Server HDD Question

[AMD RULES]

Can I run a business server run 24/7 365 days a year with SATA2 hdds instead of SCSI or SAS smoothly?

 

[unhappy_mage]

What for? File storage? Database stuff? What's the envisioned I/O load on these? What are your requirements for reliability? What's your backup strategy like?

Other than that... Make sure your cooling setup is overspec'ed - fans do die. And buy a better power supply than you strictly need; consult the PSU forums folks on this. An UPS will help preserve your data in case of power failure. Use fan filters, and clean them out monthly.

I have 3 sata drives that have been running and under some load for about a year and a half now. No failures, no dropouts. I have (much!) older IDE drives still in service, but the thread was about sata

 

[AMD RULES]

Glad to hear that.

What for?

Small Business Server to act as an active directory for sharing files, print services, and domain controller. This server will be in use in a small dental practice.

What's the envisioned I/O load on these?

Well, it will be accessed by a front desk computer, three desktops in the opertories, and a single desktop in the boss' (main dentist) office. Not to hard of file accessing. I'd say the most systems accessing the server at one time would be three.

What are your requirements for reliability?

They need to be reliabile. I'm already looking at buying a very good raid card and running the storage hdds in raid 5 or 6, and two os hdds in raid 1.

What's your backup strategy like?

Currently, there will be no backup strategy besides a Tape Drive. But i'm sure we will add a small server as a backup server and run the backup wizard on the server daily, as well as backup on tape.

As for cooling, the server will be housed in the case below:

Case: Coolermaster CM Stacker 810
Cooling: Three of these

I will be buying an APC UPS Backup for the server.

No need to worry about a good psu, I already picked out a great one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817703007

CPU: AMD Optern 1210 (Socket AM2)
HDDS: 8x 80gb Raid 6 - Main Storage
2x 80gb Raid 1 - OS

ALL DRIVES Will go in two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816215001
and the stock CM Stacker hdd cage will act as an air intake for the rest of the system

 

[unhappy_mage]

Small Business Server to act as an active directory for sharing files, print services, and domain controller. This server will be in use in a small dental practice.

Good deal. If there were a hundred users or they were doing something disk-intensive it'd be an issue, but as it is disk load shouldn't be an issue. Are they doing medical imaging of any sort, or just billing and so forth?

Currently, there will be no backup strategy besides a Tape Drive. But i'm sure we will add a small server as a backup server and run the backup wizard on the server daily, as well as backup on tape.

That's a good start. I've seen worse I suggest you schedule backups rather than rely on humans to do it every day, especially when they're not primarily IT people.

Cooling: Three of these

And an 80mm fan for the top, yes?

I will be buying an APC UPS Backup for the server.

What capacity? What's your uptime goal? Make sure to install the software that comes with it.

No need to worry about a good psu, I already picked out a great one:

Yes, that should handle the load. You don't really need the SR version for this application, but it'll prevent crossloading the three rail version with the presumably low video card draw, so okay.

HDDS: 8x 80gb Raid 6 - Main Storage
2x 80gb Raid 1 - OS

Don't buy 8 drives unless you really want to. To paraphrase the Notorious B.I.G, "mo hard drives, mo problems". 2 300-500 gig disks in raid 1 (or 4 in raid 6, or 5 in raid 6 + hot spare) would be cheaper, cooler, and fewer points of failure. And it'll probably be easier to find replacements in two years when one dies.

A quick comparison: A single 80GB hard drive here costs $134. A 500GB ES nearline drive designed for 24/7 multi-drive environments is $235. That's $.47/GB compared to $1.67/GB - roughly a quarter of the cost per GB!

ALL DRIVES Will go in two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816215001
and the stock CM Stacker hdd cage will act as an air intake for the rest of the system

I personally like the Supermicro cases (they've got a 92mm fan instead, for one thing), but okay. At least it's an enclosure; I wouldn't want more than three drives in standard 3.5" bays.

PS: Might want to check out my Split Quote bookmarklet, if you're using Firefox. It makes it easy to break a block quote into multiple pieces to respond to.

 

[AMD RULES]

I just assumed buying small drives that don't cost as much would be easier for us to replace if it failed on us. I will be doing all of the IT management as this is my dad's business.
I guess I could always do a 3x250gb in raid 5 for storage and two 80gbs for OS, eh?
I will have scheduled backups set, both on tape and most likely some type of backup to a backup server. Yes, 80mm fan on top. Uptime will not need to be long with the UPS, maybe 20 minutes. Also, how is a 80gb hdd $133? newegg has them for $44.99 (unless you don't live in the USA ???)

I'll post my final server specs in a bit cause i gotta go....thanks for the info

 

[Michael Daly]

Can I run a business server run 24/7 365 days a year with SATA2 hdds instead of SCSI or SAS smoothly?

Smoothly, yes. Lightning fast - maybe. With the demand you describe, I think you'd be fine. I've seen companies run web servers with PATA drives with acceptable performance. It all depends on the demand.

Look at getting enterprise-quality drives. Western Digital, Seagate and others offer enterprise versions of their popular SATA drives. They tend to be about $10 more per drive (e.g. for 320GB) but are rated for 24/7 continuous operation. If you look at the HD makers' web sites, you can get info on them.

