NAS vs. dedicated file server

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chiablo

Limp Gawd
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Feb 6, 2005
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I have recently been deemed the network admin of the company I work for...

They are currently running two servers, one is acting as a domain controller and SQL server, the other is strictly a file server. There are around 10-12 machines on the network with roaming profiles set up.

The file server is a Dell Poweredge 2550 with 4x37gb SCSI hard drives in a RAID0 configuration. The file server hosts all of the user's roaming profiles, our peachtree database, and a few other critical files.

The thing that concerns me is that the file server is hosting all of this critical data and yet it's in a RAID0... if one of the 4 drives fails, all is lost. Their backup plan is to have a removable hard drive hooked up to the server, and a batch file is scheduled to xcopy the nessisary files to it. This external drive has not worked for a few weeks now, but nobody knew the better.

I am planning on suggesting they upgrade to a NAS (probably a 1TB Buffalo) that is set in RAID1 with newer, more reliable external hard drives that can be rotated on a bi-monthly basis.

My main question is... Will the NAS be too slow to handle the roaming profiles?
 
go with a raid5 setup, we just got a few of the lacie 2tb nas servers at work to use as a dumping groud, there fairly good units and very cheap!
 
Why not use the NAS for backup purposes, supplementing rather than replacing the file server?
 
drizzt81 said:
Why not use the NAS for backup purposes, supplementing rather than replacing the file server?
Click to expand...

And whats your DR stratagey? What if the bulding burns down? Nothing can replace tapes off site. I would switch the server to a raid 5 volume and have my daily backups taken offsite.
 
That may be an expensive proposition based on the facility size he mentioned. Now, if somebody in the office takes the tapes or removable drives home when he/she goes home for the day, that's fine, but getting an "IBM", "Iron Mountain" or "Sungard", that may be out of their budget.

But you're totally correct, if the building burns down, water pipe, etc... it's all gone, including the backup. Definately plan on a off-site solution.

I say this because I'm an SME on our company's global DR solution (100's of offices around the world with almost 100,000 employees)

PS: If "Joe" or "Mary" take the tapes/drives home, please implement encryption first, I would want my SSN/personal info be stolen simply because they stopped at the Kwik-Mart for milk and eggs and didn't lock their car.

oakfan52 said:
And whats your DR stratagey? What if the bulding burns down? Nothing can replace tapes off site. I would switch the server to a raid 5 volume and have my daily backups taken offsite.
Click to expand...
 
Cobalt2112 said:
PS: If "Joe" or "Mary" take the tapes/drives home, please implement encryption first, I would want my SSN/personal info be stolen simply because they stopped at the Kwik-Mart for milk and eggs and didn't lock their car.
Click to expand...

Unless thats sarcasim, i think you mean "wouldn't".
 
dan__wright said:
go with a raid5 setup, we just got a few of the lacie 2tb nas servers at work to use as a dumping groud, there fairly good units and very cheap!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't trust those 2TB lacie drives for storing anything important, even if temporarily. They're 4 hard-drives in RAID 0.
 
Ah, if they're the NAS server then yeah, they can be. I thought the 2TB external drives were being referred.
 
fire safe...



but first off, get those drives out of raid0, i cringed when i read that, that is aweful, besides a drive plain out dying, there can be corruption in a RAID0 system that will mess you over just as bad... and if you need to, go get a new controller card, it'll be worth it...

unless of course you have too much data for 4 37 gig drives in raid5 (~111GB)... in which case you'll probably want to get another drive or two if you can still find those models... depending on the drive, you can find used SCSI drives for VERY cheap... and buying used scsi drives isn't like buying used IDE/SATA drives... just run some rigorous testing on them before storing anything important on them (but u should do this with new drives too)

for only 10-15 users, depending on how much data you actually change per backup increment, a NAS would probably be fine... if you have some free legacy hardware, consider making your own NAS linux machine using freenas or openfiler... i've actually just used winflp (consider the connection maximum if you want users to access it directly... this setup is best when used as a client connecting to servers for a backup) with VNC and microsoft's own synctoy on a few machines i shoved together, and i've found that for most uses, it works wonderfully, setups a snap (pretty decent security too, if you opt-out of installing IE and enable the builtin firewall)... even if i want to add FTP or HTTP access to it, i can do it easily with freeware running on winflp... also makes recovery a tad easier when the drives in the dead machine are formatted with plain 'ol NTFS instead of having to deal with linux FSes


EDIT: firesafe thing gives me an idea for a pretty kickass case mod for backups....:eek:
 
chiablo said:
My main question is... Will the NAS be too slow to handle the roaming profiles?
Click to expand...

Current consumer NAS boxes are slow. However, your current server may be slow as well, due to 100 Mb/s networking, and you might not need much performance capacity due to limited load.

I'd try to check this out by logging the network and drive access (transfer rate and requests/sec) for some time, and then analyzing it. If you find that you're not even stressing 100 Mb/s, then a consumer NAS box could be fine.
 
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