[SGVLUG] Suggestions for business application server

[Joel Witherspoon]

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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