RAID questions

[Vivienne]

Hi

 

We have a tech who looks after our business computer. He suggested that we have a RAID setup. He said that he has been working with RAID systems for many years (20) or so, and has set up mega systems and small ones. He said it is the standard by which all large companies operate and he thinks it is a good one for a small company as well. Ours is just one computer. The RAID setup appeals to us because we will not lose time nor data if there is a disk failure.

 

I started to do some research to learn as much as I could before giving him the go ahead. I was hoping you would help me with the things that I really do not understand ( which is almost everything!).

 

Question 1:

 

He said that the Perc Card is best. I do not understand why he would be recommending that when we have an Asus ATV Deluxe board. The specs are as follows:

 

Floppy disk

2 channels ATA/133

2 channels Serial ATA 150 via VT8237 south bridge with RAID 0,1 support

1 channel ATA/133 via Promise PDC20378 with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 support

2 channels Serial ATA 150 via Promise PDC20378 RAID with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 support

 

Is this not good enough to support a relaible RAID configuration ? Is our motherboard's RAID capability inferior ?

 

Thanks!

 

Vivienne

[Dalo Harkin]

Hi Vivienne,

 

I have no idea why a perc card has been recommended, your board does support RAID and the controller is more than up to the task.

 

RAID is the best way for business setups as you will not technically lose and data, but there are alternative solutions.

 

The thing to bear in mind is that all drives have failure rates and when you add 2 in RAID that chance is doubled but the backup is there.

I am surprised that he has not recommended that you store the data online as it is then not using your resources as in the cost of drives.

There are alot of companies that offer the ability to manage your data over the web and they have all the means in place to offer you basically an outsourced server and with that you get the bonus's of data recovery/disaster recovery and low costs - if you prefer to keep the data 'inhouse' then use RAID (Mirrored)

hope this helps and please feel free to ask any more questions you have.

[Vivienne]

Dalo:

 

Thanks very much for your reply.

 

I am surprised that he has not recommended that you store the data online as it is then not using your resources as in the cost of drives.

 

 

This was our first choice and in fact we did confidently do this for about six months. We, however, eventually noticed that some files were missing. At first the company said maybe they were open (or something to that effect). After they had us do several things to verify, we all gave up. We used another company, highly recommended, and the same thing happened. We have no more confidence in doing this. We now do a backup every night and take it off site.

 

Question #2 :-)

 

We have an Antec Performance Plus 1080 AMG case. The specs say that it has 10 drive bays:

 

Front accessible - 4x5.25", 2x3.5"

Internal - 4x3.5"

 

We have a floppy drive and a cd rom drive and a card reader. (For some reason Belarc shows 2 card readers.) We now have our operating system and program on C: Drive and our documents on D: Drive.

 

What room do we have to add drives ? Is the C: mirrored to one drive and the D: mirrored to another drive ? Or do we have to have everything on one drive which is then mirrored to another drive ? Is one way preferable to another ?

 

Thanks!

 

Vivienne

[Dalo Harkin]

Right the problem with setting a RAID up is that it needs to be done before DATA is put on the drive preferably.

You would need 2 disks the same size make and model number, and then you can use that as say C:/ so you would effectively show 1 C:/ drive but there is one that is always getting the data that is sent to C:/ sent to the other mirrored drive too.

and you do the same with the D:/ drive preferably again to reduce cost you would partition C:/ and D:/ on the same drive and have that mirrored.

 

I know this sounds confusing.

please let me know if anything needs claifying

[Seth]

Hi Viv.

 

If the data is very important, you should also have a backup in separate location. Reason being, what if there was a fire that destroyed the computer?

[Vivienne]

Dalo and Seth:

 

Thank you both for your replies.

 

Dalo:

 

Right the problem with setting a RAID up is that it needs to be done before DATA is put on the drive preferably.

 

We can't do that as all the data we wish to save is already on the drive. What problems may this cause ?

 

You would need 2 disks the same size make and model number,

 

If we wanted to continue to have the data on a separate drive, do we have room in our case for four drives ? (Please see earlier post for specifications.)

 

I know this sounds confusing.

please let me know if anything needs claifying

 

Dalo, thank you. It is not confusing at all. You are very good at explaining things.

 

Seth:

 

If the data is very important, you should also have a backup in separate location. Reason being, what if there was a fire that destroyed the computer?

 

If the data was lost it could be the end of the business - so thank you for bringing up that concern. We take 7 days of backup off site every week and we backup to an 8 GB USB stick ( which my son wears around his neck ) daily.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Err

 

I know nothing about RAID setups Viv but perhaps it's not a good idea to have backups on that scale parked up on a USB stick. :eek:

[Tony D]

Curious, what RAID configuration is your tech suggesting?

[Vivienne]

Hi Kelly :-)

 

Curious, what RAID configuration is your tech suggesting?

 

He said he likes to have 2 mirrors of the operating system (3 hdds for C: ) Nothing has been decided. If we were interested he was going to open the computer and have a look. :-) He is a new tech and has not worked on this computer before.

 

Err

 

I know nothing about RAID setups Viv but perhaps it's not a good idea to have backups on that scale parked up on a USB stick. :eek:

 

There is only one backup on the USB Stick. We have 5 .5 GB of data backed unto an 8 GB stick. We have three sticks which we rotate. The seven days of backup is done on an external hdd. We have two that we rotate.

 

Vivienne

Edited September 26, 2008 by Vivienne

[Tony D]

Sounds like the tech is suggesting RAID 1 which provides a mirror of the drive. This is one way to protect your system. If one drive fails, they other can be used.

 

I don't know that RAID 1 is a standard for businesses. Where RAID comes in handy for a business is when you employ RAID 5 or 6. These methods provide striping data across several drives. In the event that one drive fails, the system continues to operate. The business is not affected.

 

Since this is a business, please also consider off-site backups. This can be tape backups that are removed off-site at the end of the day. If there's a fire, the off-site backup tape can be used to restore data and even the OS.

[Vivienne]

Kelly:

 

I don't know that RAID 1 is a standard for businesses. Where RAID comes in handy for a business is when you employ RAID 5 or 6. These methods provide striping data across several drives. In the event that one drive fails, the system continues to operate. The business is not affected.

 

This is exactly what the tech told us. He said that if a drive fails, we can carry on as though nothing happened. That is the only appeal to us to go with RAID. He didn't say what would happen if it was another type of hardware failure. Surely there must be something similiar so that you can keep working ??

 

Since this is a business, please also consider off-site backups. This can be tape backups that are removed off-site at the end of the day. If there's a fire, the off-site backup tape can be used to restore data and even the OS .

 

Right now, our off site strategy is about a week behind - that is we would lose a week. The daily 'offsit' backups are on a USB stick which is only offsite when my son is offsite as he wears it around his neck. Because it is a home business we cannot just take the backup home. :-) We shall have to rethink this - thanks for the reminder!

 

Thanks, Kelly.

 

Vivienne

[Tony D]

Please ask your tech which 'flavour' of RAID he/she intends to employ before you make a decision. RAID 5 or 6 is better than others (in my opinion).

[Vivienne]

Please ask your tech which 'flavour' of RAID he/she intends to employ before you make a decision. RAID 5 or 6 is better than others (in my opinion).

 

Will do and will make sure that it is either 5 or 6. Thanks, Kelly.