Home server data storage.

[pentium]

I'm shining up my wish list again.
Anyways, I have always wondered what is the best storage type a server should use.

-A RAID or Fibre Channel disk array


OR

-Multiple removable scsi drives crammed into a case.


Say you want a storage plan that will give you a hard drive for each person who uses the server. You need hotswap and the ability to get fast data transfer.

I looked into just getting several removable scsi drive bays but after bays, cables, drives and other parts it easily exceeded $150 ($50 for a 5-head ultra scsi cable?!)

I then looked into disk arrays. There are quite a few proliant arrays out there that offer 4+ bays, Use RAID technology (connecting to server via pci card) and drives go for a dime a dozen.
They looked good until I saw their prices and design. They almost always come in rackmount and I HATE rackmount and they are rather heavy making an ebay auction end at $50 but with shipping turn into $133.

I already see some people have their home servers on this site. What option do you use and how good is it?

[willawake]

Re: Home server data storage.

hahaha when you get older you will love rackmount
the only probs with buying servers is be careful what is required for the installation a few absent components like rackmount rails and hdd caddy's can bump up the cost a whole bunch

in the subject of home storage. coming from an office background i say do not trust the hdds for your storage. always have a second backup as well. even if you have a raid 1 or 5 or 10 whatever you still need another backup. probably a sata drive or two.

but still that is not enough and i recommend to archive whatever data you are not using currently to dvdr.

in my opinion that only can mean the most quality dvd blanks and not tape. i have shit experience with tape. in my case i trust taiyo yuden because the first cd blanks i burnt were those and they still work today. otherwise mitsubishi chemicals with their azo technology. the fact is though dont even trust that. reburn your stuff every few years or so.

hopefully the blu ray or whatever will bring us the ability to burn adequate amounts of data to disk. at the moment it is just annoying to work out how to make everything split to many dvdrs.

still i miss the days of 20gb hdds where i was forced to make folders and burn them to cd when they reached 650mb.

now being spoilt for storage and especially with the adsl lines downloading huge amounts of crap things can get a little messy.

when should you backup. well how much is it ok to lose?

still if you want some good sata raid then maybe look into 3ware a few techs swear by that and their utilities.

the most important when considering raid is how to get out of a drive or array failure. seems quite nice until you experience that. even one drive failing slightly and writing corrupted shit to the array and you are truly up shit creek without a paddle..........

[Topcat]

Re: Home server data storage.

Avoid fibre channel like the plague. Backplanes and controller cards are nearly non-existent and extremely expensive when you do find them. Stay with SCSI 160 or 320. You can achieve the same thing from it and actually find large drives for them.

A storm took out the Linux install on one of my servers, so thats how I get to waste my saturday, reinstalling and reconfiguring..... Critical data was saved, but the OS was totally hosed. The power was up and down so much, the UPS batts died, and the servers kept shutting down and powering back up.... Linux doesn't like that I see.... lol

[pentium]

Re: Home server data storage.

the only probs with buying servers is be careful what is required for the installation a few absent components like rackmount rails and hdd caddy's can bump up the cost a whole bunch

My alternative to racks:
Shelves...lots of em

Backup?
I was planning to get two 25 gig tape drives from a guy who sells them nearby for cheap. I'm only using 50 gigs (Five 10GB drives) and the backups would only cover folders I want to keep safe. Whatever else is okay to be lost because it is usually just fluff that I have forgotten to delete or can be re-downloaded off the net. Hower if you recommend dvd backup...I have to shell out a few more bucks.

even one drive failing slightly and writing corrupted shit to the array and you are truly up shit creek without a paddle..........

Am I to assume that this is commonplace?

[pentium]

Re: Home server data storage.

Avoid fibre channel like the plague.

Okie dokie!

Stay with SCSI 160 or 320. You can achieve the same thing from it and actually find large drives for them.

My system can only use scsi. No onboard IDE.

[Rainbow]

Re: Home server data storage.

The power was up and down so much, the UPS batts died, and the servers kept shutting down and powering back up.... Linux doesn't like that I see.... lol

With ext3 filesystem, this shouldn't happen.

[willawake]

Re: Home server data storage.

Am I to assume that this is commonplace?

god i hope not

The power was up and down so much, the UPS batts died, and the servers kept shutting down and powering back up

uhuh well just shut them the fuck down until its over
your telling me that windows likes that more?

i am another disciple to the longevity of scsi drives. personally i go with 10.000 rpm rather than the 15.000 versions. even 10.000 is kinda much to my engineering mind. still there is not much point unless your controller support.

but you are talking 50gb well just mirror daily to another computer with ide or sata drive. there are a lot of progs for that. i use the awesome backup magic running under windows scheduler for the final clean files only backup.

[Topcat]

Re: Home server data storage.

uhuh well just shut them the fuck down until its over
your telling me that windows likes that more?

Just shutting them down is kinda hard to do with client sites on them. I do keep backups religiously.... Well, whether Windows liked it or not, the win box is still running without a hitch, the *nix box is getting a reinstall.... Kinda self-explanatory there.... They were ext3 partitions.

[willawake]

Re: Home server data storage.

is that shit really pushing anything at all?
why not host them on the badcaps server in the datacenter?
i look at my company site and its like pushing 500mb a month. lol. wonderful clients heh.

[Topcat]

Re: Home server data storage.

The win server moves a lot of data... Theres a second *nix box that does as well (wasn't affected). The one that died didn't have a whole lot on it. There's about a dozen sites running off the badcaps.net server, I really dont want to tax the actual server anymore. I have plenty of bandwidth, but the server itself is a nutless wonder....

[pentium]

Re: Home server data storage.

but you are talking 50gb well just mirror daily to another computer with ide or sata drive.

Good luck, Excluding my only 130 gig drive, the biggest hard drive I own is only 20 gigs.

Back on topic...
I'm not asking what I should get for my needs or what backup I should use.
I am just asking what you use and what you would recommend for a home installation.

EG.
Don't use FC arrays because they are expensive and sometimes hard to find parts for.

[bgavin]

Re: Home server data storage.

For all my commercial clients, I keep GHOST images of their installed systems. This is a fast and reliable method of getting a dead system back online without a laborious rebuilding chore. I run it under BART-PE and it performs flawlessly.

One client backs up 140gb nightly, so I have a dedicated 2nd machine for this purpose. It also doubles as another domain controller, but is primarily for backup. The client brings an external USB drive onsite weekly to take a dump for offsite storage.

Most of my clients have a 2nd disk installed, and utilize my backup program. It is a wrapper for NTBackup and automates the daily backups, plus pushes a copy of the backup to another directory or networked machine.

The point made above about refreshing old DVD is a very good one. They die over time, and your data will die with them. This sux, but is also life in the digital fast lane.

[willawake]

Re: Home server data storage.

Back on topic...
I'm not asking what I should get for my needs or what backup I should use.
I am just asking what you use and what you would recommend for a home installation.

if i was buying a server for home though i would be wary about getting anything branded. simply because proprietary parts can be very expensive or just plain unobtainium when the device is old. Typical with some of the rackmount units is that they usually have a lot of fans and are noisy for home use. The fans are usually proprietary and some units dont even allow to operate without fan positions populated and rpm sense being received. Some pedestal models do the same.