16 Nov
2003
16 Nov
'03
9:21 a.m.
Rich,
Most NAS are using some form of OS or stripped down embedded OS like
Linux. If you're using this as your primary repository I suggest the
following:
2 small drives 4gb-9g (use for OS partition) Mirror these.
Once your system is built out, I would recommend something like Ghost or
Partition Manager and make an Image of your OS drive, then burn it to a CD,
this way if your OS were to fail completely and you lost your mirror or
mirror were to be corrupted you could build out a new OS partition in a
matter of minutes by booting from a DOS disk and imaging the new drive.
1 small drive again like a 4gb for your SWAP (you could mirror, but I think
on a small personal server, that is overkill for /swap)
If you require any app above system apps, then I would place apps on another
set of drives, and mirror them.
Now for the important stuff, your data, definitely consider Raid 0+1, get a
pair of raid controllers (IDE or SCSI, your choice) I prefer SCSI myself,
setup your Raid, Raid 5 is best, it chews up the most disk space for the CRC
data of the other disks for rebuilds, but its the most reliable.... Now
on a seperate identical controller and drives, mirror the primary raid
partition.
Finally, a smart UPS system so your NAS server can orderly shutdown in the
event of a power failure and your reduce data corruption.
This is a good setup for low failure and fastest recovery.
You can find some nice Dec (aka Compaq, aka HP) Storageworks RA8000's fairly
cheap these days, I've worked with them and 12000's and they are wonderful
systems, you can pick up a cheap fibre channel card and hook up a server
right to if and serve the storageworks data from that server (like a very
simple linux RH box or the like)
Curt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard A. Cini" <rcini(a)optonline.net>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 10:06 AM
Subject: On-line storage backup options
Hello, all:
Here's an oddball question. I have a small Windows NT Server network at
home that frankly I use mostly for storing all sorts of crap -- classic
and
other. It's overkill (Compaq dual PPro200 3U
server and 4-drive RAID 5 and
10gb DLT) for what I need but the price was good.
With hard drive densities continuing to increase I was toying with
building
some sort of NAS unit to replace the server. So,
I'm looking for
suggestions
on building a stand-alone, small NAS system, maybe
using Linux, and it has
to be more appliance-like rather than a full-blown system. Any thoughts or
suggestions on implementation?
On an unrelated note, I'd like to automatically mirror the information on
the RAID to a cheap 40gb drive (because I'm too lazy to mount the tape and
do a backup). I have some server-oriented backup probrams but they don't
allow you to backup to a file -- you can only back up to a physical tape
drive. Any thoughts on this?
Rich
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project
Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
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