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Storage suggestions please?

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by shdowflare

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Hello,

We've got two load-balanced IIS web servers that suddenly need to host access to 50GB of PDF files. The problem is that these 1U servers each have only 2 drive slots which are currently filled with a 36GB RAID-1 set.

I need to implement a way to host these 50GB+ PDF files so they're available for these web servers to respond to client requests. My initial thoughts would be to accomplish this with an external SCSI drive shelf or maybe a NAS.

One caveat - if we opt for something other than a drive shelf (i.e. a separate networked storage component), this component must support the Veritas Storage Replicator (VSR) software we currently use to synchronize files between servers.

Since it appears that this software only runs on Windows servers, we may be forced to use the drive shelf and setup VSR locally on the web server.

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Brian M.

19 replies

by cactus pete

http://www.nexsan.com

We are buying these quite a bit now... The only caveat is, particularly with a 1U box, make sure the SCSI card is supported, else that you have room for adding one that is.

We've been buying the 14x400 GB model, but they have disks up to 500 GB each... Ours comes to 4.8 TB. Remember that LUN attached storage on a windows 2k box is limited to a little over 2 TB, though, so you'd want to split the array into volumes. Our array have been coming preconfigured with 3 1.3 TB volumes... [One hot spare disk and the equivalent of one lost to checksum in the RAD5 array]

by drummerb0y

Great avatar BTW, totally dug it! I just wanted to comment about the TB limit in Windows. To be honest, I didn't know if there was a drive size limit in Win2k before you mentioned it. But just for reference, the project I work on has 2 sites that use EMC and InLine. They host around 7TB x 2 per site. We use Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and the disks are fiber channel attached. Windows 2000 then configures them as a Dynamic Disk Group, I think. Anyway, the drives show up with 1 drive letter with 7TB total space (approx.) I'm sure you've been through all this already. I was just letting you know it can be done. Cheers!

by cactus pete

It all has to do with how you attach the devices and if you make it dynamic or not. There are lots of pros and cons, each system has to be evaluated with its intended purpose in mind.

We also have IBM FastT700 SAN drives which get rather large indeed. Of course, that's a little more expensive than the Nexsan...

by userdeletedbyrequest

Hello,
Someone working for us had an accident last week and trapped a large number of Discs in the safe door. In consequence to this the discs got smashed, such as Windows Server 2003, Windows Advanced Sever 2000 & Windows Server 2000. I was just wondering if you would make me a copy of your windows server disc and post it to me? This is completely legal as I will be using my existing serial number. I am willing to pay the costs to produce the disc and post it. Please can you help?

Please E-mail zakflemingo@gmail.com

Thanks

Zak

by daniel.muzrall

I've got a NexSan ATAbaby (1 TB, 701 MB actual) running on a Adaptec 39160 PCI SCSI card. The ATAbaby has been great, offering a large amount of storage space at a pretty reasonable cost...even though it runs on a SCSI connection to the host server, the drives in the ATAbaby are all IDE. This keeps the cost down, and provides a couple of RAID options to you.

by drummerb0y

NAS if you need to go cheaper. Obviously your two driving factors are the customer's needs (present and future) and cost. If cost isn't an issue, like dpetrak said, go SCSI. Also, like he said, make sure your servers have or can support (PCI slots anyone? Bueller?) a SCSI controller. If not, maybe another server in the rack can host your SCSI RAID?

If you need to go on the cheap, there are plenty of NAS vendors out there. The only that comes to mind right now is SNAP (www.snapappliance.com). And the VERY brief research I did on your Veritas Storage Replicator (which I only found Volume Replicator on Veritas's site) says that VVR replicate across IP based networks. Since MOST NAS products either solely use or support TCP/IP connections, you shouldn't have any problems there.

Just try to ensure that whatever you purchase is easily scalable. Your customer suddenly came up with a 50GB requirement; who's to say in 6 months they won't want 500GB for a database backend, for example? If you go SCSI, maybe try to get an enclosure with extra slots for future hard drives?

(By comparison, my project maintains 3 sites plus a lab, with 2 sites hosting 7TB, the 3rd hosting 3TB, and the lab having 1TB. All with EMC and InLine SAN arrays with full mirrors.)

Good luck!

by dubdays

The best thing about direct-attached storage is that it works just like the drives were located on (in) the 1U enclosure, but you just have an external enclosure to hold extra drives (most are quite expandable and modular, AFAIK). You just connect the SCSI port on the DAS enclosure to the rear of the 1U rackmount.

Since you already have a RAID-1 configuration set up, you shouldn't be at capacity on your SCSI controller yet (unless you have something connected to it that I don't know about), so why not just set up another simple RAID-1 with two drives on the DAS utilizing the same controller?

