Here is my take, swallow what you will ,spit out what you wont.. I have no idea what you currently have. Based on your size and the zillions of posts around this.
Identify your space need for the next 3 years. Since you ARE running DFS, you have to do with LOCAL drives. That means your server thinks they are built in. NAS units and CIFS shares wont work . DFS requires Windows 2003/2008 Server to function. DFSR requires 2003 R2 or 2008 servers. Buy a NAS that supports ISCSI (Drobo, Synology) or go with a good DAS, MD3000 or such... Make sure it can handle your storage needs. Any of your servers if they are within a few years can run Vmware or HyperV and interface with a DAS and partition space if you want to go that route or install the ISCSI initiator on your VM's/Physical and map it to the LUN on the unit. Purchase a Datto Backup unit. Capable of taking 15 minute snapshots of your server and realtime dropping the whole server, SQL, Exchange, Files into Vmware waiting to hit the start button in the event of a total failure. All of that data replicates to their cloud for recovery in the event of a total failure or disaster locally. Allows incremental recovery of data locally as well and recovery to point in time for the whole server or mount SQL or Exchange without having to go through full recovery procedures. Its slick, I use it, clients love it, and it just works. I bet the whole solution would cost you 15k and your monthly would easily spread out over 3 years to your 30k. Your finance people will love not dropping 30k up front. You get reliability, data recovery and business continuity. I am the first one to admit, that I can get overwhelmed with the dozens of options, and you are probably in the position that this decision/purchase has to be right because if its not your but is on the line. So you are hesitant to make the decision. We have ALL been there, and we all probably get there more often than we used to. I may suggest you contact a proven IT organization in the area and spend 5 to 8 hours of their consulting time and help them develop these "business goals, IT goals" and then give you some options on meeting them. Then come back to the list with a clear idea and let us throw out suggestions. I have no more time to read this ongoing thread until you have done the work. Greg From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 11:17 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: SAN question Oh, I understood that you meant that. But I have seen too many times that the focus is on backup: making the windows, saving space, compressing data, etc. And very little consideration is made to getting it all back into place, and reintegrating the saved data with existing data. Even backup applications which talk about speed rarely mean "restore speed" ASB On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Raper, Jonathan - Eagle <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: ASB, thanks for clarifying.... Didn't you hear what I MEANT?! :) Jonathan L. Raper, A+, MCSA, MCSE Technology Coordinator Eagle Physicians & Associates, PA [email protected] www.eaglemds.com ________________________________ From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 11:01 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: SAN question Backup AND Recovery. Trust me, the second one won't work without the first, but the second is done poorly, you'll still have lots of grief and pain... ASB (My XeeSM Profile)<http://XeeSM.com/AndrewBaker> Exploiting Technology for Business Advantage... On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 10:57 AM, Raper, Jonathan - Eagle <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: +100,000,000 Who cares about your High Availability & redundancy if you don't have a *ROCK_SOLID_BACKUP_PLAN*. You need these books: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/701 Curtis *KNOWS* his stuff, and you (as well as all the rest of us, if we haven't already) would benefit from his knowledge and experience on the subject, less we experience an RGE... [1] HTH... Jonathan L. Raper, A+, MCSA, MCSE Technology Coordinator Eagle Physicians & Associates, PA [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> www.eaglemds.com<http://www.eaglemds.com> [1] Resume Generating Event ________________________________ From: Jeff Steward [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 10:49 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: SAN question What is your current backup solution? -Jeff Steward On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 10:21 AM, John Aldrich <[email protected]<mailto:[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]<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]<mailto:[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]<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]<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]<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]<mailto:[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]<mailto:[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
