New Server time Again guys

ace2109 said:
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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You can't do it for that in a professional manner. End of story. You're doing them no favours by giving them a sub standard solution and you need to educate them to the costs of doing things properly.

How are you going to explain to them if you put together some collection of bodges for £3k and it looses them a crucial section of client video??
 
3K max for a pair of servers, that you rely on for the storage of the companies data. including software, to business class. If the company has been going for over three years and has had 250% growth in their storage needs alone. and you want to fix it with a 3K budget.

LOL
 
ace2109 said:
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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Theres no way from the likes of Dell et al. Better start thinking about a homebrew box. Big frickin case, lotsa cheap SATA disks and an open source NAS type deal.

Edit: And I agree with the above lol :)
 
i'm currently putting in three NetApp filers, bottom of the range, with 7Tb of storage each, and that is nearly 50K. Purely for resilience, and growth. Plan for the future, not now.

Just had a trawl through my old orders.

Last year we put an archival system in small little 1U server with a DAS SAS connected array. 15K for the array, to be fair it did have 14 500Gb drives in it. But this stuff aint cheap if its done correctly. And if a business is going to reply on the data, its got to be done correctly. Im sorry if its harsh, but a cobbled together soloution does not work.

What happens if you get offered a job elsewhere, or get mown down by the number 10 bus on your way to work, where does your mate, and his business stand then ???
 
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Just to expand on the :D

You need 2 servers, each with 6TB of storage for ~2-3k?

For just the cheapest SATA drives you will be looking at around £700 for the drives alone, this isn't taking into account any drive redundancy, hell even backing up 6TB of data onto LTO tapes would cost in the region of ~£200 just in tapes alone without even buying the drive (budget ~£1k), software I would say maybe another £500+ and this is only for a single drive for 6TB you would want multiple drives and autoloaders unless that data is more historic and doesn't change often.

I understand that smaller companies don't have massive IT budgets but they have to be realistic and understand that to do things properly costs money, some thing are worth cutting corners on, the data that the company uses to make money isn't one of them!
 
6GB onto tapes is a difficult proposition.
Using LTO 4 you're looking at a minimum of 4 tapes to do a full backup (800Gb standard, 1.6TB Compressed).
LTO-4-120 from Dell is about £1700 per unit, plus Backup Exec for a couple of servers + whatever else (Exchange?), you're on the wrong side of 2.5k pretty swiftly.

This is without any of the servers involved.

I think Server with DAS would be the way to go on this one. At least until the company is significantly larger and is more willing to part with the dosh.
Mikeh501's suggestions are sound. Though looking at Dell's pricing on drives, you may well have to get them yourself. 15 x 1TB drives, 1 hotspare, RAID6, should give you about 10TB usable for a 'reasonable' cost, with sufficient redundancy.

The costing should be looked at on a 3-year basis, by which time they will either be in a situation to get a SAN or attach another MD3000.
 
Shaz]sigh[;14991081 said:
Why not get an 8TB Iomega IX4 200d and then a Mozy Pro account?

Simple works.
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Until they get charged for the offsite storage each month.

$0.50/Gb I'll let you do the complicated maths of what 6Tb of data at that rate will cost, let alone the amount of time required to do the initial backup, though I know with S3 / Rackspace you can post them the drives for that.

One place I worked as a sound editor specialised in doing animations for some very big clients, lose that data and the company would be done for hundreds of millions.

At peak I think we could churn out a good hundred or so terabytes of rendered files a day and the only viable option for them was a very large SAN and offsite overnight backup over dark fibre into two different data centres.

Obviously at the other end of the scale here, but you get the picture.

I know that I'm flogging a dead horse by saying what others already have, but if this is the data that the company earns their money from if they are serious about working in this industry then they need to learn that these things cost.

And in my experience people who can't learn that from a bit of helpful and friendly advice tend to learn the hard way when it ****s up and they lose information - which if you've taken on responsibility for their "IT' whether that be as a mate or in a formal capacity could land you up **** creek in dire need of a paddle shop.
 
2.3K for a 10TB Terrastation NAS (or other make) That will give you 8TB after you RAID5 it
800 for a LTO-4 (800GB/1.6TB)
Tapes are around £24 each.
I'd get them to seriously think of archiving old jobs to DVD.
Use the old server as the application box.
 
Shaz]sigh[;14991081 said:
Why not get an 8TB Iomega IX4 200d and then a Mozy Pro account?

Simple works.
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I lol'd.

Mozy Pro..... rofl. Do you have any idea how long it would take to back up 6tb over the internet? I'm assuming given the budget they probably have a ADSL pipe..... I might go get a calculator just for a giggle.
 
maybe their on LLU and get 1.3 up they would still be doing the first backup when BT finish rolling out 21CN!

faster to post off the hard disk!
 
Whilst this thread decends into LOL's and criticism, I think now is the time to point out that we are all in fact trying to help. Just don't get yourself into a sticky personal situation with your friend. If I were you I would just point out that you have researched the situation further and outline our (your) thoughts. Say you can do "x" (i.e. put drives in a box and off you go) but it won't meet future requirements and puts data at risk and what you would prefer to do is "y" (proper storage solution with backup) but this will cost a lot more.

Just don't put the onus on yourself. Let them decide which way they want to go and then you can do the work. If it's their decision, there is no come back.
 
If it was me, I'd be walking away from this one - the budget isn't enough to do a proper job so I'd be politely telling them that I wasn't willing to put in a half arsed solution because of budget restrictions. I'm sure they'll understand and will mean you're not getting into personal problems
 
Biffa said:
2.3K for a 10TB Terrastation NAS (or other make) That will give you 8TB after you RAID5 it
800 for a LTO-4 (800GB/1.6TB)
Tapes are around £24 each.
I'd get them to seriously think of archiving old jobs to DVD.
Use the old server as the application box.
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For that kind of data volume I'd want RAID6 personally, a 2TB drive can take a long time to rebuild...
 
Spooter said:
Incremt backups Mon, Tue, Wed, Friday

Full backups Thursday on a 6 week rotation.

.
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Can I ask why you dont do the full backup's on Friday?

We do four weekly cycles + End of Month on LTO tapes (17 tapes a week and 5 tapes for EOM; exchange, SQL, file server, pst's)

We also backup over cable twice a day and have live replication on majority of our servers for ease of building everything in a DR situation
 
mikeh501 said:
I lol'd.

Mozy Pro..... rofl. Do you have any idea how long it would take to back up 6tb over the internet? I'm assuming given the budget they probably have a ADSL pipe..... I might go get a calculator just for a giggle.
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Bandwidth is cheap although admittedly didn't check the price per GB of Mozy Pro.

I'm obviously defunct in the SMB arena now.
 
bigredshark said:
For that kind of data volume I'd want RAID6 personally, a 2TB drive can take a long time to rebuild...
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6TB in a QNAP 509Pro with RAID6 for 1.6K

Either way its a toss up between performance and cost for the poor OP :)

Agree with the guys, the client seriously needs to reevaluate their priorities. I'd still advise you to convince them to archive off the oldest files/jobs/etc give yourself some breathing room.
 
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