NAS for onsite SMB backup??

[madman300]

Hi Guys,

I am working on a little project for a friend where he needs a storage solution for onsite system backup only (offsite will be covered by Mozypro). His budget is $1200 and he has 5 machines that need to be backed up plus 1 SBS 2008 server.

- Each PC contains about 30GB of data
- The server contains about 200GB of data

I would like the NAS to take a full system backup of each machine and then incremental backups nightly. The device should allow for a fully system restore for any of the machines in the case of total hard drive failure.

So far, I am thinking of using a Synology Diskstation DS411+ using RAID 5 with 4x2TB drives. This should give me about 5.5TB of useable space. In addition, I think I would add a 2TB external drive to the SBS server for SBS2008 full system backups.

Any modifications or thoughts to this plan? Has anyone worked with the DS411+ before?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Emulex]

Raid-5 would be too painful. you need to do raid-1 or raid-0 - since you will backup to offsite it doesn't matter if you use raid-5 or raid-0 but raid-5 backups on that pos nas would take forever.

most external ports (even esata) on those pos nas will be USB based and take up too much system load.

Raid-0 would allow multiple machines to write at the same time. Sometimes you do not have enough time at night to allow backups to not overlap. this would help immensely.

skip raid-5 it provides very little protection when the unit is unusable for several days due to a degraded performance.

 

[madman300]

I'm surprised to hear RAID 5 would be that much slower. This review ( http://www.storagereview.com/synology_diskstation_ds411_review ) compares the speed of RAID 5 and RAID 1 and there does not appear to be a great difference in speed.

I plan on the backups being incremental, so after the initial backup of each machine, that I can do over the weekend, I'm guessing I would have <50MB of new data per machine to backup each day.

 

[Fardringle]

RAID 0 can be nice for fast drive access for quick loading of applications and games, but I would NEVER use it as a backup solution. One drive in the array fails and ALL of your data is gone permanently. RAID 5 is a much better option for backups since you can recover the data even if a drive in the array fails. Yes, performance is degraded for a short time until the failed drive is replaced, but which would you rather have - slower access to the backups, or NO access to them?

Backing up around 350GB data nightly to a local NAS (as long as the box doesn't suck) is absolutely possible even if you do full backups every night. Backing up that much data to MOZY (for the initial backup) is going to take a long time even with a fast Internet connection, but incremental backups after that shouldn't be a problem at all.

 

[madman300]

Thanks Fardringle,

The main goal is to not lose data. (i.e. not focused nearly as much on speed or time to restore, in the end we just don't want to permanently lose data.) I would either use RAID 1 or RAID 5 but have not plans to use RAID 0.

Currently the plan is:

- Stage 1: All computers backup their user generated data and databases to MozyPro nightly. I realize this initial process could take up to a month.

- Stage 2: All computers, including all data, are backed up to the local NAS (DS411+) at least weekly.

- Stage 3: VHDs of each machine will be created quarterly and stored on the NAS (in a different folder than the backup)

- Stage 4: A 2TB external drive will be added to the SBS 2008 server for nightly backups with Server 2008 managing this drive.

Thoughts? Anything I missed?

 

[aceO07]

.. raid-5 backups on that pos nas would take forever. ..

The DS 411+ isn't that slow.

I have one, but currently only use it on RAID1 with 2 disks. Later on when I need more space and drives are cheap I'll get 2 more and go RAID5.

 

[stevech]

I'm in the camp that says "RAID is not backup".
A wholly independent drive and file system is backup, with or without using a RAID system.

Use one of the many automated file cloning software products such as SecondCopy, Acronis' real time backup, and many others.

 

[kevnich2]

I do have to disagree about RAID5 being slow and to only use RAID0 for fast data access. I have a large RAID5 with 4 1.5tb drives and am able to use it on 15 machines simultaneously without a hitch.

As others have stated, however, RAID is not a backup solution. RAID is only needed for uptime. If your NAS system is ONLY for backups and it doesn't matter if it's down for a few hours for a disk replacement, then you don't need RAID. RAID5 is good in the case that one of your disks dies and you need to replace it. The array is still available while the disk is replaced and the rebuild is going through. If you use RAID0 and you lose even a single disk, the entire array and data is gone. This is fine if you have all the data backed up to another hard drive, which I would do even with RAID5.

Though again, if this is strictly for backups, who cares if you use RAID0 and all your data goes poof. It'll just re-build itself the next time your scheduled backup goes through. If you do plan on using it to store business critical data, however, I would definitely recommend using RAID5 and then also backing up the data to another usb hard drive to keep it on two separate systems.

Plan a disaster recovery plan to include a backup to 3 devices. In case one of your backups doesn't work, you still have a plan b and c.

I would personally recommend crashplan service as opposed to mozy though. With crashplan you can purchase a one time hard drive from them for $150 that they ship you next day, you do a backup to that usb drive, then ship it back. They then put this in your archive and your data is backed up remotely within around 48 hours or so instead of waiting months. If your data crashes, you can also do the same thing, they ship you a drive with your data on it and you restore from that. I use crashplan myself and use it more for deleted files than anything else so far and it's never missed a beat yet. Even does file versioning so you have months worth of different versions of the files in case someone deletes it 2 months ago and doesn't tell you until today.