What you need is a disaster recovery plan. Are both servers in the same physical location? If not and you are replicating data between the two, that's better fault tolerance than probably 80% of the companies your size and complexity. I manage the network for a medical device manufacturer of about your size (well - we *were* that big, but that's another story) and we don't replicate to multiple sites at this time. If our building burns down, we recover from offsite tape. Depending on how frequently your data changes, you may find it *much* more cost effective to evaluate cloud based backup and recovery solutions.
There is *nothing* wrong or bad about having your DC also be a file server unless your performance metrics indicate an issue. You are continuing to make the classic mistake of developing a solution before you have defined the entire problem. If both of your servers are in the same physical location, adding a SAN/NAS/DAS doesn't do anything for you if your building burns down or lightning hits your server rack. -Jeff Steward On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 11:02 AM, John Aldrich <[email protected] > wrote: > We have about 200 Gigs of data on the servers now. As to how much we have > on > individual workstations, I can only guess. I don't believe we have enough > storage available on the current servers to migrate stuff from the user's > desktop machines to the servers, though. Also, as I mentioned in my reply > to > Jeff Steward, I don't have a very good backup program right now, as we only > mirror the data between our two servers. I *definitely* need to get > *something* going to keep us up and running in case something happens to > one > or both servers, which is why I'm thinking converting the DCs to virtual > machines would be a good idea, but I need somewhere to put the storage > that's currently ON those machines before I can P2V them. > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Raper, Jonathan - Eagle [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 10:49 AM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: RE: SAN question > > John, > > How much data do you have in Gigs or Terabytes now in centralized file > storage now, and how much data did you have 3, 6, 12, and 18 months ago? > > Also, how much data do you have on local workstations that you would be > moving to centralized file storage? > > Finally, if I recall correctly, you only have a few handfuls of users, > correct? Your disk performance requirement may not justify you pulling file > storage off of your DCs. I would look at the server performance and confirm > whether or not performance is suffering before spending significant dollars > on a NAS, much less, a SAN. > > Jonathan L. Raper, A+, MCSA, MCSE > Technology Coordinator > Eagle Physicians & Associates, PA > [email protected] > www.eaglemds.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: John Aldrich [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 10:22 AM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: RE: SAN question > > Well, my (admittedly limited) understanding is that at the low-end SANs > have > a lot of overlap with NAS and that they are almost interchangeable. I want > some sort of separate machine to get the "file server" role off the DCs. > Maybe that means a NAS, maybe it means a SAN, maybe it means a server with > DAS running Windows Storage Server. At this point, I'm not really sure what > the best money would be. Whatever we get, I want it to be expandable so > that > as we (hopefully) grow, we can add more storage as needed. > > I do like the idea of having tape to back up whatever we have. If we're > going to have email in-house, we're likely to end up with at least a couple > terabytes of data in the long run, so whatever archival backup we end up > with is likely to need to be a library, instead of just an on-board tape > drive. > > > > From: Kevin Lundy [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 9:12 AM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: Re: SAN question > > And absolutely none of that requires a SAN. Especially for your data set > size. > > Why do you think you need a SAN? versus NAS? versus well architechted DAS > with decent tape? > On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 8:37 AM, John Aldrich < > [email protected]> > wrote: > I want to ensure that the data integrity remains intact, even if it takes a > couple days to recover. This is business-critical data, although we could > live without it for a couple or three days, it would be very difficult and > time consuming to recreate much of the data on the servers. For this > reason, > I want redundant disks, network, controllers, etc. > I believe I previously mentioned that my CEO told me we could live with > taking up to 3 or 4 days to recover the data, but after that, it would be > problematic. Personally, I'd like to get it down to under 48 hours to > recover (not 4 business days, 48 actual hours.) That's why I want redundant > controllers or if I can't get redundant controllers on the storage > appliance > itself, I want redundant storage appliances, such that the data itself is > redundant. > I would not like to have to go to the CEO and tell him "sorry, we lost the > data because the system crashed and we had no backups." Theoretically, I > could have one "appliance" and a tape library and be good, but I'd prefer > to > have it a *little* more robust than that. > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Steven M. Caesare [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 12:12 AM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: RE: SAN question > > > set up in some way that there's lots of redundancy > > Data redundancy? Disk redundancy? Controller redundancy? Site redundancy? > Link redundancy?... > > If the answers to any of the above are "yes", to what degree? > > You can go nuts with this stuff... as has been mentioned before, what are > your business requirements driving this architecture? > > -sc > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: John Aldrich [mailto:[email protected]] > > Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 3:28 PM > > To: NT System Admin Issues > > Subject: RE: SAN question > > > > Well, I *would* like to get the storage off the domain controllers and > have it > > set up in some way that there's lots of redundancy. I suppose I could buy > a > > Microsoft Storage Server with a couple terabytes of disk space and use > that. > > > > > > > > From: Bill Humphries [mailto:[email protected]] > > Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 3:14 PM > > To: NT System Admin Issues > > Subject: Re: SAN question > > > > Yeah, my vote is for DAS. You have a simple network that doesn't have to > be > > complex. A carpet company isn't some startup or tech company that will > > change radically in a short period of time. The only way things > radically > > change there is if Shaw or Mohawk come knocking at the door...then you > > have different problems. > > > > Bill > > > > > > Jeff Steward wrote: > > I'm bored, I'll bite. > > > > Like others here, I'm not convinced you even need a SAN or even NAS. You > > can probably make use of DAS. > > > > To even begin to make an attempt to give you more guidance we need: > > > > How many users will be hitting the file server. > > What type of file i/o are we talking about? Have you benchmarked your > > current performance? How much storage do you currently have and how > > much do you think you will need to meet anticipated growth over the next > 24 > > to 36 months. > > > > If you move to providing in-house Exchange, how many users will you be > > hosting? How many are heavy duty users versus light duty? > > > > That's a start, answers to those questions will help us help you further. > > > > -Jeff Steward > > On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 10:16 AM, John Aldrich > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Ok, guys. I'm trying to narrow down my many choices with regards to our > on- > > going search for a SAN manufacturer. I'd like your thoughts on the whole > > question of adding more intelligence vs just adding more disks. i.e. the > EQ vs > > LeftHand models. > > > > I can see arguments to be made for both models. I'll tell you that, > initially, the > > SAN is going to be a glorified file server, however, we plan on hosting > our > > email data store on the SAN when we bring email in-house later on. I've > > already verified with the email vendor that I hope to use that this is > not > a > > problem, so that's a non-issue. Other than that, the only database we > would > > store on the SAN would possibly be the database from our Vipre install, > > although initially that would stay on the local storage. > > > > So, I'd like to see some discussions of the benefits of just adding a > tray > of > > "dumb drives" or adding a complete controller along with the drives (a la > > LeftHand.) > > > > I just don't know enough about the benefits of each model to know what > > would work best for us. I'm hoping that you guys who are more experienced > > would give me the benefit of your knowledge. > > > > > > > > Thanks, > > John Aldrich > > IT Manager, > > Blueridge Carpet > > 706-276-2001, Ext. 2233 > > > > > > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ > > <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > > > --- > > To manage subscriptions click here: > > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > > or send an email to [email protected] > > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ > > <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > > > --- > > To manage subscriptions click here: > > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > > or send an email to [email protected] > > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ > > <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > > > --- > > To manage subscriptions click here: > > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > > or send an email to [email protected] > > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ > > <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > > > --- > > To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt- > > software.com/read/my_forums/ > > or send an email to [email protected] > > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > > Any medical information contained in this electronic message is > CONFIDENTIAL > and privileged. 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