Re: suggestions on network storage

In article <489630f7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
geoffx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
Howdy,

No, it depends on your business being able to eat the down-time for a
rebuild.

I accept this and I did concede the point. In fact my opening statement
was that I felt any enterprise that was 'exceeding capacity' could
easily afford such things. No-one ever factors in the down time. It
seems to be human nature.

The larger the business the less down-time they can tolerate, RAID is
for hardware redundancy, not backups.

Ghost requires some place to store the images, so, if you're going to
have another PC with that much storage space then you already can afford
RAID.

:-) Almost. 1TB storage now costs less than US150 - Winchester and
Maxtor. The average server install is < 32GB with sql server installed
so you could store 30 such images. We use them to store all our VMs. And
a portable drive is the best place to store such things.

No, 1TB of storage costs a LOT more than $150 when you factor in the
device you need to connect it too. I've seen a number of NAS devices
that I consider quality devices, with 500GB that cost around $900 each.

Oh, and another point. RAID won't stop an OS corruption or mess up. You
will still need to rebuild your OS in such circumstances so the portable
drive is a good backup.

And that's a different issue, RAID was never designed or used as a
BACKUP, it's for hardware which fails from time to time.

You do understand that this is a SBS group, right?

Yes - you do understand that you can create differential backups and
SharePoint is free. Yes you need to do them without the Wizard but are
you suggesting this is difficult? Before SBS we didn't have the backup
Wizard. But in any event I was talking about SQL backups. We are talking
Premium. And sql backups will generally be your most important. Mail is
self backed up to users PCs and the OS backup is not that important.

You're reaching again - SQL logs are not, by default, backed up every
hour using the SBS wizards, mail is only backed up if they are doing
cached mode, files are not backed up every hour either... My statement
stands, a loss can mean an entire day of work gone and often more than
an entire day to re-enter it - in our discussion, RAID would have
prevented that added cost if a drive failed.

SBS does not do incremental backups, it does FULL backups, 1 time per

No, it can do both. I suggest you look into the backup tool.

I suggest you look at the SBS Backup Wizard, it does not do incremental
and you should be teaching your server owners (clients) how to use it
and understand it.

I suggest you follow best practices. If you need hourly backups then you
need to have a reasonable IT person onsite most days.

Yes, any person that builds servers knows how to use NT Backup, but that
doesn't follow the SBS practices methods, and it's certainly not go
anything to do with RAID or not using RAID.

As for hourly backups of logs, yes, you can do that too, but it's not
built into SBS, and this is a SBS group talking about SBS solutions.

For data! This is an SBS forum after all. SQL and SharePoint exists
here! Surprised you don't at least use SharePoint for your document
management and storage.

We never use Share Point for Document Mgt, nor SQL, but we do have
customers running Document apps that store them in SQL and acces them
via a web service on the SBS box, but, again, it's third party and
offers a lot more than SP does.

So, if you've got this non-standard SBS solution running, the server
takes a total dump, how long does it take you to get them back online
and working without any loss of data? I'm willing to bet that the cost
of a RAID array is vastly cheaper. Even a lowly on-board RAID controller
with multiple drives (say 4 to 6) is cheaper than a single instance of
you having to rebuild the server 1 time.

Please, this is not a religious argument about RAID. Did you get out of
the wrong side of the bed today? I happen to agree that RAID has its
place but the guy wants to cut corners and this is one corner you can
cut.

No, it's not a place that any respectable IT professional would cut
corners, not one respectable IT pro would ever claim that you can cut
the RAID solution to save money as being a reasonable suggestion.

There are many places that CAN wear a day of downtime and yes, 1
day is enough to fully restore an SBS site if you have planned it all.
And no, this is not a non-standard SBS site, it is very standard down
this neck of the woods.

Then your scope is limited, I can't think of any of our clients that
would even consider 1 day's downtime as being acceptable.

No, but I got the point that you're telling him he "Needs" 2008 because
it will make his business more efficient, and none of us can tell him
that based on his provided information.

You don't read - I never said 'need' as an imperative. Heck the product
isn't even released yet. I recommend both you and he investigate 2008
because it does have substantial improvements in many of its tools and
features. IIS 7 and Exchange 2007 alone are worth the trouble but ISA
2006 (or whatever they put in SBS 2008) is way ahead of 2004. The
wizards are better, the backup is better, SQL Server is better....

And you seem to be missing the point, early adoption of an OS is always
a bad thing, it's always best to wait for the first SP or 6 months to
give the vendors time to work out the bugs. I see no reason to PUSH 2008
on any client when they meet all of their business needs with 2003, it's
just not worth the changes and costs to do it.

You, again, mistake one part of a message for a lot more than it is. I
have 8 servers in my office here, all of them are less than 2 years old,

Oh! You started the argument claiming 10 yr old hardware and now it s 2.
Ok :-)

No, you just made an assumption, that's where you're getting into
trouble.

