To Raid or not to Raid - Small Business Server

[Cain]

that is the question...

do I need that mirroring raid in my new small bidness server??

Advantages disadvantages??

[Dead...Again]

I would have a single drive for the OS.
Check this out for options for your data array.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/36458...rive-extender/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/thr...rive-extender/

[Nauticas]

I agree on not raiding the OS. Might be better just to setup a backup drive that backs up certain folders are partitions every night.

I work for a small business and help with the IT stuff and that's what we do. We have one server with 2 drives with each drive being partitioned into multiple sections. We then put all of our important stuff in certain partitions. We then have another, 3rd hard drive that is setup for back-up only. Every night at 3 a.m., the partitions set-up to be backed-up are copied to the 3rd hard drive.

The other nice thing about this setup is that you have a day old version of everything. So if you delete anything by accident you can go to the back-up and copy the file. I forget what back-up program we use for that, but I can look if you want.

[Donziboy2]

How much information are we talking about?

[Rand{CLR}]

I've lost 3.5 HDs on my home systems in the time I've had pcs, 2 of which were total losses, so I'm paranoid. I say if you're using it for business, RAID 1 is absolutely essential.

-Rand

[WalkinTarget]

This is where my WHS comes in handy. I can RAID away to my hearts content. I lose a driver, I just pop another drive in its place and back it up from the daily backup that ran the night before.

WHS wakes up each PC that is on the network, backs it up, then puts it back into sleep mode after its done.

I did test it (numerous times) and even had it recover a failed RAID array at one point. WHS was Microsoft's failed attempt to market a home server to users, based on the Server 2003 OS with a nice manageability frontend, but home users didn't know WHY they needed it. It sorta still exists, codenamed as 'Vail' until its release earlier this year and now based on the Server '08 OS. You can connect up to 10 client PCs to it, so it is still viable for a small business.

[slice]

that is the question...

do I need that mirroring raid in my new small bidness server??

Advantages disadvantages??

Cain, if this is for business purposes, yes, you need at least a RAID1 setup. Depending on what you are doing, redundant multiple drives (I'm talking at least 4) should be highly considered.

Obviously, it would be nice to have a hardware RAID controller, but if you don't, or do not want to invest that much into a RAID setup, just use the built in software type RAID that most motherboards support.

[Cain]

I agree on not raiding the OS. Might be better just to setup a backup drive that backs up certain folders are partitions every night.

I work for a small business and help with the IT stuff and that's what we do. We have one server with 2 drives with each drive being partitioned into multiple sections. We then put all of our important stuff in certain partitions. We then have another, 3rd hard drive that is setup for back-up only. Every night at 3 a.m., the partitions set-up to be backed-up are copied to the 3rd hard drive.

The other nice thing about this setup is that you have a day old version of everything. So if you delete anything by accident you can go to the back-up and copy the file. I forget what back-up program we use for that, but I can look if you want.

Thanks guys.

I like the idea of having the OS either on a separate drive or perhaps a partition. In the even of a crash I will have to rebuild the OS anyway. Will I be better off with the OS on its own drive perhaps??

My plan was to back up all our data onto another local HD and then back the same data into the cloud with Amazon. I would use this program to automate that process, and of course get an Amazon account (which is surprisingly reasonable).

WHS 2011 Backup | Amazon S3- CloudBerry Lab

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

If I have the date backed up both locally and to the cloud, and my OS either on another drive or a separate partition, I'm thinking I may not need to mess with RAID.

Thoughts ?

[slice]

Thanks guys.

I like the idea of having the OS either on a separate drive or perhaps a partition. In the even of a crash I will have to rebuild the OS anyway. Will I be better off with the OS on its own drive perhaps??

My plan was to back up all our data onto another local HD and then back the same data into the cloud with Amazon. I would use this program to automate that process, and of course get an Amazon account (which is surprisingly reasonable).

WHS 2011 Backup | Amazon S3- CloudBerry Lab

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

If I have the date backed up both locally and to the cloud, and my OS either on another drive or a separate partition, I'm thinking I may not need to mess with RAID.

Thoughts ?

Those are fantastic ideas, however, what if the network is down? Then you lose access to the cloud. Still, what if your your main drive crashes? And your "backup" drive did not have the latest data transferred to it?

For the OS, I would look into cloning software like Symantec Ghost (It is what we use here at my office). That way, you can re-image your OS drive and be up and running in no time, with the settings etc they way you had it before.

Obviously it all comes down to cost and time. Spend the money now, and you could potentially save yourself tons of time and money in the future, and also have the peace of mind that your data is accessible and even if your system gets corrupt, or your OS is shot, you have the tools needed to get you back up and running in no time.

I am rambling but I think you get what I am saying.

[Cain]

Good points Slice. Thanks.

I plan to back up our files to the local drive probably more than once per day, then upload files to the cloud nightly. We only have a few folks working on files, and typically they are only working on a few each day, or perhaps the same few files for a week at a time.

My original plan was to BIOS Raid 1 two drives with my os and data, then back up the data only onto a third drive. That way if one of my main drives failed I would barely notice it, I would just pop another drive in there for it to re-clone it and we would be off and running again. Question. For Raid 1, do the drives have to be identical size??

Now I'm thinking maybe one small or partitioned drive for only my OS and another drive, maybe two for backing up my data very frequently.

If I lose my main drive with the OS on it I assume in a pinch I could mount the formatted backup drive into another machine and access the files we need ASAP. Perhaps I could not? I am not certain if my backup will be a mirror or some type of encoded backup, I am still researching that. Ideally I'd like my local backup to be a carbon copy of the data drive it is cloning.

Also, I think I can pull down individual files from Amazon S3, in the event of some catastrophe locally. I think they even have an option now to let you set up your Amazon cloud drive as a mapped drive, which looks pretty cool.

Have any of you used the Amazon S3 ??

[Dead...Again]

For RAID, the drives should be identical. In a RAID1 array, if one drive goes down you should still be able to boot to the other drive. You could also look into RAID5, which combines RAID 0 and RAID 1. BTW, if you use a RAID array for your backup volume, you won't be able to just plug it into a different system and access it.

[Cain]

OK say I have RAID 1 for my OS and two identical 320G drives...

One of them drops dead a year from now.

1) Can I continue to boot and run my server with only 1 drive??

2) What happens if I cannot replace the old/dead 320 with a new 320. Perhaps in the future the smallest drive I can get is 500G. The what ??

3) Is there some advantage to doing RAID from my BIOS/Hardware over doing it in OS ??

[The_Needle]

1. In Raid 1 on most machines, yes. You get a drive failure message and continue working on the other drive until you replace the failed one.

2. You can always buy used hardware or image the existing drive onto a pair of new larger drives.

3. Speed, reliability, a lot of it depends on your hardware. For a good easy listing see this link: Software Vs Hardware RAID

[Cain]

Thx Needle...

I assume if my Motherboard says it comes"with RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 support on the ZOTAC® H67-ITX" then my Motherboard has hardware Raid capabilities, correct ??

I assume it has its own RAID controller ??


====

Question, if I have Raid 1, how do I know when one of the HDs has failed??

[Dead...Again]

I think the RAID support in Intel chipsets is SW raid. The SATA controller in the PCH can be configured to IDE, AHCI, or RAID.

If one of the drives fails, you should get an error message during POST when the RAID Option ROM runs.

If you have a RAID1 and a drive fails, you should be able to clone the volume and put it on a newly created RAID array with the larger drives.