NationStates Jolt Archive

i just got some gigabit network attached storage for the small company i work for and have to make a fairly large decision.... do i go for RAID 1 or RAID 5? anybody have any thoughts or experience here, cos it seems like 5 is to all intents and purposes just as good a backup as 1, but i can't quite believe it myself... how can 1/4 of the drive space be an effective backup for 3/4 of the rest of the drive? :confused:

anyway, all opinions welcome :)

i just got some gigabit network attached storage for the small company i work for and have to make a fairly large decision.... do i go for RAID 1 or RAID 5? anybody have any thoughts or experience here, cos it seems like 5 is to all intents and purposes just as good a backup as 1, but i can't quite believe it myself... how can 1/4 of the drive space be an effective backup for 3/4 of the rest of the drive? :confused:

anyway, all opinions welcome :)

Raid 5 mate all the time.

Raid 5 mate all the time.

great... that was all i needed! :p
after reading stuff on the net and the guide wot came with the thing, looks like RAID 5 it is :)

Raid (http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/piclib/images/%5CMID%5C0330000503_5mb.jpg)?

It's not backup; it only protects against storage failure, not stupidity. You delete a file and it's gone (well, as gone as any file on any is when it's deleted).

For N disks:

RAID 1 gives you N/2 disks storage, but up to half of the disks can die before you lose data - if they're the right disks. You might lose data if only two disks die. However, you may be able to recover data from any remaining disks more straightforwardly than with RAID 5. There may be an improvement in read performance over JBOD, but it's not guaranteed.

RAID 5 gives you N-1 disks storage, and can survive one disk failure. If two disks fail you're completely fucked, because of the way it stripes data across all the disks. It should provide an improvement in read performance over JBOD. Write performance may be lower.

My personal recommendation would be RAID 5. However, if the data you're storing is at all important, keep regular, good backups anyway.

Raid (http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/piclib/images/%5CMID%5C0330000503_5mb.jpg)?

Pretty much, yeah. But more expensive.

It's not backup; it only protects against storage failure, not stupidity. You delete a file and it's gone (well, as gone as any file on any is when it's deleted).

For N disks:

RAID 1 gives you N/2 disks storage, but up to half of the disks can die before you lose data - if they're the right disks. You might lose data if only two disks die. However, you may be able to recover data from any remaining disks more straightforwardly than with RAID 5. There may be an improvement in read performance over JBOD, but it's not guaranteed.

RAID 5 gives you N-1 disks storage, and can survive one disk failure. If two disks fail you're completely fucked, because of the way it stripes data across all the disks. It should provide an improvement in read performance over JBOD. Write performance may be lower.

My personal recommendation would be RAID 5. However, if the data you're storing is at all important, keep regular, good backups anyway.

well we're going to use it as a central storage server for our main database, pictures, and other things. we're a small marketing agency (among other things) and this is going to be a very good big step up from where we are at the moment in terms of backup technology... which is precisely nowhere (everything stored on each persons' own HD with no fault protection or systemised backup)

we do make backups of our database fairly regularly, but probably not regularly enough :-S

well we're going to use it as a central storage server for our main database, pictures, and other things. we're a small marketing agency (among other things) and this is going to be a very good big step up from where we are at the moment in terms of backup technology... which is precisely nowhere (everything stored on each persons' own HD with no fault protection or systemised backup)

we do make backups of our database fairly regularly, but probably not regularly enough :-S

You ought to arrange a "disaster recovery test" if at all possible, once you're set up and under way. Nothing worse than finding out after a year that you can't actually recover the database. I don't know what the practicalities of doing this for a small company are, but if you can ... Oh, and keep an eye out for those dang Vikings, too. ;)

Raid (http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/piclib/images/%5CMID%5C0330000503_5mb.jpg)?

Or Raid (http://www.scjohnson.co.uk/products/product/images/img_right1_23.jpg)?

You ought to arrange a "disaster recovery test" if at all possible, once you're set up and under way. Nothing worse than finding out after a year that you can't actually recover the database. I don't know what the practicalities of doing this for a small company are, but if you can ... Oh, and keep an eye out for those dang Vikings, too. ;)

lol :p

sadly its not really my main job being IT-man, so i don't think i could spare the time to do a test like that, but i do think one last purchase in the name of security would be a good idea. the network drive can have USB2 HDDs attached to it, so i figure we get a 1tb external HD and set the software up to automatically backup the network drive every other day or something. that way there's a direct backup the thing as well as RAID 5 :)

best part of that is the USB HD can be taken home with us (its a family business) and can be uber-safe :cool:

the other thing that prompted this move, though, wasn't really a lack of storage but a) the backup issue (obviously) and b) our network was running too slow, largely cos we just got new employees starting and stuff. upgrading everybody to 1000mbps will be a good move, and this network storage will be far quicker than the current 'server' HD we have sitting in a 5 year old computer :p

lol :p

sadly its not really my main job being IT-man, so i don't think i could spare the time to do a test like that, but i do think one last purchase in the name of security would be a good idea. the network drive can have USB2 HDDs attached to it, so i figure we get a 1tb external HD and set the software up to automatically backup the network drive every other day or something. that way there's a direct backup the thing as well as RAID 5 :)

best part of that is the USB HD can be taken home with us (its a family business) and can be uber-safe :cool:

the other thing that prompted this move, though, wasn't really a lack of storage but a) the backup issue (obviously) and b) our network was running too slow, largely cos we just got new employees starting and stuff. upgrading everybody to 1000mbps will be a good move, and this network storage will be far quicker than the current 'server' HD we have sitting in a 5 year old computer :p

Just make sure you install it as early in the morning as possible, so you get the longest amount of time before it becomes obsolete (usually dawn the next day).