How would you design a large, redundant, expansive network storage device?

Hello IT teckkies!

I am looking at my friend's business network and trying to help him optimize some of the aspects of his current set up. He has a business DSL network line running one fileserver with a backup server (not running but sitting next to it with the same configuration if the fileserver dies), one terminal server with a sonicwall VPN firewall, one webserver, one Buffalo NAS (with 1TB RAID 0 I think), and around 15 office terminals. He wants to build a solution to his growing amount of data that allows him to expand his storage as need grows which allows him to take a copy off-site at the end of the day in case of fire or other disaster. The idea of just stringing more NAS's has been the common answer to the growing size of his data pool that does have redundancy but not off-site copy. We were discussing some of the builds that I have seen here and I decided to post the question to the real computer geniusses in the world....TBCS members! Can you think of a good way to do this? Hot swapable drives would work to a degree, but I don't know how well this would behave on a RAID configuration.

Jon

You could build a case that has plenty of space. Put 6 identical drives into it, and have them running on seperate RAID's (3 per RAID). Depending on the OS, have a incremental backup made upon shutdown, and have one of the RAID systems easily removable, preferably as one unit removed from the front.

That way, you would have three drives worth of space, and can use a 6 SATA port motherboard with no add-in cards.

Considering that you can get 1TB / 1.5TB drives fairly cheaply (compared to what they used to be), you can have 3 / 4.5TB of space that is backed up onto the other RAID. If you need more space, add more drives, and use an add-in card.

For the ultimate storage capacity, use two motherboards with 6 SATA ports and dual gigabit NIC's. Have 6 1.5TB drives on each port, and have one system incrementally backup onto the other through one of the gigabit NIC's. Then make one system's disks removable as a single unit, and hey presto, you have a 6TB backed up/removable for offsite system.

EDIT: Here's a visual of what I am thinking.

But have both the drives on one tower. Or two, it doesnt really matter.

I am in now way a genius/guru. But I can give what I would do.

I would have/build/buy a PC/Server with the on-site hard drives in your raid of choice, then use that 1 TB as the back-up to take off site. The case would have extra spaces for additional HD's if/when needed or it would be able to support a min of 4 HD's for raid.

Depending on how much data and how much they would be willing to spend, there are companies that do just that... off site storage.

here is a google search for sites (Searched "off site storage solutions")
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=off+s...fp=IlBcsxTWBgM

Your last sentence: "Hot swapable drives would work to a degree, but I don't know how well this would behave on a RAID configuration."

Depending on the Raid configuration, this is what its meant for. Personally I prefer mirroring. It does take a minimum of 2 Drives and will only be able to have as much storage as the smallest hd used but it provides you with 2 copies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redunda...ependent_disks

Thanks for the ideas guys! I did look up all of the raid descriptions before posting but I didn't fully understand how to implement some of the raid configs higher than 1. And I didn't know how puling a drive out of any of those setups would effect it. Like suppose it's set to write files to mirrored drives and one is pulled out while a file is being written, does that screw things up? And with the higher raid configs, I'm afraid they are just over my head at this time. If I were to attempt to use any of them, I would need a much better understanding. But at this point, I basically need to know if one of those raid options would be best for this concept, and essentially how it would be set up.

Using a company to manage the data back up was exactly what we were trying to avoid if possible. Not that there is anything wrong with them, they are typically very reliable and a great solution. But these guys are really into DIY and would like to be able to accomplish themselves if possible. If not, they can live with that, but since I have this group of smart PC users I figured I'd ask advice.

At this time they only have about 600GB of data but that is expected to rise rapidly as they start scanning all old medical records into digital files, so we wanted to design big.

Thanks for that great concept and sketch Killa! I had not thought of doing it like that, certainly worth considering! +rep to both of you!

I am relaying a question from my friend...

"with mirrored slaved drives hot-swappable in RAID, if I remove one drive and replace it with an equivalent blank drive, do I end up with a new mirror of the residual drive that in effect is also defragged?"

