8 GB rack mounted NAS

[IHateMyJob2004]

I am trying to find a rack mounted NAS solution. The thing is, we only need this to backup some Windows 2008 R2 servers so alot of the extra fucntioality in a rack mounted NAS is unneeded. Or atleast appears unneeded to me.

So we might just get some of the cheap 2 TB NAS drives that sit on a desk to back up our servers.

This is not a performance intensive environment. It is a test and dev environment. So we do not need anything crazy for backup. We just don't want to loose everything and be able to restore quickly.

So, what are some suggestions? What can we use with Windows 2008 R2 to act as a backup system? Does 2008 R2 have backup software included?

 

[imagoon]

Is this business or personal?

How much is the data worth to you?

You have to ask yourself if you are comfortable with the fact that your backups are sitting on top of your servers (basically.) IE if there is a fire, are ok with losing everything?

How long is the backup window?

2008R2 has some built in backup abilities but they are not that powerful. IE it will not backup a database correctly for example.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

The issues are cost and utility. Can a rack mounted NAS act as a JBOD setup and appear as a single 8 TB drive?

Well the fact that 2008 R2 will not backup a database properly is an issue. Thanks for that. So what can we do then? An aftermarket backup solution is within budget I'd think.

We would be willing to image the computer manually once a week if that is possible and database friendly. But what software would we use?

 

[mv2devnull]

The issue with database is that essentially keeps the file open and probably caches writes. Therefore, copying the file just copies data from disk that that may not be latest nor consistent version. You either shut down the database server to flush and freeze before file copy, or the database provides a tool that guarantees to generate a consistent snapshot.

Thus answer depends on your database.

 

[imagoon]

A rackmount NAS [SAN] can do JBOD (at least all of the ones I work with can.) Problem is once you start doing JBOD, one disk fault kills the array and causes all backups to be lost. IF all you care about is one backup than that might be ok. From a business perspective however I would consider only "1 backup" esp if it is in the same room as the servers quite risky. Total data loss is quite possible at that point. Quite possible a 'going out of business / bankruptcy sale' not much longer afterwards. What you need to look for is through put. Backing up 8TB (I assume you actually mean this) over a slow NAS that can only do 18MB/s is going to be painful.

There are tons of backup solutions out there. BackupExec being one example. BE also has database backup utilities. Just be aware that most of the products that properly backup database are not in the $49.99 software rack. I believe the SQL and Oracle plugins for BE cost almost 4x the cost of the base app itself. (along the lines of $1800 per SQL server.)

Honestly your comment about "we don't need anything crazy for backups" would have me concerned that your team and management have not fully thought this out. You don't needs something drastically expensive but going cheap on backups tends to cost you more in the long run.

For example, what happens when you lose a file from 3 weeks ago? The backup 4 days ago blanked the drives. What happens if a power surge fries the servers / NAS that is on the same circuit. I actually had this one happen. That business is no longer in business because they were basically dead and people had stopped keeping paper so entire orders, project documents, and misc company financial info was lost and could not be rebuilt.

Anyway food for thought. If you are just backing up test then by all means take the cheap way.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

This is litterally a backup for software being developed and whcih is archived monthly in another building. We just don't want our test environment which is a tightly configured server with user profiles and such to be lost.

I am thinking more and more that all we need is one simple 2TB desktop NAS per server. We have a switch so all servers could backup without sharing bandwidth.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Wow, this is a good price. Might go with it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148667

 

[imagoon]

That looks like it would work decently. I am having difficulty finding performance data but it seems to be Intel Atom based which means it should actually have the cpu it needs to support a decent performance. Make sure you order from a place that is in stock as HDD lead times are really long at the moment.