Disk Setup for 1 TB+ Case Sizes

[jcovey]

Hey everybody!  I have heard several times that Intella is being used for multi-terabyte cases, which I don't at all doubt.  What I'd like to know is, for those doing so, what is your specific disk setup?  For example, I have a high-end Dell Precision rackmount workstation on which I run Intella Pro.  It has 5 physical disks with RAID 5.  It's basically ~ 300 GB system drive, 1 TB each for case data and case index, and 500 GB for Optimization.  I have 3 empty slots to add more drives, but with 10K RPM SAS drives, the disks are only 900 GB.  So even if we max it out with 3 more, I still doubt that I can achieve, for example, a 2.5 TB case data, case index, and a 1+ GB Optimization drive if I retain RAID.  I'm assuming most everyone is using RAID?  I certainly don't want the reduced performance of larger, 7200 RPM drives, so what to do?

 

We also use Intella Connect, and have two Intella Node instances.  This lets us process data on a production SAN with fiber channel connection.  If I want, I can add fiber channel to my Dell in order to give it high bandwidth SAN access.  We're also just getting a new Tintri, hybrid SAN online.  Intella Node processing has become so fast on the SAN that I'm not even sure that the Dell machine can edge it out any more, and the hybrid system will certainly be faster.  Regardless, these are my other disk options.  

 

The problem we run into has to do with backups.  We use Veeam and are fully virtualized, and our network engineer tells me that having a lun larger than 2 TB causes issues with Veeam backups and/or VMWare. Yet I know some of you must be dealing with this, so I thought I would go straight to the source and ask how!  Any info would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!  

 

Jason    

[AdamS]

Sounds like you have some nice gear, but as you discovered it can be tricky to get the HDD setup right with servers as they aren't really designed with that in mind.

 

For my setup I have a beefy PC, 128GB ram, dual high end GFX cards with the following HDD setup.

1 - C drive is SSD

2 - Optimization drive is RAID 0 (2 x WD Black 2TB drives)

3 - Evidence drives are what ever drive I have handy with the original data but never USB, always connected via SATA in a hot swap cage.

4 - Case drives are generally WD Red drives of varying sizes also local drives.

 

I have a server running Connect which has 144GB RAM and a RAID 5 array.

 

I process on the PC then transfer across the network to the server for hosting. Both have Shadow Protect and the server also have Veam Endpoint backing up to a secondary location for added redundancy.

[jcoyne]

Hi Jason,

 

We have recently moved to 2 x Dell 730xd's 1 for Intella Pro and the other for Intella Connect.

 

These are only 2U but have 12 drive bays on the front with 2 flexi bays at the back.

 

We have configured these with 12x2TB drives on the front in a Raid 10 array for the evidence and storing the case data and 2x120gb SSD's  spanned as an optimisation drive smaller cases.  

 

We've also done some testing with using SoftPerfects RAM disk - setting 50% of the system ram after windows has booted to be 256GB ram drive. For Optimisation drive and the 2x120 SSD's for the case storage. Which is great for the preparation of the smaller matters before pushing them onto the spindle storage. 

 

To be honest, I'm not too sure that the optimisation drive config in Intella really makes that much difference over the spindles - but the type of material being analysed will make a difference. 

 

These kit has been installed for a few months now and next week we are moving them from Physical to Virtual because we want to use the spare CPU thread for OCR'ing for the times that the machines are just ticking over.