How Buffalo Americas uses TeraStation NAS Internally

Some time ago, I was in the market for a new server to replace our existing out-of-warranty machines. While playing with the storage configuration calculator from the manufacturer, I realized that the main driver of server prices is the storage media you put in them. Go to any server manufacturers’ site, and the prices look GREAT—provided you are one of the few people who only need the single 4TB SATA drive they have under the ‘as low as’ priced unit.

I’ve talked in the past how SSDs and other fast storage devices are a bad value in certain use cases, and that remains true even at the server level. Our file server has years of accumulated junk, and like a lot of admins, I never seem to get to that place in my priority list where I archive pictures of the 2007 office party and make my file server backups smaller. So, I need a lot of storage space for all my VMs. Scanning documents is obviously better than massive file cabinets of paper that we managed back in the day, but maybe providing blazing fast access to receipt images where we spent $16.32 on an AC filter replacement and installation in 2012 isn’t the best use of my IT dollars.

What is an enterprising IT director to do when they’d like to get nice new goodies and make the VMs run well, and users happy, but also doesn’t want to over-engineer (that is, overspend) and deplete the IT budget before they can buy shiny new laptops and triple-monitor docking stations?  I can’t speak for everyone, but I simply implemented Buffalo storage products in my server rollout to increase my total available capacity, allocating fast storage to applications that require it, and slow storage to things that don’t.

How I did it was pretty simple. I went ahead and ordered a server with a modest amount of ultra-fast storage for the few applications that need it, like SQL Server, and then I grabbed one of our TeraStation 51210s (which is compatible with VMWare as an iSCSI or FTP data repository) and set up an iSCSI network on one of the free 10GbE connections on the new server.

While creating VMs, I created a C: drive to house all the OS stuff and any speed-sensitive applications that resided on the ultra-fast local storage, and then a D: drive that was allocated from the iSCSI repository on the TeraStation. This is where data that isn’t millisecond-sensitive was kept, including years of ‘other’ that the users should probably go through and delete, which I’m sure they would prioritize and get it done quickly if I asked real nicely. Or not.

I then put in a second NAS with SMB storage for my backups, and I was in business. Our customers use Novastor, Veeam, Acronis, and anything else you can imagine to backup VMs to our TeraStations, so I had my pick of the litter.  The whole system runs excellently—the users are happy with response times, and I easily saved $20,000 compared to if I’d have stuffed the server with SSD / M.2 storage. And I am writing this on a new laptop with 32Gb of RAM.

I’m happy to discuss it with you if you would like to do something similar. Our sales team can set up a call with one of our sales engineers or myself (though those guys did a lot of the actual implementation of this, I mostly drank coffee and looked managerial).

Call us at 800-688-7466 to talk to one of our sales people and we can certainly get you moving in the right direction.