GP
New Member
I was looking at that one - but cnet seems to love this one:
http://reviews.cnet.com/network-sto...2-nas/4505-3382_7-35057147.html?tag=mncol;lst
Is Drobo really that much more plug and play than the rest of the RAID market?
GP
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For anyone looking for a good backup solution
- Thread starter tcorn1965
- Start date
I was looking at that one - but cnet seems to love this one:
http://reviews.cnet.com/network-sto...2-nas/4505-3382_7-35057147.html?tag=mncol;lst
Is Drobo really that much more plug and play than the rest of the RAID market?
GP
Untrue again
, for example my mdadm RAID 6 is software raid (...mdadm...) and is controller independent. The type of RAID is not what determines whether or not your RAID is controller dependent what determines that is the controller setup. Most good commercial solutions sidestep this issue as well, RAID has come a long way in the last decade. For example in larger environments companies will do software RAIDs made of hardware RAIDs, it gets confusing fast but I think you get the point . Then you can also get into stuff like zfs...getting way outside the scope of these forums though.MatthewTimothy
New Member
Synology is pretty much the class of the industry right now along with Qnap (Cisco uses Qnap hardware rebranded at this level).
Here's a good resource: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/
Drobo is much more targeted to the "plug n' play" market for sure, they sponsor photography/design conventions and such and that's why. Depends on how tech adverse you are, usability is a factor for sure. I wouldn't consider any of these beyond a tech self-starter though, if they are daunting consider bringing in a local geek shop to set you up (a -competent- local geek shop).
Here's a good resource: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/
Drobo is much more targeted to the "plug n' play" market for sure, they sponsor photography/design conventions and such and that's why. Depends on how tech adverse you are, usability is a factor for sure. I wouldn't consider any of these beyond a tech self-starter though, if they are daunting consider bringing in a local geek shop to set you up (a -competent- local geek shop).
SightLine
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Also on hardware raid controllers. The majority of true commercial grade controllers are backward compatable with each other. You would even find that many branded server raid controllers from the likes of Dell, IBM, etc are pretty much all made by one of a very few companies like LSI Logic. Your raid 5 array from your Dell with the SAS 5i controller - you can replace that Dell branded controller with just about any other commercial class LSI controller - tell it to read the config from the drives and be off and running. As signswi said - raid controllers have come a long ways.
That being said - it's a different story for consumer grade controllers and consumer desktop embedded controllers, as well as most software raid implementations. With any of those - well - good luck. There are a few that can be trustworthy but you will need to do a lot of digging and research.
That being said - it's a different story for consumer grade controllers and consumer desktop embedded controllers, as well as most software raid implementations. With any of those - well - good luck. There are a few that can be trustworthy but you will need to do a lot of digging and research.
GP
New Member
I have burned through three local geek businesses since growing into our current location. I was straight with all them and outlined my very basic needs (work station building, creating back-up routines, simple file sharing, and some sort of on-call systems management)
I assure you they were all being very fairly compensated, as in name your price and pull through for me. I have been down this road before in prior business models and understand that my strengths lie elsewhere and like an accountant, IT is always best outsourced.
Two ran and/or disqualified themselves. And this current one I am not sure about.
I am just very nervous that I have zero systems in place. We are winning bigger clients and the random routine of external, usb hard drives is no longer acceptable.
GP
I assure you they were all being very fairly compensated, as in name your price and pull through for me. I have been down this road before in prior business models and understand that my strengths lie elsewhere and like an accountant, IT is always best outsourced.
Two ran and/or disqualified themselves. And this current one I am not sure about.
I am just very nervous that I have zero systems in place. We are winning bigger clients and the random routine of external, usb hard drives is no longer acceptable.
GP
choucove
New Member
I definitely agree that hardware raid controllers offer huge benefits over simple software or integrated software RAID controllers. The difference is most simple NAS devices don't include a high-end hardware RAID controller as can be found in sever-class systems. Then again, that's a big part of the difference in cost between a full file server system and a NAS.
We have a customer that just ordered a new server for storage based on the HP ProLiant ML110 G7 server. Adding in an HP P410 hardware RAID controller and three 1.5TB SATA 6Gb/s drives (two in RAID 1 and one external non-raid for data backup) came to about $2,000. That's 8 GB of ECC memory on a 3.3 Ghz quad-core processor, hardware RAID controller, redundant power supplies, and a full Windows 7 operating system (though you could easily do something such as FreeNAS or even Windows Server 2008 R2.) This was more expensive than just doing a NAS for them, but this server can run on ESXi HyperVisor and run Windows applications to manage backups from all of the workstations without extra software on any other computer, and is simple enough that their staff can handle running the backups without learning a whole new software or operating system.
I know this isn't the best route for everyone, there's a LOT to consider either way you go. What I'm really meaning is that what you choose to use for your business depends on much more than what files you are saving.
As others have suggested, if you're looking for a NAS device, go with Synology. They have a great reputation for business-grade devices instead of trying to rely all of your company's data storage on an entry-level basic device. Your information is the most valuable part of your business, so don't skimp on keeping it protected and available!
