Jonathan, thanks for your input. I am beginning to rethink some of my plans. That being said, I would like to correct some misunderstandings you seem to have of my plan. I don't plan on keeping a *lot* of email. I have just under a hundred mailboxes at this time (probably about 90, give or take.) I don't plan on storing a huge amount of old emails on there, but I know my users and I know human nature. If I don't force them to delete messages, they likely won't. :-) This kind of goes with another thread from a few days ago about email retention policies. We dont currently have an email retention policy, so I don't know who far back I'd need to keep emails, but I'd guess probably at least a year. Kerio recommends about 100-200 Gigs of disk space for the amount of users I have. I also want to migrate files off user's desktop machines onto the network, so that in the event the PC crashes, I can just rebuild the PC and then restore their work-related files via a folder redirect. I figure between what we have now, in disk space used and what all the other plans I have require, that we will be using around a terabyte of disk space. If I want to take snapshots, etc, it would be prudent to double that, I would think. Also, I want to leave room for growth. Perhaps 5 Terabytes is overkill to start with, but I think 3 Tb sounds reasonable. I'm willing to be corrected, though by others with more experience. :-)
From: Jonathan Link [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 10:57 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: SAN question Let's cover some definitions. A SAN is a storage area network, connotes networing equipment and servers (which sole duty is to provide storage). Let's call those storage servers- appliances. Those appliances may be high end boxes which provide multiple ways of accessing data: CIFS, NFS, iSCSI, Fiber Channel, etc. At the low end you have NAS (Network Attached Storage). Storage appliances can provide their storage to many clients but it is not a good idea to do that. You will still likely need a server serving the files to clients. In that case, considering your needs, I would not pickup a storage appliance, and would instead go with a server with DAS and serve that up. You do not want Window Storage Server, as that basically turns a server into a storage appliance, and you will still need another server to serve the files to clients. You go with a SAN if you have a heterogenuous environment which requires centralized storage to simplify management. One reason for that might be virtualization, there are others, but in this case are far beyond your scope and need. Were I you, I'd step back and look at your backup methodology. How far back do you want to keep? How much data do you have? How much data growth do you project within the next 2-3 years? Answer those questions based on your defined SLA, size the backup device accordingly, but a rough guess in your case would probably take me to some sort of NAS for backup. I'd have a dedicated file server and put your NAS at the other location you have access to and setup some sort of replication between the two. If your file server goes down for an extended period of time, you can probably use the NAS in a pinch. I think your email retention is a bit too ambitious, you likely don't have a great need to retain emails over a long period of time, and of such a volume as a few terabytes based on your previous emails about your environment. Keeping that much email is likely a huge waste of system resources. On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 10:21 AM, John Aldrich <[email protected]> wrote: 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 ~ 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
