+1 Hire a consulting firm that can spend a day or two with you to work out what your requirements are. They can probably recommend some options (which you can then come back to the list for some sanity check)
Cheers Ken From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, 24 September 2010 11:42 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: SAN question 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 ~ 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
