What RAID setup do you use in your school?

[6Foot2]

3 minutes ago, NegativeKillDeath said:

FN-GM likes raid so much they post in RAID 1

 

RAID now degraded (one post hidden.)

[PotNoodleTech]

21 minutes ago, dmj said:

100% that's why I use ZFS - it does all the things I need without having to string together disparate systems

Touche!

[Hoyt]

5 hours ago, PotNoodleTech said:

Having not lost a single RAID array in 24 years I have to say I would need some convincing.

 

This right here.  I've heard for years how bad RAID is and anyone that uses it is an idiot.  For some strange reason I have never encountered any of the world ending scenarios that these smart folks say will befall me.  If I get pressured to do something different in the future, I will, but it ain't happened yet.

[Koldov]

2 hours ago, mavhc said:

Linux is the most popular server OS, so you should know that if you work with servers. 

 

Thing is, I do know and that sort of figure is quoted a lot... but it's irrelevant to our eco-system, maybe a lot of techs dabble in Linux (but I wonder how many going for an average job would be as confident if the job description said 'we run Linux' compared to 'we run Windows'...? Has anyone done a vote on the most popular school server OS...?) and so we're not comparing like for like in the reality of our job role though. I mean if you're going to compare the figures, they probably include the hundreds of thousands of servers chugging away in hundreds of thousands of data centres, it's obvious they're going to be prevalent and yes, it's probably because they are good at that (see '1' below)... I don't know enough about it though for sure, because that's never been my job or something I'm remotely interested in, but I'd always presumed that a vast majority of those 'servers' are not a tower server sitting in a school cupboard, but are in fact:

 

1) Sitting in a data centre somewhere (running webservers, cloud infrastructure, apps, portals, etc.)

 

2) Looked after by Linux sysadmin teams.

 

3) Not running a local print server, SIMS SQL, a DC (AD/DHCP/DNS), a local file server (not to mention a vast assortment of other school software and systems that won't be able to run natively in Linux).

 

Anyway you'd have to run Windows on top for all those services anyway wouldn't you (so in our job what are you gaining), that's the point. Although I know the 'cloud' this, 'direct print' that, 'Azure' blah, blah options, so you're not talking about a couple of hours work spinning up a Linux server and everything's rosy... it's a complete and total infrastructure change. What are the reasons to want to do that?

 

EDIT: There are rarely 12 options of a piece of software a school uses, but if the school is using a popular closed source from one of the top 2 or 3 then I may have used it, or at least there will be a vast amount of easily accessible (and understandable) support on the web (especially on EDUGEEK). Also, at least if everything else in the estate/infrastructure is familiar then at least I don't have to worry about that.

 

Backups are done with VEEAM (reverse incremental), so just spin that up and restore the files or the whole VM in DR cases I guess...?

Edited April 29, 2025 by Koldov

[Hoyt]

13 minutes ago, Koldov said:

Backups are done with VEEAM, so just spin that up and restore the files or the whole VM in DR cases I guess...?

Yeah I forgot to mention we use Barracuda for off site backups and don't have any real complaints.  Restores are quick an easy but the only time we ever use it (because of the ease of shadow copies) is when we replace a file server.  We tell our users that we don't back up any media files, such as pictures, audio, and videos, so when we swap out file servers we give them ample warning and just restore the content on the new server.  I migrate the the empty base directories with Robocopy and export those shares from the registry and import them to the new server.  When Barracuda restores the data minus the happy go lucky stuff we wind up several hundred gigs lighter on the new server.

 

I know it's a bit off topic but I figure that illustrates the simplicity found in most of the rural school systems around here.

[MrForgetfull]

All this talk of RAID vs ZFS and I'm thinking...you still have lots of local storage?

 

Such a small server footprint these days, who give a smeg what redundancy it's running on so long as it is fit for purpose and you know how to resolve any issues that occur...

[supportman]

1 hour ago, MrForgetfull said:

All this talk of RAID vs ZFS and I'm thinking...you still have lots of local storage?

 

Such a small server footprint these days, who give a smeg what redundancy it's running on so long as it is fit for purpose and you know how to resolve any issues that occur...

 

Exactly, I've been championing local storage and a good Veeam instant backup strategy for years.

[dmj]

11 hours ago, MrForgetfull said:

All this talk of RAID vs ZFS

It's not so much RAID Vs ZFS, because ZFS implements RAID, and backups, and snapshots, and duplication and data integrity, and encryption. You don't get that with other file systems, you end up having to pay more and learn lots of separate things, increasing complexity. It would be great if there was a competitor to ZFS but at the moment there's nothing that comes close to the stability or feature set.

[KK20]

Cluster servers RAID 1 on the BOSS drives, no raid on the data as we use storage spaces direct. Standalone DC RAID1 via its 755 perc hardware controller.  Hoping to be "almost server free" by the time refresh rolls around in a couple of years.