RAID for redundancy is a very good idea in your case and a good UPS is also essential. You will have to put together a good offsite backup strategy to finish it off. Whatever you choose for backup - tape, DVD, removable HD etc - you'll have to keep the data in another building to be sure it won't be subject to the same disaster that your office may suffer. A bank safety deposit box might do, but even the main dentist's basement could suffice.

 

[AMD RULES]

Look at getting enterprise-quality drives. Western Digital, Seagate and others offer enterprise versions of their popular SATA drives. They tend to be about $10 more per drive (e.g. for 320GB) but are rated for 24/7 continuous operation. If you look at the HD makers' web sites, you can get info on them.

RAID for redundancy is a very good idea in your case and a good UPS is also essential. You will have to put together a good offsite backup strategy to finish it off. Whatever you choose for backup - tape, DVD, removable HD etc - you'll have to keep the data in another building to be sure it won't be subject to the same disaster that your office may suffer. A bank safety deposit box might do, but even the main dentist's basement could suffice.

ok, i'll make sure the drives I pick are rated enterprise-quality.
Can I just backup to another server within the office, for when you say off-site? Because we're not running a fiber optic line here. Just a commerical grade broadband connection.
Unless, you are saying backup to an offsite FTP server?.?.....

 

[unhappy_mage]

I guess I could always do a 3x250gb in raid 5 for storage and two 80gbs for OS, eh?

Sounds like a good way to go, but one suggestion - run raid 6 or have a hot or cold spare. N+1 drives isn't enough redundancy for business, IMHO, and if you're investing in a raid controller that'll do raid 6 you might as well use it

I will have scheduled backups set, both on tape and most likely some type of backup to a backup server. Yes, 80mm fan on top. Uptime will not need to be long with the UPS, maybe 20 minutes.

Good, good, look for GXT2 Liebert units. On eBay they're around $300, usually. 1000 VA true online UPS.

Also, how is a 80gb hdd $133? newegg has them for $44.99 (unless you don't live in the USA ???)

Because it's 2.5" laptop form factor Next time I'll do a sanity check before hitting submit... maybe

The hdds i selected in a previous post (the 80gig ones), here is the manufactors website and they are rated for sata servers:

Those are 7200.9-based drives. I would recommend the newer 7200.10-based drives, because the 7200.8 and .9 series were unpopular due to poor seek times, so they may go out of production sooner than normal. For OS drives, it's not so critical - if they go bellyup, you reinstall and move on. For data drives, it matters.

 

[AMD RULES]

I don't know if i posted this or not, but here is the raid card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816131004

I'm gonna go with Raid 6 on this one.
I think i'll stick with two hdds in raid 1 for os just for safety.

Raid card will be for the three 320gb seagate's i selected and the onboard raid on the motherboard will be for the os drives.

Motherboard: ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe

 

[Michael Daly]

Can I just backup to another server within the office, for when you say off-site? Because we're not running a fiber optic line here. Just a commerical grade broadband connection.
Unless, you are saying backup to an offsite FTP server?.?.....

If you're using tape or DVD for backup, I mean take the tapes or DVDs out of the office to another site for storage. If you backup to another server in the same office, something like a broken water pipe could conceivably take out both servers including all drives. Storing to a server in another building increases your security. It all depends on how much you can afford to lose data and how much you can pay for the security. Sometimes it's a tough call on what to do. A catastrophic failure in your office is likely improbable, but not impossible.

One backup strategy is to do a full backup, say, once a week (or two, or monthly). Then do an incremental backup frequently. A full backup will be very big, but the incremental one will be smaller - it will only contain the changes since the full backup. To recover, you install the full backup and then install all the increments until you are back to current. This makes for one big data transfer (big tape, say, or long transfer over broadband connection to offsite server) and many smaller ones (easier over broadband).

To do incremental backups, you have to have the software that will support it in terms of doing it and recovering the data.

The other thing is that you can backup only critical data and just re-install all software from scratch (plus fixes/updates) if the software doesn't change significantly. That means your backup is only data, which might be small. The cost is the time spent reinstalling and re-configuring the system before reloading the data.

This is a big topic and you should look into it via the web, as it's a bit much to explain on a forum like this. All this stuff has been thought through and done before - you just have to choose a combination that works for you. Once you're familiar with the options, you can ask here and we'll pitch in.

 

[GeorgeHR]

I suppose the dentist already has a computer system.

250GB is a lot of data for a small business. I suspect 15-20GB is the max needed.

Backup can be a simple Xcopy with the right parameters.

Backup to a internal hard drive every evening to a directory that looks like Month-Year. Backup to an external drive drive also and every Monday rotate to a different external hard drive.

Set the turn off hard drive time to 15 minutes.

No RAID. If you want to, mirror the OS to the backup drives

 

[AMD RULES]

I suppose the dentist already has a computer system.

250GB is a lot of data for a small business. I suspect 15-20GB is the max needed.

Backup can be a simple Xcopy with the right parameters.

Backup to a internal hard drive every evening to a directory that looks like Month-Year. Backup to an external drive drive also and every Monday rotate to a different external hard drive.

Set the turn off hard drive time to 15 minutes.

No RAID. If you want to, mirror the OS to the backup drives

Just my opinion, I disagree with your input. I suspect that atleast 100gigs will be used at this office, with several thousand high res photos, patient files, and more. There is no computer system right now.

I will take off-site backup into consideration. Thanks for your input Michael Daly

 

[GeorgeHR]

Perhaps you should ask how much data is going to be produced.

You don't go from no computer system to a 100G data requirement.