copy of your data somewhere else. This definitely gets trickier to do with off-the-shelf products unless you're looking at storing stuff with a cloud provider. But, for that kind of space, you'll pay a premium.