bodminman Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 Hi there, after a bad month of Feb regarding server failure and issues relating backups/restores, the powers at be have sort of given me the go ahead for a D2D2T solution for our school. The software side of things I'm not too worried about as we'll go for DPM but my queries are relating to the hardware side of things. Firstly, we have a Dell PowerEdge 2950 server onsite which is hardly used so I am looking into populating 5 of the 6 bays with 600gb SAS disks and use this purely for the backups and leave one of the current 145gg disks in for the O/S and apps. 5 SAS disks are going to cost us just short of £2k. Would you say this is dosh well spent or would you advise me spending this dosh elsewhere to achieve the D2D2T part of the sequence? Sencondly, can anyone recommend an LTO-4 tape library with tapes, cables, interface cards etc for around £3k? Thanks and look forward to your comments.
strawberry Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 depending on how much your planning to backup and the time frames then 2k on disks might well be a total waste when sata will do. misco do a quantum kit quite cheaply. for 2k i'd buy 2 cheapo hp servers, stick one in the server room, one in another building. Stick 2 single tape drives in each. get one to replicate to the other and have each one spit half of the backups onto tape. That way if anything happens you dont have to find a server and tape drive to restore 1
kmount Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 I'd rethink you running the OS/Apps on a single disk for when that fails and you need to rebuild it. How much data are you talking about, how big a back up window do you have, etc. 1
bodminman Posted March 3, 2011 Author Posted March 3, 2011 I'd rethink you running the OS/Apps on a single disk for when that fails and you need to rebuild it. This will just purely be a backup server, nothing else. Ao long as the server itself and the data withing the storage part are backed up then surely all bases are covered. We can get a VM going pretty quickly, install DPM and get data restored from the tape library. How much data are you talking about, how big a back up window do you have, etc. No more than 1.3tb.
kmount Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 (edited) This will just purely be a backup server, nothing else. Ao long as the server itself and the data withing the storage part are backed up then surely all bases are covered. We can get a VM going pretty quickly, install DPM and get data restored from the tape library. Fair enough, I would have just thought it'd have been sensible to not have the whole operation floored by a single disk failure. It may not be a big 'job' to rebuild it etc but it seems to be one that's pretty easy to avoid. (I've seen this before when the back up exec db was stored on the OS Disk that wasn't considered important and when the disk did fail, all of the data was there and happy on the storage array but they had to reindex the whole lot because they didn't have the sql db) I don't see the point in deploying anything on single disk these days if you can avoid it. EDIT: Just re-read your backing up the server anyway so you could bare metal restore that from the tape library onto a new disk I guess. Edited March 3, 2011 by kmount 1
bodminman Posted March 3, 2011 Author Posted March 3, 2011 Fair enough, I would have just thought it'd have been sensible to not have the whole operation floored by a single disk failure. It may not be a big 'job' to rebuild it etc but it seems to be one that's pretty easy to avoid. (I've seen this before when the back up exec db was stored on the OS Disk that wasn't considered important and when the disk did fail, all of the data was there and happy on the storage array but they had to reindex the whole lot because they didn't have the sql db) I don't see the point in deploying anything on single disk these days if you can avoid it. EDIT: Just re-read your backing up the server anyway so you could bare metal restore that from the tape library onto a new disk I guess. Sorry Kim, I could have made it more clear. Yes I was going to get the DPM server backing up straight to tape during the evening. Currently money is tight so can't afford to get another server but will get one asap.
john Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 In terms of tape pricing, I've got a price on my desk for a 16 slot LTO5 Autoloader for under £3K, including the SAS-2 Card to go with it and cabling including 3 year next day warranty. No tapes inclued in that however and they do add up to fill the thing! But at that price its good value IMHO and means I have a tape in my hand which I do miss with random hit and miss NAS backups 1
Norphy Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 That's an insanely good price! Can you give the model and where you got it from? 1
bodminman Posted March 4, 2011 Author Posted March 4, 2011 Wow! AK378A HP StorageWorks MSL2024 Ultrium 1760 - tape library - LTO Ultrium - SAS - BuyItDirect Drive £2490.00 C7974A HP LTO Ultrium - 800 GB - storage media - BuyItDirect Tapes £20 each C7978A HP Ultrium Universal Cleaning Cartridge - LTO Ultrium x 1 - cleaning cartri - BuyItDirect Cleaning Tape £35 each 416096-B21 HP SC44Ge Host Bus Adapter - storage controller - SATA-300 / SAS - PCI Expr - BuyItDirect HBA £90 SAS Cable £215.00
bodminman Posted March 4, 2011 Author Posted March 4, 2011 Hi John, can you please let us know where you got your quote from. I especially like the 3yr warranty!
john Posted March 4, 2011 Posted March 4, 2011 Hi John, can you please let us know where you got your quote from. I especially like the 3yr warranty! That's an insanely good price! Can you give the model and where you got it from? Yeh sure, its from Insight My account manager is Faith Radley she can be got on 0844 692 8694 Its a Quantum Superloader 3 16 Slot LTO5 Autoloader, it comes with a 3 year rapid replacement warranty as part of it as standard and the cable! I also can get an LSI SAS Card suitable for that autoloader and it comes to just over £3010 (hadn't got the right card on my original part list whoops!) Only downside of LTO5 is the tapes, they are over £50 a piece
bodminman Posted March 5, 2011 Author Posted March 5, 2011 . . . . Only downside of LTO5 is the tapes, they are over £50 a piece Thanks for this. Can you use LTO-4 tapes in an LTO-5 device? Just thinking about buying LTo-4 tapes initially and then replacing them later on with LTO-5's which will have hopefully dropped a little in price by then!
john Posted March 5, 2011 Posted March 5, 2011 Thanks for this. Can you use LTO-4 tapes in an LTO-5 device? Just thinking about buying LTo-4 tapes initially and then replacing them later on with LTO-5's which will have hopefully dropped a little in price by then! Yup LTO drives are quite flexible, you can write back the the previous generation and read the one before that but any older no go. So LTO5 can write to LTO5 and LTO4 media and read LTO3 media but no go for LTO 2 & 1. You can work that backwards for older drives 1
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