New Server time Again guys

ace2109

ace2109

ace2109

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28 Dec 2002
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Location
Northern Ireland
Hi guys,
I have a little story to tell you first. About 3 years ago my friend started his own film production company and wanted me to look after all their IT for them. At the start they need a file server to handle all their files so i built them a small server running Win2k3 and it had about 2TB of Hard drive space, loads back then.

1 year later they needed a new server as the small one could not handle the volume of files being stored. So i built them a large server with 5 Tb of Hard drive space. But they are getting bigger and bigger by the year and it has come to that time again that they need a new server.

We have been building a new office for the past 2 months and are getting close to moving in. What we have done is installed a brand new network cabling structure all running back to a main server room. We are getting a medium sized data cabinet and all new gigabyte switches.

What i need from you guys is a really good spec of server, in fact 2 server that must be identical, 1 will be used as the main server and the other will backup everything over night.

The server will only be used for file sharing so advice on the operating system is very welcome. We also need each 1 to have about 6TB of hard drive space but be able to be upgraded when we need more space.

Hope you guys can help.
Ace
 
Can't see what would be wrong with ML115s stack them full of 1.5 TB drives (say 6x 1.5 that'll give you 9TB). Perhaps add an extra GB NIC (and maybe a dedicated RAID controller) to both and hey presto you'd probably get them both £2k
 
The cheap HPs seem to be a catch all solution around here, although I think a bit more information is required.

Presumably with files that big, speed is important? What about redundancy?

How much do they expect to grow in the coming years? How many users?

My first thoughts are that this is getting beyond the capacity of a simple single server and copying 9tb of data overnight seems like madness. I'd be looking at a SAN of some sort, that way it can be expanded to meet the needs of the business. A DL360 as a server attached to it would be sufficient.

You could then look at SAN replication for your "backup" - although a copy on site isnt really a backup and doesnt give you any more than a decent RAID 10 array. Mind you, getting that much data offsite wont be childs play either.

Its not likely to be the cheapest solution, but when was cheapest ever best?
 
I do this for a number a sites...

DL360 with LTO tape drive.

Incremt backups Mon, Tue, Wed, Friday

Full backups Thursday on a 6 week rotation.

Although for that much data a bigger tape system or backup to disk might be needed.

Store tapes in Fireproof safe and keep a copy offsite.

Win Server 2003, BE12.5 although on a new server Win 2008.

Will this server also not act as the Domain Controller, DNS, DHCP server? Maybe even print server?

If the servers only purpose is to share files then I would just use something like FreeNas, Centos, Red Hat or ubuntu server. They will perform just as well.
 
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This needs to be cheap guys and we got a quote from a well known computer company for almost 3k for a server setup without backup.

The file server is just for files, i am getting a simple dell server of flebay to handle DHCP and Mail as its better to keep them separate.

A SAN is a great idea but as i said we are restricted where money is concerned.

cheers
 
Have you looked at the ReadyNAS Business edition NAS/SAN boxes? Shoebox sized, six disks, get a pair of them and they can back up to each other automagically.

Pricey though - about as much as a base ML server filled with disk, about £1000.
 
You have gone from 2TB - 5TB in a year so I would be looking at more than an initial 6TB otherwise you are going to be upgrading before you know it.

I would also work a solution round backups, unless the data can afford to be lost having a copy to another system on site isn't adequate, I honestly can't see this being done on a tight budget without cutting major corners!
 
ace2109 said:
A SAN is a great idea but as i said we are restricted where money is concerned.
Click to expand...

The SAN is a very good idea. To be honest if they're storing this much data and won't stretch to the appropriate equipment then they need to re-assess their priorities and the like.

Seriously, loading cheap servers up with cheap disks isn't a business class solution and if you're doing their IT you need to make that very clear to them. There's a chance it'll all go horribly wrong one day. One day, sooner or later, they will need to spend serious money on storage in their business, there's no point hiding that from them and what appears to be doing them a favour bodging a solution to fit their budget isn't necessarily a favour at all.
 
bigredshark said:
The SAN is a very good idea. To be honest if they're storing this much data and won't stretch to the appropriate equipment then they need to re-assess their priorities and the like.

Seriously, loading cheap servers up with cheap disks isn't a business class solution and if you're doing their IT you need to make that very clear to them. There's a chance it'll all go horribly wrong one day. One day, sooner or later, they will need to spend serious money on storage in their business, there's no point hiding that from them and what appears to be doing them a favour bodging a solution to fit their budget isn't necessarily a favour at all.
Click to expand...


Agreed. Quit cutting corners or this business will end up in deep doo-doo.
 
