Re: Storage server
Am Samstag, 8. September 2012 schrieb Veljko:
> On Fri, Sep 07, 2012 at 01:26:13PM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> > On 9/7/2012 11:29 AM, Veljko wrote:
> >
> >
> > > I'm in the process of making new backup server, so I'm thinking of
> > > best way of doing it. I have 4 3TB disks and I'm thinking of
> > > puting them in software RAID10.
> >
> >
> >
> > ["what if" stream of consciousness rambling snipped for brevity]
> >
> >
> >
> > > What do you think of this setup? Good sides? Bad sides of this
> > > approach?
> >
> >
> >
> > Applying the brakes...
> >
> >
> >
> > As with many tech geeks with too much enthusiasm for various tools
> > and not enough common sense and seasoning, you've made the mistake
> > of
> >
> > approaching this backwards. Always start here:
> >
> >
> > 1. What are the requirements of the workload?
> > 2. What is my budget and implementation date?
> > 3. How can I accomplish #1 given #2 with the
> > 4. Least complexity and
> > 5. Highest reliability and
> > 6. Easiest recovery if the system fails?
> >
> >
> >
> > You've described a dozen or so overly complex technical means to some
> > end that tend to violate #4 through #6.
> >
> >
> >
> > Slow down, catch your breath, and simply describe #1 and #2. We'll
> > go from there.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Stan
>
> Well, it did sound a little to complex and that is why I posted to this
> list, hoping to hear some other opinions.
>
> 1. This machine will be used for
> a) backup (backup server for several dedicated (mainly) web servers).
> It will contain incremental backups, so only first running will take
> a lot of time, rsnapshot will latter download only changed/added files
> and will run from cron every day. Files that will be added later are
> around 1-10 MB in size. I expect ~20 GB daily, but that number can
> grow. Some files fill be deleted, other will be added.
> Dedicated servers that will be backed up are ~500GB in size.
> b) monitoring (Icinga or Zabbix) of dedicated servers.
> c) file sharing for employees (mainly small text files). I don't
> expect this to be resource hog.
> d) Since there is enough space (for now), and machine have four cores
> and 4GB RAM (that can be easily increased), I figured I can use it
> for test virtual machines. I usually work with 300MB virtual machines
> and no intensive load. Just testing some software.
>
> 2. There is no fixed implementation date, but I'm expected to start
> working on it. Sooner the better, but no dead lines.
> Equipment I have to work with is desktop class machine: Athlon X4,
> 4GB RAM and 4 3TB Seagate ST3000DM001 7200rpm. Server will be in my
> office and will perform backup over internet. I do have APC UPS to
> power off machine in case of power loss (apcupsd will take care of
> that).
>
> In next few months it is expected that size of files on dedicated
> servers will grow and it case that really happen I'd like to be able to
> expand this system. Hardware RAID controllers are expensive and
> managers always want to go with least expenses possible, so I'm stuck
> with software RAID only.
Are you serious about that?
You are planning to mix backup, productions workloads and testing on a
single *desktop class* machine?
If you had a redundant and failsafe virtualization cluster with 2-3 hosts
and redundant and failsafe storage cluster, then maybe – except for the
backup. But for a single desktop class machine I´d advice against putting
such different workloads on it. Especially in a enterprise scenario.
While you may get away with running test and production VMs on a
virtualization host, I would at least physically (!) separate the backup
so that breaking the machine by testing stuff would not make the backup
inaccessible. And no: RAID is not a backup! So please forget about mixing
a backup with production/testing workloads. Now.
I personally do not see a strong reason against SoftRAID although I
battery backed up hardware RAID controller can be quite nice for
performance as you can disable cache flushing / barriers. But then that
should be possible with a battery backed up non RAID controller, if there
is any, as well.
Thanks Stan for asking the basic questions. The answers made obvious to me
that in the current form this can´t be a sane setup.
--
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7
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