If you replace a hot-swappable drive in a mirrored raid system, (assuming the system is setup right and running right), the system will mirror the full drive to the blank one, but not necessarily "defrag" it. So, if you wanted an off-site backup, you could yank one of the mirrors and take it with you, the downside is then you're going to bog your server down while it re-builds the mirror - and the bigger your data "clump" is, the longer your server is going to be bogged.

To answer your original question, if your friend is running a VPN server, he could have a mirror fileserver (duplicate computer) running offsite which accesses the real fileserver through the VPN and can do backups or datacopies at low traffic times, or it could do continual updates - depends on how he wants to run it.

BTW, I liked the idea of using one of the two dual-gigabit lines to a second computer idea - I'm just kinda modifying it I guess. ;)

These are some great ideas guys, thanks so much for the input! Please keep them coming, as the more info the better. and of course, +reppage!!

I have a few ideas but I would like a little more information if I am gonna give you some options.
So there is just the one DSL conenction? What are it's up and down speeds?
What network infrastructure is there in place?
How is the network structured is there the modem and then a switch with everything hanging off it?
For backups do they want to personally take the data off site with COB each day? Or do would a automated backup to offsite storage be ok?
How much data are we talking?

For storage go and have a look at some of the Dell and HP SAN solutions. I would advise against a custom build.

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Originally Posted by simon275

So there is just the one DSL conenction? What are it's up and down speeds?
Yes, it's a business DSL connection which has a much slower up/down rate than residential. I ran a speed test the other day and got an average of 1.3/.3 (d/u) but we are looking into getting a bump to a higher bandwidth.

What network infrastructure is there in place?
The network infrastructure is in basic terms laid out in the first post, but the actual network map is chaos and too much if a pain to describe here. Essentially, the file server and NAS need backed up which can both be accessed on a mapped network drive from the fileserver or from the terminal server.

How is the network structured is there the modem and then a switch with everything hanging off it?
It goes; DSL modem->netgear router->everywhere else through direct lines or switches.


For backups do they want to personally take the data off site with COB each day? Or do would a automated backup to offsite storage be ok?
Automated backups would be preferred actually.

How much data are we talking?
Currently just over 600GB, but they have a whole fileroom of paper than is scheduled to be scanned into digital records, I anticipate that several TB will be needed.

For storage go and have a look at some of the Dell and HP SAN solutions. I would advise against a custom build.
I do agree that a custom build is risky, and I was looking for ideas in general just a much as custom configurations. Actually, Curtis brought Drobo to my attention the other day and the Dr. really liked it. We may end up going with a Drobo and DroboShare for offsite backup.

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Thanks for the help so far!

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Originally Posted by jdbnsn

I am relaying a question from my friend...

"with mirrored slaved drives hot-swappable in RAID, if I remove one drive and replace it with an equivalent blank drive, do I end up with a new mirror of the residual drive that in effect is also defragged?"

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When the drives are mirrored, parts of each drive are kept on other drives, not just exact copies of disks. So if you remove one, the rebuild is bits from each hard disk, which is a lot faster, and is all sorted by the RAID chip.

To have an exact replica, or at least a full backup that can be removed at any time, my idea would be perfect.

I do admit that a custom job is a little more risky, but it's the better plan as such, but I don't think anyone makes it commercially as such.

Thanks for the +rep

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AMD Killa

When the drives are mirrored, parts of each drive are kept on other drives, not just exact copies of disks.

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I think you have mirroring mixed up with striping. In a RAID 0,3, and 5 the data is striped across multiple drives. In a RAID 1 or mirror, it is exactly that one drive is an exact copy or mirror of the other one.

A drobo isn't a bad idea.

If you are gonna be doing automated offiste backup you are gonna have to get a better net connection with faster upload. The first time it would probably be easier to physicaly transport the data to the offsite data center as the volume of data would be so large. Then all the other backups would be smaller incremental ones.

If you end up a with a file server running *nix rsnapshot is a good tool to use.