[NTLUG:Discuss] Data Storage recommendations wanted.

[Preston Hagar]

On 11/15/06, Kipton Moravec <kip at kdream.com> wrote:
>
> A friend of mine is starting a document scanning and storage business,
> and asked me the best way to store the documents. The documents will be
> scanned and stored on some type of non-volatile media, and will be
> stored for so many days (30, 60 or 90) online.
>
> Right now he is backing up to CD.  I am recommending to upgrade to DVD.
> Is that what you folks recommend?
>
> For the online data he does not need speed, he just needs tons of cheap
> space. What is the cheapest way to store data on line? Just get a bunch
> of SATA or IDE hard drives on multiple cheap servers?
>
> Kip
> --
> Kipton Moravec <kip at kdream.com>
>
>
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>


At the company I work for, backups are without a doubt the most important
aspect of my job.  Backups should be the most important thing at any company
IMO.  We have used DVDs, and tapes in the past, but tapes can be slow and
finicky and DVDs are limited to only 4.4 GB (seems crazy that isn't even
near enough anymore).  Basically our solution seems to go along somewhat
with what others have been saying.  Hard drives are absurdly inexpensive
now, so our main backup device is a Dell PowerVault MD1000 (link:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pvaul_md1000?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04)
currently with 8 320 GB Seagate SATA drives (link:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140)   The MD
1000 has space for 15 drives.  Each drive is set up with a mirror on RAID 1
so basically we have ~1 TB of storage with each drive having a redundant
backup.  It is then hooked up to an inexpensive (~$1000) 1U HP server with
an LSI SAS card running OpenSolaris to get the nice ZFS features.  We also
built a server that we put in collocation using this chassis:
http://www.serversdirect.com/productdetail?product=99355 which has 8 hot
swap SATA drive bays.  We put 4 drives in it for now and rsync our data to
it each night in case of an on-site failure/problem.

Anyway, I know this might be a little extreme, or pricey for what your
friend is looking for, but I would highly suggest multiple hard drives with
some sort of redundancy.  Even if you just bought like 4 500 GB USB hard
drives it might be a good solution.  It would be much easier than cataloging
hundreds of CDs or DVDs and would give you more future expandability as the
company grows.

HTH,

Preston