Thank you for clarifying that but you obviously get my point too.
But there is an overhead in managing hardware on that basis. Instead I
prefer complete machine replacement then a demotion of the old server to
workstation status - every 2 years. The reason: every 2 years seems to
see a dramatic step in capability and performance.

I agree with 2 or 3 years, it's a good planning method and you've
already written the hardware off on taxes by then in most cases. You
will find that many businesses do NOT need the new features, new toys,
and can operate for years on older platforms, never missing a thing that
allows them to do all the work they need.

As for missing something - With a Quad Quad Core box, 32GB RAM, etc...
I'm not missing much, but, this is a SBS group, so there is no point in
talking about Quad Quad boxes.

Yes I think you are. SBS runs on hardware does it not? Appropriate
hardware is intrinsic to appropriate system performance. If you want
your SBS box to run well then you separate out exchange onto a separate
physical drive (or array) and flood the box with RAM. If you can afford
it, put your OS onto an 32GB SSD and it will sing to you. Of course if
performance is not an issue then please disregard all of this but you
said you were a RAID person so I am betting you are also a performance
person.

I'm not missing anything, but this seems like it's pointless with you.

No, you're right, you are offering an "Alternative view", but I'm not
"under compensating" anything. Your suggestion flys in the face of good
business practices that have been proven reliable for decades by most of
the world.

I don't think so. You are just picking out one element of a large and
complex mix. RAID was utterly necessary once to compensate flaky
reliability in drives. They are better these days so the need is not as
great. If you can afford it then sure, knock yourself out with RAID. But
when in the same breath you start telling me you keep 10 yr old
components in your server I know you aren't being balanced or
consistent.

RAID costs the price of a an additional drive, since almost all server
boards come with basic RAID controllers, so, if the cost of your days
work, the cost of 1 days down-time, the cost of recovering work done for
1 full day, is not more expensive than the cost of that one additional
drive, then you're right, RAID would not be economical. If your data has
value, your time has value, your business has value, the cost of RAID is
insignificantly small, in fact, most people will waste more on Coffee in
one month than an additional drive to make a RAID array for most
servers.

My experience is reasonably vast, and it covers decades of working on
these types of things, and it also covers knowing how to build reliable

Yes, but put like this makes you sound a little bit of a dinosaur <g>.
Put your OS on a 32GB SSD and forget RAID. MTFF and MTBF are so low and
the performance is so high you will throw your complex and sometimes
performance reducing RAID in the trash can immediately. Look into SSD -
it is the next generation of storage media.

But your comments appear to make you own to a person that uses cheap
workstations as servers and costs your clients (if you actually have
any) a lot of trouble/down-time.

LOL, Preventive maintenance is when you REPLACE IT BEFORE IT FAILS, not
after it fails :)

NOW you're getting the picture! :) That is where I started this
discussion. My suggestion to the fellow was to replace his hardware now,
not pad it out with storage solutions. Get your storage solution all
right but for reasons that you need storage, not to extend the life of
the server box.

You mistake your impression of what I have experience with.

Well I don't know. I haven't made any assumptions about your experience
yet.

RAID is for the server itself, at least the OS array, and it's not
optional in my view (as well as most any IT person's view that supports

Can we get off the religious argument here. Less than 1 in 10
installations I've seen employ RAID - in the US and in Oz. It is
certainly the purists choice and certainly in use in larger
installations but most small companies busy a single server box for SBS
and that's it! And they are still running trouble free 3 years later and
most can wear a day of down time.

And every one of thousands of servers I've worked with and seen have
RAID solutions working in them. I can't recall the last time I ran into
a business that was not using RAID in a server.

Having 2008 will not benefit MOST businesses that use 2008 currently,
it's got a lot of nice features, but it's not going to dramatically

Was that a typo? I guess you meant 2003 currently. Ok, but I didn't say
dramatic but I am saying substantial. Have you reviewed 2008? There are
productivity measures here really worth investigating. Take a look at
the EBS range of OS. Again, the improvement in migration tools,
reporting, centralised management, Hyper-V and TS are seriously worth
reviewing. This is not just some pretty upgrade. Now whether or not you
want to do this is up to you. I am recommending you review it. It is you
who is upgrading my remarks.

I stand by my position that 2008 will not make any significant
difference in productivity or ROI for businesses currently running 2003.

On a busy 70 user SBS box, a MIRROR for the OS, and a RAID 5 with 4-6
drives for user data, and another small RAID-5 for Exchange or SQL would

You don't have to convince me, I keep telling you that, but your
discussion is irrelevant. The guy hasn't explained the size of his user
base so we don't know. He just said he needed to expand his server
capacity and that he was short of money. My point is that the two
concepts are mutually exclusive. If you need to expand then you can
afford to and you have to. Simple math :). You convince of the need for
RAID and I will convince of the need for better OS hardware. I will
convince you both to investigate 2008.

You're sort of right, money is not part of the consideration, RAID is
the MINIMUM that is acceptable to any IT person that has customers they
care about. If all he needs is more space, he does not need the down-
time or cost of a new server or OS.


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drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"
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