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Redundancy for Laptop Server

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Fooshnik

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 6, 2004
Messages
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I like to use old laptops for personal servers because the monitor's attached, low power consumption, and I like the idea of reassigning hardware that might otherwise go unused. The laptop I'm currently using has developed a bad NIC so it's going to be replaced. I usually just image the server every month or so but now I'd like to set up some sort of redundancy so I don't lose anything if the HD dives. I'm looking for suggestions on how to do this, the cheaper and more ghetto the better. This server is going to be used to host Zimbra, web apps and a couple other things.

Would two external drives and software RAID be viable? Any better ideas?
 
There are caddies that are the same form factor as optical disks but they take hard disks. I don't know what they're called but they're on Ebay. Stick a disk in it and run raid1. The caddies are specific to laptop models so buy the right one.
 
He uses it to run webapps not as a file server. A laptop is fine for light webapps that serve 3-4 users in a home setting.
 
What Laptop(s) are you planning on suing? Do they have a PCMCIA or Cardbus slot? You always have the option of using an adapter like this or get a USB3 cardbus adapter like this and then a RAID1 chassis like this which does USB 2/3, Firewire & eSATA for whichever adapter you get.
 
Old laptops are great I use one with Ubuntu to share printers with Airprint for ipad support.

Personally, I would set up the machine to copy an image of itself over to a remote share on NAS (assuming you have some sort of network storage available). I'm not sure how to image a linux machine that is running but there must be a way. Windows has the backup thing that supports network shares and with solaris you could use ZFS to send snapshots to a remote share.

If you don't have a NAS then I would just use an external usb hard drive and periodically update the external storage with an image or a copy of the main drive.
 
The laptop I'm using is a well loved but still decent Gateway NV73 Athlon II M300 64-bit, which has a higher Passmark score than a Xeon 3040 that worked just fine in servers in 2007. The problem with a daily backup to a flash drive is with Zimbra Open Source all the Zimbra processes need to be shut down then the /opt/zimbra folder needs to be backed up. This can take up to 30 minutes, when you add in the other applications I need to back up I prefer to just image the server. Unfortunately laziness prevails and I don't do this as often as I should. Usually I set these things up, put in my closet where my patch panel is, and forget about it. So I'd like to mirror the HD if at all possible.
 
Fooshnik said:
The laptop I'm using is a well loved but still decent Gateway NV73 Athlon II M300 64-bit, which has a higher Passmark score than a Xeon 3040 that worked just fine in servers in 2007. The problem with a daily backup to a flash drive is with Zimbra Open Source all the Zimbra processes need to be shut down then the /opt/zimbra folder needs to be backed up. This can take up to 30 minutes, when you add in the other applications I need to back up I prefer to just image the server. Unfortunately laziness prevails and I don't do this as often as I should. Usually I set these things up, put in my closet where my patch panel is, and forget about it. So I'd like to mirror the HD if at all possible.
Click to expand...

Well, unfortunately you don't have a cardbus slot or USB3, so your best option is to use the fastest external connection you have which is GigE. Get yourself a NAS enclosure that does RAID1 and shove some drives in it, and mount it via IP for your backup.

Your other option is this. Your notebook is based on the M880G chipset, which does support RAID (whether gateway implemented this support is another matter). If the support is still there, get one of these which will let you replace your optical drive with a hard drive and setup hardware raid in the BIOS (or software raid in the OS of your choice regardless of BIOS support).
 
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