Expanded (redundant) NAS and backup methods..

[dawks]

So right now we have 3 servers, 1 runs 2000 Server, and the other 2 run Server 2003. All are maxed out on space so we are looking for a simple add-on solution. We don't want to buy a full server if possible because of the cost (including Windows licenses). So we are looking for an option that could plug into our network or to one of our servers via USB so we can write to the drives (hopefully with NTFS). (Before anyone wants to run off on a linux tangent, we want to stay Windows, thanks).

Are there any options that might work? (Redundant - RAID required) I looked at this from Intel, SS4000, but would we be able to use NTFS on it? (we might store user profiles or other data that requires permissions).


Additionally, is there a good backup tool that doesnt cost much, that would let us relatively make daily backups, store them for a week or two, and be able to restore a file for a user? Right now I just use NTbackup to do a daily incremental backup that overwrites the original (space issues). As such we can't restore files from a few days back. Nor is file restore clear with ntbackup.

Thanks for your help!

 

[EKKC]

i have the SS4000 setup as a media server, read some reviews on it first, it may or may not be for you

pros:
- RAID5! i have 4x300GB for 900GB
- you can configure as 3+1r or 2+1r+1hot spare. hot swappable too
- gigabit connectivity, dual ports
- good web interface, FTP
- unicode support

cons:
- RAID 5 takes forever to initialize, and you cannot use during initialization
- not NTFS compatible
- SUPER SLOW on RAID 5! even at RAID 1 it is barely over the 100mbps/fast ethernet speed, so gigabit functionality is wasted.
- username/pw limited to 8 characters
- expensive
- backup client only for one PC

to setup a redundant NAS with NTFS support i think it'd be best if you build a mini file server, if NTFS and NT/windows security is optional, then by all means, go ahead with the intel solution. it is not cheap though.

i recently bought the simpletech simpleshare NAS too (250GB), it had windows domain support but i couldn't get it to work, and their latest firmware actually DISABLED that feature. you can set up RAID over ethernet, which i have never seen before. chiefvalue (another newegg branch) sells it cheap this week for $110 shipped:
******/product/productdetails.aspx?item=22-154-327

 

[EKKC]

for some reason chiefvalue is blocked? arent they the same as newegg? why block?

 

[nweaver]

It shouldn't matter what FS your NAS server uses.

Are your servers full? It would make more sense to rebuild existing servers on a larger RAID array.

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: nweaver
It shouldn't matter what FS your NAS server uses.

Are your servers full? It would make more sense to rebuild existing servers on a larger RAID array.

Well considering our server drives are all SCSI, we'd be looking at $600 just for a 150gig partition (mirrored). Alternatively we could get that Intel box I linked, toss 4 SATA drives in RAID 5, and get 1 terabyte for just over $1,000.

Like I said, we might like to move things like user profiles or some other data that requires NTFS permissions for access, so I'd believe the FS does matter. Unless theres some way around that, maybe like mounting the drive? Say format it with whatever is provided then create a virtual partition, similar to the way VMware or Virtual PC does?

 

[drag]

Personally I'd just get a Intel box with 945G chipset hat supports AHCI and cheap Pentium-D proccessor, and drop a bunch of harddrives in it.

Depending on how redundant you want to get about it I'd go different routes. Take that and stick 4 400 gig drives, since typically that is what aviable onboard with them, configure it into raid 5. There are usually two regular IDE cables so I'd stick a DVD drive and a harddrive in there for the OS. Maybe do RAID 1, make those the smallest cheapest things you can find. That'd give you about 1.2 terrabytes of storage on that guy. Around 800-900 dollars.

that is about as big as I'd get and still trust RAID 5. The trouble with raid 5 is that it simply does not scale well at ALL. It should be avoided unless your going for ultimate cheapness. RAID 10 is a requirement for anything above that, and should be used were performance and aviability is more important then price.

If you want higher reliability then you can go RAID 10 with maybe 500 gig drives. Bump the price up over 900 dollars and loose about 200 gigs or so of disk space, but you get faster performance and higher reliability.

Of course if you want to do real backups, and not just storage, your going to have to add another couple thousand to that for a good quality tape backup system. Internal 400G (compressed) tape drive from HP would be $1700.

Another route would be to raise the level of rendundancy. Have a remote server in a colocation or something like that with similar storage capacity and use rsync to mirror it with your local storage. Remote things like that are very nice.

Or if you want redundancy at home base you can buy two of those things and get 1.2terrabytes with 99.999 percent avaibility for around 1600-2000 dollars.


If your FS is realy that important to you then export the storage array as ISCSI. I've done that and it works fine and gigabit ethernet is plenty fast for storage. Use it on your box as if it is local storage.

So you go like this:
setup a box, put 1.2-2 terrabytes on it. Whatever you want. Use logical volume management to divide up the aviable space for sharing out to multiple computers. Setup a _private_ storage network seperate from your normal network and use that to provide the basic storage fabric.

Export out individaul ISCSI shares to all your servers, which then get formated to NTFS and then you can use as if they are local disks. You may want to invest in redundant switches and dual network ports for the storage server. If you loose connectivity on the ISCSI share you will cause your Windows servers to hang if they try to do disk I/O at that time. Also you can do ethernet bonding to get a 20-30% improvement in performance over a single ethernet line.

The main limitation with NTFS over ISCSI is that your only going to be able to allow one server to access one ISCSI LUN at a time. NTFS is not a cluster-aware file system. For that you have to go with more expensive options or go to a real network FS like CIFS/SMB which will offer much lower performance, but more efficient use of resources.

But then again you said your windows-only so all of this is not a option for you.