+*∞* On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Ken Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think this thread (like all the previous ones) has gone on long enough. > > We are not asking you questions because we want answers. Frankly, I think > most of the people here no longer care - you've used enough time as it is. > > *You* need to work out what your *requirements* are. Not what you're > 'unhappy' about. Or what you 'think' you need. You need to find out what the > business needs, in order of priority. > > For example you state that you need to be back up and running within 3 > days. OK - a SAN is not going to help with that. Only a *recovery* system > can help with that. That means some way of replacing your tape drive (if you > are worried that you'll lose that), and a way of getting your tapes back, > and a way of restoring. All within 3 days. That's called your RTO: Recovery > Time Objective. > > The next thing to consider is your RPO - Recovery Point Objective. How much > data can you afford to lose? One day? Two days? A week? Again *you* need to > figure this out. And again, a SAN will not help you with that. > > The only thing a SAN is going to do is help you avoid a recovery scenario. > But you haven't stated *any* requirement whatsoever about this. Is the > business happy to pay $30k to ensure that they only have a disaster once > every 10 years? Or would they prefer to suffer a disaster once every 5 > years, but by spending $30k on a tape library, they can be up and running > again in 3 days? This is what *you* need to find out. Then you can work out > what you need to buy. > > It doesn't matter how big or small your environment is you need > requirements. My environment is going to be ~4000 Wintel servers in > Production alone, I suspect yours will be smaller unless the carpet business > significantly picks up. Our requirements from the customer and internally > run to many hundreds of pages - probably over a thousand pages now. Even my > home network (where I have about 10 VM servers) has requirements. Otherwise, > you are just going to be either (a) bothering people with questions forever > or (b) p*ssing money up a wall on stuff you don't need. > > If you want help documenting what you need, then please ask for help on > that. Please stop asking for advice on SAN vendors until you've worked out > what your requirements are, and you think you've found a good fit and what > other people's experience with that particular piece of kit. > > Cheers > Ken > > -----Original Message----- > From: John Aldrich [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, 24 September 2010 11:26 PM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: RE: SAN question > > We are running DFSR, but only for redundancy. All clients map to a physical > machine and drive, as we had some issues with DFSR not staying synchronous, > even over a GigE connection. This was mainly due to running out of room on > the disk for replication (due to multiple copies of large files being stored > --- since corrected.) > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto: > [email protected]] > > Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 11:06 AM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: RE: SAN question > > Also do you use DFS? If you do, NAS units don't work. The volumes must be > mapped to Windows servers as local drives (meaning ISCSI or DAS) > > HECK, running two servers with appropriate DAS running DFS/Replication > would give you redundancy.. There are tons of ways to slice this without > going to a SAN and spending that money unless your REQUIREMENTS dictate > specific features that only SANS require. > > You can get two cheap Drobo or Synology boxes that support AD, SMB, CIFS, > ISCSI (mini sans basically) 3 to 5 TB depending on raid and size of drives > for 1/3rd the cost of a SAN. Synology and Drobo do replication between each > other, you could use ISCSI and do DFS replication one to each server for > redundancy, or have one online and replicate to the other for backups. > > > -----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. > > > > ~ 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
