Suggestions For A Server Build

[kwisher]

I would like some opinions for a file server build. I have no experience with actual server grade hardware. The customer is a photographer and uses Photoshop. He is requesting a central storage system so that he can work on his files from multiple systems in his studio. I will use a Linux distro as the O/S. I will also be installing a gigabit network.

My questions are:

1.) Is server grade hardware necessary for this situation or can I just use pc grade hardware?
2.) I would like to use Raid-5 with two 1-TB disks. Is software raid dependable or should I use hardware raid?
3.) I would like to have some kind of backup system. I was thinking of two 1-TB external drives that could be swapped each week. The customer would keep one drive off-site at all times.

TIA

[eddie]

I am not an expert on this, but I think raid 5 might need at least 3 to four drives to work. Anything made with a plastic case might not be a good 24/7 server box. If you only use it occasionally, most any box should work. Openfiler or freenas could be a good turnkey solution to start with. Though any distro will work. You could also set up ledgersmb via apache so they can do web based accounting, billing/invoices, and etc.

[diazamet]

I would like some opinions for a file server build. I have no experience with actual server grade hardware. The customer is a photographer and uses Photoshop. He is requesting a central storage system so that he can work on his files from multiple systems in his studio. I will use a Linux distro as the O/S. I will also be installing a gigabit network.

My questions are:

1.) Is server grade hardware necessary for this situation or can I just use pc grade hardware?
2.) I would like to use Raid-5 with two 1-TB disks. Is software raid dependable or should I use hardware raid?
3.) I would like to have some kind of backup system. I was thinking of two 1-TB external drives that could be swapped each week. The customer would keep one drive off-site at all times.

TIA

1.) I work with quite a lot of servers and in my experience, server grade hardware seems to fail just as much or as little as pc grade. The main difference being the server company will just come out an replace the part when it fails.

2.) As the previous reply states, for RAID5 you need at least 3 disks. There seems to be some serious contention when it comes to S/W RAID vs H/W RAID. I've been using S/W RAID for over a year without problems and without downtime. The reason I went for S/W RAID is, if the machine dies, it's easy to put all the disks in another machine and reconstruct the RAID array.

For H/W RAID, I've read stories about RAID cards dying then being unable to reconstruct the array because the RAID format is proprietary and a card exactly matching the dead card cannot be found.

I would say that for your circumstance, as the server is not exactly going to be stressed by thousands of requests per second, SW RAID should be fine. If you go for H/W RAID, I would seriously consider buy at least two RAID cards (obviously both same manufacturer/model), just in case a card fails in the distant future

Alternatively, you could consider a FreeBSD based server and use ZFS, however I have no experience with this and I am not sure of its maturity.

3.) Sounds reasonable, I would probably keep the backup method simple, use rsync or similar.

Just my 0.02cents.

[eddie]

How about go for all the marbles with a high availability cluster with mirrored drives?

[kwisher]

This server will be the only Linux system at this location. In order to use the external hard disks as a swappable off-site backup solution, can these drives be swapped "live" by the user from the server without having to manually unmount them?

[eddie]

Even if you use live swappable drives, it still will take time to rebuild the data when replacing a drive.

[kwisher]

When I said "swappable" when referring to the external disks I meant just unplugging one drive at the end of the week and then plugging the other drive in. I was thinking of just using a backup package or rsync to backup the data to the external drive the night before he swaps the disks. These external disks will be USB drives. Will this work? Is there a better solution for ease of use for the owner who is somewhat computer illiterate? I hadn't considered a hot swappable drive, which is what I think you were referring to.

[eddie]

I would use alternating backup drives, so that if there is a problem, you might have a grandfather, father, and son of data. two one half dozen of another. Backups are easy it is the restore that is the hard part. Never hurts to put archival data on non magnetic media also. Save lots of hd space. Data retention can be a resource killer. There are also a ton of offsite companies that specialize in doing offline backup. It would save on the drive routine. Then you could just rsync data via a secured line. Backup could be automatic.