[SGVLUG] Suggestions for business application server

[DYN: Jim Workman]

Thanks Joel,

 

That's just what I was looking for!

 

Jim 

 

________________________________

From: sgvlug-bounces at sgvlug.net [mailto:sgvlug-bounces at sgvlug.net] On
Behalf Of Joel Witherspoon
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2009 4:40 PM
To: SGVLUG Discussion List.
Subject: Re: [SGVLUG] Suggestions for business application server

 

Jim,

I can't comment with statistics, but I've had a good run with SATA in
our MSSQL environment. We replaced our SCSI servers with SATA servers
and the reliability is great.

In the last year, I've only purchased servers with RAID 10. We've
eliminated the IO issues that we had with RAID 5. Again it's RAID 10
with SATA; moderate virtualization.

We have OS only servers that run RAID 5. We use a SAN for volumes. The
SAN is RAID 10.

When data has not been modified over 9 months we move it to a NAS box
for archival (NAS-LITE). It's not the best way, as there is not
governance for data retrieval, but the NAS box is a 4TB RAID 10 HP ML
370 that I've hulked up just for storage. If someone is looking for a
file, we can usually find it with no problem. Our desire is to purchase
a second SAN for data progression; at least there we'll have logic for
retrieval.






On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 1:54 PM, DYN: Jim Workman <JimW at dynashoe.com>
wrote:

We are planning to replace our current Dell RHEL 4 server (keeping the
old server as a nightly-rsynced hot backup).

 

I'm looking for suggestions on some questions from those who have recent
configuration experience.

 

Current system has 8 SCSI 73GB 15k drives in RAID5.

 

Has anyone replaced SCSI with SATA in high-reliability environment.
(Non-SQL files with lots of record-based I/O.)

 

I have read that RAID5 is less preferable to RAID10 or other
configurations due to its slowness.

 

Also read that it is better to not keep the OS on the main RAID array.

 

Are there significant advantages to go to RHEL 5, and can the backup
system stay RHEL 4?

 

We are currently making nightly full backups onto DLT VS1 tapes.  (2
week rotation and archiving the Month-End tape.) 

Because tape drive & tapes are relatively expensive, I am investigating
a cron-driven backup to USB hard-drives as a replacement.

Anyone doing this?

 

We have an option to make incremental backups to an enterprise-level
hard-drive archive system, but I have concerns about restoring
individual files from such a system.  Has anyone dealt with data
recovery from EMCsquared?

 

Experience-based comments to any of the issues above are welcome.

 

 

Jim Workman




-- 
Joel Witherspoon

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