Was Compressing DVD ISO Images, now Storage solutions

["White, Peter" <peter.white@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is interesting stuff, and came up today in the office.  We're
looking
for a 'storage solution' that acts as a network drive for the users (with
access control on some folders), which in turn will be backed-up (somehow).
The office that we're currently tenants is uses a clunky Novell Netware
fileserver structure and an even clunkier ArcServe backup routine over
night, that sometimes works, but mostly not, and even if it does, a restore
takes forever.
=20
So with a blank canvass and a minimum budget, what would people recommend?
I'm thinking 50Gb storage per user, plus 100Gb general space - that works
out to around 1.2Tb.  In my naivety I was thinking a couple of
Terrastations, 1 mirroring the other, with one in the UK office and the
other in Germany.  The key is to keep it simple, and keep it portable, as
we'll likely move office within the next year.  All the remote offices are
on the VPN, so as long as the device has an IP address, they can get to
it.=
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The final piece of the puzzle will be automating backups from peoples
laptops, but we'll eave that for now.
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Any free advice welcomed :-)  We have various servers that could be used as
fileservers if people think that NAS isn't the way to go.
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thanks, Pete

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From: Phil Harris [mailto:phil@xxxxxxx]=20
Sent: 14 February 2006 09:54
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] Re: Compressing DVD ISO Images


> Yeah, I have since looked it up, and it does do raid5, but since they
> only take 4 disks, that means 25% of the capacity is lost to the
parity
> info.
>
> I think Id still opt for an 8 drive raid5 array, which will mean only
> 12.5% wastage.  With the Gb per =A3 ratio currently peaking at the
250Gb
> drive mark, that should make a 8x250Gb (1.75Tb available) setup
possible
> for around =A3850 (PC + drives) - compared to the 1.6Tb Terrastation
(onl=
y
> 1.2Gb available in Raid 5) which costs around =A3150 more.
>
> Mal

For media servers do you *REALLY* need RAID though?

If you are using *HARDWARE* RAID using a PCI or mobo based RAID solution
then you really must buy either a second RAID card or mobo as a spare in
case either develop a fault as you may find that in a couple of years time
if your controller (rather than your drive) fails then you're completely
stuffed if the controller is no longer available to be replaced. If you
have a power supply fail whilst your nice safe RAID5'd media server is
writing to the array then you can easily get a couple of drives with
corruptions which will cause you to lose data and if you have a drive fail
in a RAID 5 array whilst it's rebuilding (which isn't beyond the realms of
possibility since it's likely that all your drives will have been bought
at the same time and will be from the same batch) then you will loose the
whole damn lot.

I played with several RAID solutions (both Hardware and Software) under
Linux, Windows and MAC OSX and in the end decided that should a drive go
down on my media server then I could live with having to re-rip those
movies again - a 300Gb drive full of movies is about a weekends work to
re-rip and of course you have the originals to do that with don't you?

It seems that there is a lot of belief that as long as you have some form
of "RAID 5" solution then you can sit back safe in the knowledge
that your
data is secure and I know I'm going to get shot to sh*t on this for
contradicting the crowd but I don't consider it quite that cut-and-dried.

The only data that I have flagged up as "too important to lose"
is the
family documents directories, the family digital photos and my extensive
collection of "porn" (and for anyone that doesn't know me that
means TVR
videos rather than what you might be thinking of) which is *WAY* less than
160Gb and so I simply mirror that drive using two *DISSIMILAR* drives -
curently the primary drive is a 160Gb Maxtor (which is probably in the
order of six years old) and a 160Gb Hitachi (which is now probably 18
months old) - in separate enclosures (with separate PSUs) and one on
firewire whilst the other is on USB to minimise the chances of them both
failing in the same way and at the same time.

Phil








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