Need storage for machine images. Where to start?

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PCMusicGuy

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 9, 2006
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Like the title says, I'm looking for some education on my options for storing machine images. My office currently uses a 2TB external USB drive to hold machine images but is nearly full. I'm open to all solutions to achieve the following goals:

1. Easy to access and use. I imagine that most images will be transferred to the storage array via USB. Someone would carry their external drive into my office, plug it in and perform the transfer. I would like to be able to access the array via the network (mostly for monitoring and management, not really for moving the images).

2. Easily expandable. Ideally, I would start off with 4TB, redundant and would be able to easily expand to 16TB, redundant. I'm not too sure about what would be the best way to achieve redundancy. We typically deliver our machines to customers with RAID 1. I'm not really familiar with other options other than just mirroring the data, which is what I do at home with my personal files with Microsoft Sync Toy.

3. Quiet. If it is going into my office, it has to be dead silent while not in use.

4. Possibly portable. This is not a requirement at this time, but I have a feeling it may end up moving between different offices of the project managers. Under 40 lbs would be preferable.

I'm not too concerned about the cost at this time so let's ignore that for the time being. Thanks for the suggestions in advance.
 
I'd go with a Windows box. Your users can walk up and have a front end everyone is familiar with. Use storage spaces since performance is a non-issue for your workload.

I have a FreeNAS box in my office right now setup with ZFS RAIDZ1 for a purpose similar to yours. Store random backups I want to keep close by for quick recovery and also random storage for the IT department. I'm a Windows guy but have familiarity with Linux and BSD. Every time I have to do something "new" it involves figuring it out or hitting up forums. All because I saved $100-800 in licensing for a system that will be around for years. Should have gone Server 2012. The amount of hours I've spent figuring out various distros for varous storage scenarios could have paid for the OS license and CALs several times over.
 
How is the user going to copy images from that Synology box? It has no video or control inputs. You'll either have to do the transfer for them or have another machine there to access the web GUI.
 
ochadd said:
How is the user going to copy images from that Synology box? It has no video or control inputs. You'll either have to do the transfer for them or have another machine there to access the web GUI.
Click to expand...

Most Synologies have a USB port on the front that allows you to simply attach an external HD or USB flash drive and the Synology will automatically download new files from it to one of it's pools. One way Sync

It's easymode.
 
The Synology is not what I need. I need users to be able to use Window's Explorer to copy files from an external drive. Anyway, this is no longer an issue as I was informed we have a 35 TB NAS already setup for this purpose. No one from my group was aware of its existence though. :)
 
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