We have a customer that just ordered a new server for storage based on the HP ProLiant ML110 G7 server. Adding in an HP P410 hardware RAID controller and three 1.5TB SATA 6Gb/s drives (two in RAID 1 and one external non-raid for data backup) came to about $2,000. That's 8 GB of ECC memory on a 3.3 Ghz quad-core processor, hardware RAID controller, redundant power supplies, and a full Windows 7 operating system (though you could easily do something such as FreeNAS or even Windows Server 2008 R2.) This was more expensive than just doing a NAS for them, but this server can run on ESXi HyperVisor and run Windows applications to manage backups from all of the workstations without extra software on any other computer, and is simple enough that their staff can handle running the backups without learning a whole new software or operating system.
I know this isn't the best route for everyone, there's a LOT to consider either way you go. What I'm really meaning is that what you choose to use for your business depends on much more than what files you are saving.
As others have suggested, if you're looking for a NAS device, go with Synology. They have a great reputation for business-grade devices instead of trying to rely all of your company's data storage on an entry-level basic device. Your information is the most valuable part of your business, so don't skimp on keeping it protected and available!
choucove
New Member
I have a question for you that have used Synology NAS devices before. Is the operating system running on most of these devices similar across several different of their devices? What all features and functionality do you have within the operating system? In other words, do you just access configuration information using a web browser configuration window, or do you actually remote desktop or monitor connect into the device?
Second, what kind of external backup system do you use with your NAS device? One office in town that I work with has their NAS hosting their files, but they use an external hard drive which is directly connected to one of their other workstation computers. The user on that computer manually copies folders off the shared mapped network drives onto the external drive on their own computer to do the backup onto external. Is there a way instead to have the NAS do all its own backup routine onto its own directly connected external drive?
Second, what kind of external backup system do you use with your NAS device? One office in town that I work with has their NAS hosting their files, but they use an external hard drive which is directly connected to one of their other workstation computers. The user on that computer manually copies folders off the shared mapped network drives onto the external drive on their own computer to do the backup onto external. Is there a way instead to have the NAS do all its own backup routine onto its own directly connected external drive?
It will depend on the NAS and what software it includes. Most, if not all, NAS are browser controlled for setup. The UI can vary a bit as models improve and comparing the control UI is something to consider between brands and models. It's not something you log into all that frequently once it's set up, in fact, almost never.
Best bet almost always is to map the NAS as a network drive and set up an automated backup to it directly using any number of softwares (your NAS will come with it's own softs, most people use these, some prefer their own solutions). Not sure why you're talking about external drives at all, the point of a NAS is that it's Network Attached. It's in the name. If you're talking about using an external drive as a backup to the NAS...that's ridiculous. You'd be backing up a highly redundant device with failsafes onto a non-redundant fragile consumer drive. Pointless and naive. The NAS is the on-site redundant failsafe. If you want further security you need to go offsite, most commonly via cloud storage and most modern NAS have built-in auto-backup to cloud storage providers if you want to use one (usually Amazon S3).
Best bet almost always is to map the NAS as a network drive and set up an automated backup to it directly using any number of softwares (your NAS will come with it's own softs, most people use these, some prefer their own solutions). Not sure why you're talking about external drives at all, the point of a NAS is that it's Network Attached. It's in the name
. If you're talking about using an external drive as a backup to the NAS...that's ridiculous. You'd be backing up a highly redundant device with failsafes onto a non-redundant fragile consumer drive. Pointless and naive. The NAS is the on-site redundant failsafe. If you want further security you need to go offsite, most commonly via cloud storage and most modern NAS have built-in auto-backup to cloud storage providers if you want to use one (usually Amazon S3).
choucove
New Member
Off-site solutions aren't always the most feasible for people largely in part due to the amount of data they have and the available internet connection. Yes, the reason why I'm asking about directly connected external drives to do backups is just that, to do a full backup of the NAS. RAID arrays may help protect data from failure, but nothing is perfect and a second off-site backup is recommended. However, internet-based solutions might not work for everyone.
At our office, our internet speed (and the fastest you can get around here) is a 3 Mb/s DSL line. Both of our offices have around 500 GB of data files currently that need to be backed up. Even doing an incremental backup daily, it would not be possible to upload all of the changed data files to an online backup location overnight. Also the cost for that amount of online storage is quite high.
The solution for us is to have two external hard drives that we can rotate out and run backup data onto. Currently we are using all identical Western Digital Caviar Black 1.5 TB hard drives for all primary and external data storage.
At our office, our internet speed (and the fastest you can get around here) is a 3 Mb/s DSL line. Both of our offices have around 500 GB of data files currently that need to be backed up. Even doing an incremental backup daily, it would not be possible to upload all of the changed data files to an online backup location overnight. Also the cost for that amount of online storage is quite high.
The solution for us is to have two external hard drives that we can rotate out and run backup data onto. Currently we are using all identical Western Digital Caviar Black 1.5 TB hard drives for all primary and external data storage.
Even with that connection you could incrementally upload quite a bit every night. 500GB for your entire company history indicates that you aren't generating all that much data daily.
CrashPlan Pro (business grade) for example is $7.50 per computer/month, unlimited storage (my best guess at the plan that would fit you, there are lots of billing options). Cloud backup really isn't expensive anymore.
Externals are wretched devices prone to failure, just know that going in. Treating them like tape backups as you are is questionable but if it makes you feel better I guess keep doing it.
CrashPlan Pro (business grade) for example is $7.50 per computer/month, unlimited storage (my best guess at the plan that would fit you, there are lots of billing options). Cloud backup really isn't expensive anymore
.Externals are wretched devices prone to failure, just know that going in. Treating them like tape backups as you are is questionable but if it makes you feel better I guess keep doing it.