Analyst Workstation - What are you using?

What does "a good history with forces mean"

We are looking to change our workstations completely and looking for options as we speak.

Currently we are using HP Z820's with about 10TB of storage and a 250GB SSD.

We image to the server but generally work from our local machine as it is quicker so we are looking to increase our workstation capacity to about 20-40TB depending on cost with and 1TB SSD for the OS and 2TB HDD for Cache.

Intel Dual Xeon, NVidia Graphics, 128GB RAM, internal Blu-Ray/DVDR, Tableau Forensic Bridge, Hardware RAID Controller and warranty options.

Anyone recommend a supplier that has good history with forces?

What I mean to say is, does anyone in UK law enforcement use a company that has provided a good level of customer service over a good period of time?

It might just assist when looking for our next supplier.

What I mean to say is, does anyone in UK law enforcement use a company that has provided a good level of customer service over a good period of time?

It might just assist when looking for our next supplier.

Yeah, Lenovo have worked very well with us and provided a good discount for these types of machine.
They worked with us quite a bit to get them to the price we wanted and were the only machines we could get that would fit 8 internal HDD's.

They also certify that all their parts work together, a nice bonus for when dealing with ISO 17025 jobsworths

Looking at upgrading our lab setup. What are you folks doing these days?

The new NVMe hard drives make a huge difference, even compared to a normal SSD. Since they do not have any moving parts, they are very reliable and unbelievable fast.

regards, Robin

What does "a good history with forces mean"

We are looking to change our workstations completely and looking for options as we speak.

Currently we are using HP Z820's with about 10TB of storage and a 250GB SSD.

We image to the server but generally work from our local machine as it is quicker so we are looking to increase our workstation capacity to about 20-40TB depending on cost with and 1TB SSD for the OS and 2TB HDD for Cache.

Intel Dual Xeon, NVidia Graphics, 128GB RAM, internal Blu-Ray/DVDR, Tableau Forensic Bridge, Hardware RAID Controller and warranty options.

Anyone recommend a supplier that has good history with forces?

What I mean to say is, does anyone in UK law enforcement use a company that has provided a good level of customer service over a good period of time?

It might just assist when looking for our next supplier.

We have been using Workstations purchased from Continental (https://www.continental.co.uk/hardware/forensic-workstations) for the last couple of years. They offer pre-configured forensic workstations, however we had a specific build in mind and they have built these bespoke systems which come with a 3 year warranty.

Looking at upgrading our lab setup. What are you folks doing these days?

The new NVMe hard drives make a huge difference, even compared to a normal SSD. Since they do not have any moving parts, they are very reliable and unbelievable fast.

regards, Robin

Don't know where to start with that! You seem very confused. NVMe hard drives don't exist AFAIK (I can't see why they would).
Any SSD obviously doesn't have any moving parts and isn't directly related to NVMe in that sense.
NVMe's just a communications standard letting you get data across the PCIe bus (and therefore faster).

Don't know where to start with that! You seem very confused. NVMe hard drives don't exist AFAIK (I can't see why they would).
Any SSD obviously doesn't have any moving parts and isn't directly related to NVMe in that sense.
NVMe's just a communications standard letting you get data across the PCIe bus (and therefore faster).

Oww, comeon roll , I am pretty sure that Bunnysniper knows that ) , he only somehow expressed himself badly.

jaclaz

Don't know where to start with that! You seem very confused. NVMe hard drives don't exist AFAIK (I can't see why they would).
Any SSD obviously doesn't have any moving parts and isn't directly related to NVMe in that sense.
NVMe's just a communications standard letting you get data across the PCIe bus (and therefore faster).

Oww, comeon roll , I am pretty sure that Bunnysniper knows that ) , he only somehow expressed himself badly.

jaclaz

Wasn't meant as a dig - just seemed a bit confusing. If it's just a translation issue - no biggie wink

I received the following specs for a workstation. I would like to get a review from members here and an opinion on whether it will serve our analysis and processing through Magnet Axiom. We received at least 5 HDD/SDD and about 20 email files monthly. 

16GB is pretty low for a modern forensic workstation. I'd want 64gb at least personally. In fact I wanted 128GB for the box I bought not too long ago (but would have taken it above budget for the whole thing to do so).

I admire people who are in love with Xeons. However, the Xeons for reasonable money have a bowl of performance. The Xeon 5118 mentioned here has very low single-threaded performance. Likewise, multi-threaded performance is poor. Using 2 x Xeon 5118 is much slower than using one AMD Ryzen 9 3950X and more expensive. Although the AM4 platroma has its limitations, the price works wonders. If someone needs something more, it's the AMD sTRX4 platform and Ryzen 3960X.

My hardware:
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
64 GB RAM
SSD PCI-Express 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 - OS
SSD PCI-Express 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 - Case files
1 x SSD SATA - for some working files
5 X SSD SATA (RAID 0) - for image files

The whole thing cost a fraction of the price of 2 x Xeon 5118, and its performance is noticeably higher.

Take a look at the comparison:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-9-3950X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-Threadripper-3960X-vs-Intel-Xeon-Gold-5118/3598vs3617vs3148