#Chri5# said:
Or, the business could spend ££££ on some lovely super-duper solution and then go bust trying to pay for it ;)

Ace - when you say "cheap", how cheap is cheap?
Click to expand...


True, but obviosuly there is a balance to be struck. I'm afraid there comes a time where filling a tower full of drives is just no longer the way to go.
 
This is never going to be cheap tbh.... Storing and backing up that much data is always going to be fairly spendy.

Does the company really need that much data?
Can it be rationalised? W
hat about archiving of old material/projects etc?
You need to plan out what needs backing up, and how often. That will give you an insight into whats really important.

The obvious choice is a SAN, but that is very likely to be out of budget. I think in your situation i'd go for a 1u server with DAS (Direct Attached Storage). I'd also hang a LTO off of that for backup purposes. If storage gets bigger, then i'd purchase another DAS and stick more disks in it.

We're a Dell shop, so...

Dell PowerEdge R300 (not sure if this will take 2xDAS, need to chk)
Dell PowerVault MD1000 w/ 15x500gb (Bigger if poss) SATA drives.
Dell Ultrium LTO 400gb Compressed. (Use this to backup the crucial stuff)

I bet that lot will be around £4k with some discount. Obviously this doesnt cater for backing up the whole lot, but thats going to be expensive...
 
Screams for a SAN to me. Entry level HP or equivalent. I agree with the LTO though for backup.

Personally I'd chuck either an iSCSI or Fibre Channel (for speed it's always FC) SAN and lots of hard-drives in there - SATA or SCSI or FC SCSI (again depends on the budget) that way you have a scalable solution - you can start of with adding 1TB drives in there/.

It's not cheap though but if they are a movie house then they will just keep needing mroe and more space.



M.
 
m4cc45 said:
Screams for a SAN to me. Entry level HP or equivalent. I agree with the LTO though for backup.

Personally I'd chuck either an iSCSI or Fibre Channel (for speed it's always FC) SAN and lots of hard-drives in there - SATA or SCSI or FC SCSI (again depends on the budget) that way you have a scalable solution - you can start of with adding 1TB drives in there/.

It's not cheap though but if they are a movie house then they will just keep needing mroe and more space.



M.
Click to expand...

How much does an entry level SAN from HP cost? Last time we priced up something it was 35k from EMC for not quite entry level, but nothing special.
 
You could get an equalogic iSCSI san from dell for @ 15K, with 8 * 500Gb drives in, or a bit more for 16 * 500Gb, then connect via the iSCSI initiator in server 2003 or 2008. But seriously with that amount of data, you HAVE to do it properly.

How much is the data worth if you cant get at it ??? or if you lose the lot.

In fact give us a rough budget cost, and lets see what you can really do.
 
" This needs to be cheap guys and we got a quote from a well known computer company for almost 3k for a server setup without backup "

does not say its hurting.

we need to know what the budget it - end of.
 
You could look at something such as R1Soft or Acronis for a software-based backup solution running on a backup server - assuming decent disk throughput it shouldn't be a problem to run it overnight.
 
mikeh501 said:
This is never going to be cheap tbh.... Storing and backing up that much data is always going to be fairly spendy.

Does the company really need that much data?
Can it be rationalised? W
hat about archiving of old material/projects etc?
You need to plan out what needs backing up, and how often. That will give you an insight into whats really important.

The obvious choice is a SAN, but that is very likely to be out of budget. I think in your situation i'd go for a 1u server with DAS (Direct Attached Storage). I'd also hang a LTO off of that for backup purposes. If storage gets bigger, then i'd purchase another DAS and stick more disks in it.

We're a Dell shop, so...

Dell PowerEdge R300 (not sure if this will take 2xDAS, need to chk)
Dell PowerVault MD1000 w/ 15x500gb (Bigger if poss) SATA drives.
Dell Ultrium LTO 400gb Compressed. (Use this to backup the crucial stuff)

I bet that lot will be around £4k with some discount. Obviously this doesnt cater for backing up the whole lot, but thats going to be expensive...
Click to expand...

This is pretty good advice - you need to answer those questions before you start finding exact solutions. But if you must do it cheaply then the best way is laid out roughly above...personally I'm an HP fan so I'd go for the new SAS connected MSAs and a cheapish server to front end them. But either way it's way more than £3k...

Another option would be to buy something like the 4 disk Lacie external drives and just add additional units as storage requirements go up but you'll have backup headaches and it's not an neat solution to grow with.

At the end of the day, they are in a business which produces large amounts of data very quickly - they need to budget for storing that data. Media companies I've worked for have usually had IT as their second largest budget item after wages.
 
when i say cheap we could probably go 2 maybe 3k, but thats max and it must include everything, storage, Backup, OS, everything
 
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