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Network Attached Redundant Storage Solutions

S

Shimmerdark

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Joined
Jul 27, 2004
Messages
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I have a Client that is in need of a seriously Redundant Network storage solution. I am looking for a box with 100mb - 1000mb ethernet with capacity of around 500gb to 1tb setup in raid 1 (mirror)

I am currently trying to decide whether or not to get a inexpensive shuttle barebones and slap 2 500gb drive in it or a all in one solution.

Any advice would be greatly appiciated.
 
Shimmerdark said:
I have a Client that is in need of a seriously Redundant Network storage solution. I am looking for a box with 100mb - 1000mb ethernet with capacity of around 500gb to 1tb setup in raid 1 (mirror)

I am currently trying to decide whether or not to get a inexpensive shuttle barebones and slap 2 500gb drive in it or a all in one solution.

Any advice would be greatly appiciated.
Click to expand...

Raid 1 is a *minimum* of "serious redundancy".

If you want a truly redundant system, then your going to need a few more hard drives and maybe a secondary system.

But first thing's first..........

What is the budget for the project?
Why the need for "serious redundancy"?
Whats the minimum storage requirements?
What is the anticipated storage requirements in the next five years?
 
What is the budget for the project?
Why the need for "serious redundancy"?
Whats the minimum storage requirements?
What is the anticipated storage requirements in the next five years?
Click to expand...

Budget is about $1000 US

Serious Redundancy is for Art Files that are updated and changed Daily. Current Size is about 350gb. We arent talking military grade redundacy but they have been burned too many times with hard drives going bad, and have finaly come to me wanting a real solution.

Minimum Storage requirment is about 500gb, I want to give them a solution that will give them a little room to grow but price is also a concern.

I would say 1 tb is the 5 year forcast. It took about 5-8 years to get to the 350gb they are at now.
 
If you want a shuttle, I'd recommend the following setup:

Shuttle SN25P - $400
4x 500GB Seagate SATA drives - $380 each, $1520 total
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Lots of overkill here.) - $140
1GB DDR400 (Same here. Overkill) - $85
PCIe 6200 - $60

$2205 total

..Then again, you've specificied a $1,000 budget... Let's try this:

Shuttle SK43G - $152
2x 500GB Seagate SATA drives - $380 each, $760 total
AMD Duron 1.8Ghz - $50
512MB DDR - $37

$999 total

Note, with this setup, you're limited to 2 SATA drives. You'd have to pick up a PCI controller to add more drives. You're also limited on CPU choices, but I think a 1.8 should be fine for a file server.
 
No matter how much "redundancy" you put into a system, there is still the chance of catastrophic loss due to system failure, RAID failure, fire, flood, etc.

A budget of $1000 is not realistic to achieve any kind of "serious redundancy".

You might want to consider having them invest in some sort of *real* backup system with rotating backups off site along with a centralized file share on a server.

Ultimately the business has to decide what is more expensive, investing in a *real* redundant system with off site backups or recreating the lost art from a failure.
 
Yeah I understand that it's not really Serious but I think, it's a big step up from Slapping random 250 gig hard drive in thier current computers and considering the data safe as it is now. I guess Serious wasn't the right word, Some Redundancy would be the more accurate term, Serious as in there are getting a little more serious after a recent burn.

Anyone have any opions on this thing?

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97&categoryid=19
 
Shimmerdark said:
Yeah I understand that it's not really Serious but I think, it's a big step up from Slapping random 250 gig hard drive in thier current computers and considering the data safe as it is now. I guess Serious wasn't the right word, Some Redundancy would be the more accurate term, Serious as in there are getting a little more serious after a recent burn.

Anyone have any opions on this thing?

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97&categoryid=19
Click to expand...

Again, the problem is not necessarily with the storage setup, but with the *backup* of the critical business data.

RAID != Backup

Raid is good in case of a hard drive failure, but you can still have a total system failure that corrupts the raid volume and the customer winds up getting burned again.

The right thing to do is setup a minimal raid system (raid 1 or 5) *AND* a backup that gets rotated off site in case the raid system fails. It very well may cost more than $1000, but weigh the cost against the cost of recreating lost data.
 
Shimmerdark said:
Anyone have any opions on this thing?

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97&categoryid=19
Click to expand...
Never used one myself. But the price looks to be about right, and it does seem to be what you're looking for. Something to note, though - The dual RAID-1 setup may leave you frustrated if you're working with large files. It's rather irritating to waste a good 5GB of space because you've got a 5.01GB file. Aside from that, it looks like a friendly little box. Not very expandable, but the 1TB version is only $875 or so, a full $125 cheaper than the shuttle setup.
 
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