Afternoon,

Right at work we have a dilema of backups ! or having none at the moment due to file sizes.

I would ideally like to put together a rack of PC's slowly to act as ftp server, local file storage and also have backup drives available all the time and to expandale in the future by adding further rack pcs or HDDs.

Does anyone know a cheaper way of doing this without using Windows server and lots of expensive HP server equip. We currently have around 8Tb or data that needs to backed up, by this time next year it coul dbe upto 100Tb!
I'd also liek to use RAID5 incase a drive dies.
The idea of usign multiple Pcs is also so that the array can be used as a render farm in the future too.

thanks in advance

Nick

 

sweet jesus 100tb

 

yeah tell me about it!
soem of our files are 3-4 Gb each, lots of video editing and realtime 3D stuff now.

with the increased use of HD and mutilple projectors in my business it now meanssome images are over 8000 pixels wide ! at 60fps for 30mins or more!

 

you cant take backup of that without buying a back up server.
and yes they are expensive from 100 000£ and up

 

Blade Server

 

What kinda budget have you got ?

What have you got in place at the moment?

Where is the kit located (ie in a datacenter in which case it will be space critical, or is space not an issue?)

Are the systems critical ?

Are you serious about it needing to be easily upgraded to 100tb within a year?

Do you need the kit for performance or budget?

 

at my work we have two NAS boxes for this, a primary and secondary which is a live sync of the first. I didn't have anything to do with the setting up of the boxes but I know that they're not running windows (I think they're kinda indepdant and run their own OS). Because the data is historic read only stuff we don't do daily/weekly backups or anything the only backup is the second server. We can access just as a PC share so to the user there's no difference to files on the NAS as files on the normal (windows based) file servers. As for capacity I think the sky (and your budget) is the limit.

 

Interesting topic. Ive just bought a nice system for the offices here, maybe a cluster of these would be of use...


http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=11&pid=8

 

Just did a wee bit of research into our setup. Its an adaptec snap server that we use. Uses GuardianOS whatever that is!?!

Some info here but no idea if this is the same product or just from the same range.

http://www.vnunet.com/personal-compu...nap-server-650

 

If i was you mate i'd look at getting a dedicated storage array, maybe something along the lines of the Sun 2510 iscsi array

 

100 Tb its not going to be cheap. Would definately go to dedicated file server with a blade set up. I work on some massive networks but not neede 100tb of storage.

I look after (sort of) a mac enviroment, about 40 g5s that do video editing and a serios amount of music editing and production. they use a mac server cant remeber storage amount but they have individual back up drives on each mac that the individual backs up at the end of the week and that can be removed.

Dunno if that helps but 100tb back up facilities will not be cheap...

 

you going to need something similar to:


1 * XTA2510R01A2N12000 - £11067
Sun StorageTek(TM) 2510 iSCSI Array, Rack-Ready Controller Tray, 12TB, 12 * 1TB 7.2Krpm SATA-II drives, 2 * 512MB cache iSCSI HW RAID controllers, 2 * redundant AC power supplies, 2 * redundant cooling fans; Includes Sun StorageTek(TM) Common Array Manager software and 2 * storage domains using Sun StorageTek(TM) Storage Domains software; RoHS-5


That would solve your initial storage requirements,

You would then need to expand with the following expansion trays (you can add a maximum of 2)

XTA2501R01A2N12000 - £9021
Sun StorageTek(TM) 2501 SAS Expansion Array, Rack-Ready Expansion Tray , 12TB, 12 * 1TB 7.2Krpm SATA-II drives, 2 * SAS I/O modules, 2 * redundant AC power supplies and 2 * redundant cooling fans; Includes 2 * .5m SAS host cables; RoHS-5


Then you would need to start again with another controllor tray and carry on as ur data grows,




Another option would be something like the X4500


A76-PPZ2-16G-SMH - £32550
Sun Fire X4500 x64 Server: 2x AMD Opteron Model dual-core 290 (2.8GHz/1MB) processor, 16GB PC3200 DDR1/400 (8 x 2GB) memory, 48 SATA 3.5" 1TB 7200RPM HDD; 48TB, 2x PSU, Service Processor, 4x 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 4x USB 2.0 ports, 2x 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X slots, VGA port, no power cord, order Geo-specific x-option. Solaris 10 OS preinstalled, includes Slide Rail Kit and Cable Management Arm, RoHS-5.


Dropping in price to £12648 with 48 * 250gb HDD's.


If your company has been going less then 4 years, or you develop on software then you can 1/2 those prices

Lease / finance easily sorted

 

For doing large amount of data storage in house you have issues with redundancy and depreciation of hardware, it also does not resolve the problem that if there was a fire as your backups would also be lost as well as your entire systems.
You should imho be looking at off site storage preferably something running a fibre channel DAS.
Any decent IT service provider will be able to offer a scalable solution which is cost effective as you do not pay for capacity you are not using and the hardware investment and depreciation costs, not to mention administration costs are not assumed by your company.
The other advantage of using a IT service provider is that they will be able to offer different types of backups and store these for over a definite period of time, thus giving you more than one viable restore option or backup to do this effectively, securely and in a cost effective manner in house is simply un-viable for most business.

 

It all depends on your budget, but I would speak to a specialist company and see what they can offer or recommend to you. The amount of drives you need to store 100tb will set you back around £10,000 for basic sata drives, and this is excluding suitable raid controllers etc..! This is the sort of setup that needs to be managed properly and I say this as adviceand with respect and im not taking the piss out of you, so please dont think that- If you need to ask what you need for this job, do you have the ability to install and manage it?

 

thanks for ideas so far

have a couple of plans and other ways of doing it but this will fall into place when i get the budget!