john> I have to rebuild my remote Backup Server (A place for my john> servers to backup to hard dirves). I currently have a LINUX john> system with a RAID 5 array of 300GB SAS drives (Total 1.5TB) john> which has to be increased to 4TB or larger (sorta depends on the john> cost) We are virtualizing 22 of my servers which currently use john> on board tapes for Master Backups and then do differentials each john> night to my Backup Server over our WAN at night. Because this john> server will now be holding Master Backups I need to grow the john> space. I don't have the money nor budget to get any dedupe john> system or some other appliance.
john> I started looking for drives and hit the smorgasbord of john> Green/Red 32mb/16mb cache and the prices are all over the john> place. I can get a 1TB drive for $133 (approx) but the 500GB john> drive is $270 with a smaller cache. Same manufacturer and john> distributor. My RAID system has 8 slots which I want to use. john> There will be two arrays in the system. RAID1 (Mirrored for the john> oS) and the rest of the slots for RAID 5. Currently it is all john> one big array and also uses LVM which I am not going to use when john> I rebuild this thing. john> So I am looking for some insight on what performance specs I john> should be looking for in such a project. I must confess as I john> type this I probably will also look at a NAS unit that would be john> comparable size and cost. In my mind, since you'll be doing mostly large streaming writes, I wouldn't worry about the specs too much here. The network and clients will be more of a bottleneck than the disks. I'd also look at getting larger 2, 3 or 4tb disks to act as your backup destination. Are these disks going to be the only backup? Or will you then spool off to tape? You say your now-standalone but soon to be virtualized servers use individual tape drives? Or just local disk space for their backups? It's not clear from what you wrote how it actually works. In any case, that same linux box with SAS drives should be just fine if you add in some 2tb or 4tb drives (mirrored!) for backups. john> My systems use a Backup program from Microlite (BackupEdge) john> which works just fine for what we do and hasn't failed me john> yet. (looking for some real wood to knock on). _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
