G-Tech G-RACK 12: Fast, Easy, Expandable, A Winner
By Jim Bask
At NAB 2016, G-Tech released their first shared storage product, the G-RACK 12.
In the past, G-Tech has made large drive arrays that used ATTO or Highpoint RAID controllers, but over the years, seemed to have phased these out, concentrating on smaller drive arrays, that were more affordable. This changed in 2015, when G-Tech released the G-Tech Studio XL, which was a full 8 bay RAID array for Thunderbolt 2 systems, that could support up to 8 TB SATA hard drives, for up to 64 TB of RAID protected storage. This product became wildly successful for them.
The G-Tech Studio XL was (and still is) great, an excellent choice not only for standalone large RAID arrays, but also for the type of shared storage system that I have been building for years.
G-Tech has gained a reputation over the years of making very reliable products. They have relative recently been acquired by giant drive manufacturer HGST, which in turn has been purchased by the largest drive company in the planet — Western Digital (who just purchased SanDisk for 16 billion dollars), so when they announced that they were making a shared storage product, I knew that this was going to be a serious product.
Unlike the new craze of ZFS based shared storage systems from Small Tree, LumaForge and Other World Computing, G-Tech has decided to use Btrfs. Pronounce it any way you want. Butter FS, Better FS, or just spell it out. This is a Linux-based system that’s designed for maximum speed, reliability, and flexibility, including things like reconfiguring workspace allocations on the fly. Don’t worry about not knowing Linux, though. You can find everything you need in a very easy to use web browser interface. (More details about that below.)
The actual chassis only takes up 2 rack units, and as you can guess from the name, the GS 12 holds 12 drives. Because G-Tech is owned by HGST, they are fortunate to be the first company to get access to the new 10 Terabyte HGST Enterprise series SATA drives. This means that you can have up to 120 TB (100 TB after RAID 6 configuration) in only 2 rack units…[continue reading]
