Disk Replication

bigredshark

bigredshark

bigredshark

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So, this one is bothering me today...

I have a platform which has 8TB of storage directly attached (in the form of 2 HP MSA20 arrays loaded with 500GB drives).

It also has a backup array attached which is another MSA20 with 8TB (though this time it's loaded with 1TB drives so I get 8TB in one enclosure).

The next bit is simple, I need to replicate all the data from the primary to backup array once a day during a specific time frame. Or all the changes more properly, time wise this isn't a problem, even using robocopy once it's initially synced it manages to copy a full day's changes in the window available.

At present the legacy (very legacy, it wasn't me!) way we do this is a script to run robocopy from scheduled tasks. Now while this is, functional at the most basic level, I'd prefer something a bit, well, more elegant. I've played with replacing robocopy with the multithreaded fast copy instead which improves the speed but not the reliability.

Now much as I'd prefer to do it with a SAN that's not something that's going to happen at these sites in the near future. So we must use the existing storage. I've had a few ideas...

DFS - A strange idea forming in my head about using DFS to replicate the local volume, which in theory I like as it fits most of my requirements but I'm not a DFS expert - is it even possible...

Windows software RAID - not wildly keen as I know what performance can be like and it would make the copying real time rather than in a scheduled window as I'd prefer. Not out of the question though, I think it would affect performance too much though.

Anything else, I suspect hardware RAID of *** arrays is out due to the way they work and present themselves (they're running on HP Smartarray 6404 controllers though).

How would you do it?
 
If it ain't broke...

While it might not be elegant Robocopy is still a great and cheap way of doing this.

You could end up spending a lot of money on something that is essentially going to do the same thing as Robocopy but with a pretty ui.

DFS should work fine but I doubt it would be any faster than Robocopy.
 
The robocopy scripts aren't what you'd call reliable and it's too slow for my taste, the single threaded nature of the copy is a concern if we ever increased the rate of change.

Add to that the support guys profess being uncomfortable with something which runs from the command line and doesn't produce pretty logs, which has far more to do with their laziness than anything else but their boss appears ready to defend their lack of any work ethic and fighting about it in front of a director isn't in anybodies interest unfortunately - so I search for an alternative. What a waste of time.
 
SteffenFreund said:
Have a look at SecureCopy. It's a nice product and works well.
Click to expand...

seconded, used this many times to copy several TB of data, pretty sure its all scriptable so you should be able to email logs out....

DFS-R should do the trick to create multiple copies of the data, pretty sure you'll need 2003 R2 DC's to be able to have the correct schema to support this though.
 
morfmedia said:
DFS-R should do the trick to create multiple copies of the data, pretty sure you'll need 2003 R2 DC's to be able to have the correct schema to support this though.
Click to expand...

DFS would certainly do it, although like you say I'm unsure if a standard 2003 domain would support it...
 
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