Really, your server should have an external SCSI connector, but if not, a simple way to do it is by adding a (relatively) inexpensive LSI Logic RAID card and configure it to be your secondary controller (non-bootable, etc.), and, of course, install your drivers, and then connect your DAS. Your server won't even know they aren't in it's own 1U chassis.

As another person suggested, I would try to get an enclosure that's compatible with your server. Hopefully it's somewhat new, but if not, hey, why not hit ebay? There's tons of stuff there that usually works and is priced at pennies on the dollar.

A NAS might work, but you may have some problems depending on the network traffic and configuration. They're cheaper, but if you decide to go this route, triple-check that the NAS is compatible with your software without having to jump through 10 flaming hoops. The major benefit is that they are quite a bit cheaper than DAS.

Plus, you're talking about only 50GB of PDFs. Since these are non-transactional (unlike a database) and are usually accessed rather infrequently, have you checked out any SATA products? They're great for large files (due to sequential data output), plus they have very good reliability for files that are only occassionally accessed (say, 5-10% disk activity over time). Seagate actually makes SATA drives that are warranted for a full 5 years, and I must say that I've NEVER had a problem with them. They seem to be built well, and they have a great price/performance ratio. And, as a bonus, they're dirt cheap when compared to anything with the acronym "SCSI" in it.

If these options don't work for you, I (again, as another poster suggested) would go with a Snap Appliance box (http://www.snapappliance.com). Due to their popularity, they work with many (most) enterprise backup solutions on the market.

Okay, that's enough. Sorry for that rambling mess...I have some insomnia going on, and I'm running on brain power alone (or lack thereof). Anyway, good luck!

by dubdays

I didn't notice that the servers were load-balanced. I suppose you could add a DAS to each one, but that would be terribly expensive for what it is. Have you considered just a simple server to server up data to the two servers? I can't believe that it would be terribly difficult to serve only PDFs and do nothing else (just hope you avoid any DDoS attacks :)

Hell, you could probably get away with a simple Windows XP Pro 1U, since only two clients would be connecting simultaneously (there's a limit of 10 concurrent TCP connections in the XP Pro version...this is hard-coded into the kernel and can't be changed---greedy b*st*rds.

Try setting up Apache for Windows on an XP box (http://www.apache.org). Edit your httpd.conf file and away you go! By the way, don't be put off by the fact that it was originally used for unix-based OS's; it works just fine for me under windows (after a few small DOCUMENTED tweaks!) Just set it up in your DMZ (or wherever you have your servers located), and use 3 servers instead of two. Two for load-balanced IIS, and the other for simply serving the PDFs to each of the servers upon request.

by exec135crewdog

Is there a data disaster recovery plan? Are you providing your client with off site mirroring? I can't imagine why anyone with so ambitious a project would consider other than Fibre Channel. If you are hosting anything more than a poetry website, you might want to start thinking about some serious storage.

by shdowflare

Hey CrewDog,

Thanks for the tip. This data will actually be a redundant copy of existing data on another server. So no real need to backup. If we deem it necessary, all of our servers are backed up nightly so it's a simple matter to add another local drive LUN to the backup job.

Thanks
Brian

by hmiller10

Depending on the brand of server, you could buy 2 146GB drives and replace the 36GB drives with the two larger drives.

Once you have the drives, assuming they are hot swappable, pull one of the smaller drives out and insert the new drive into the slot. The array will rebuild the partitions on the new disk. After the first drive is rebuilt replace the remaining smaller drive with the second larger drive. Let the array rebuild again and then go into the array utility to create a second logical partition on the larger drives.

You can then store your .PDF files on the new larger partition.

Good luck.

by shdowflare

I actually considered this as an option but I wasn't sure if Windows would accept the larger drive and mirror to it. You've seen this done before?

Thanks
Brian

by jclutter

You should consider a Windows Storage Server. It is a NAS device but will work with your VSR soctware because it is based on Windows Server 2003. Dell, HP, etc. has many different version that should easily support 50 GB of files. You should also be able to buy a 1 U version that can save you space and still support high availabilty. for the solution you need. Hope this helps.

by shdowflare

This was exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping to receive. I now have a much better idea of my options.

I'll opt first to put bigger 146GB drives hoping that the existing 18GB mirror will be written to it. The remaining 130GB of space would be used for misceallaneous storage, including the PDF's.

If this doesn't work, the next option I like is to get a SCSI enclosure and put a PCI controller in each server. The I'll carve a separate logical array in the enclosure for each server.

Thanks!
Brian

by gwscheppink

Hi,

Dell offers a Powervault 2x0 device with dual head connectors to connect the same box to two servers. This will probably solve your issue. Any iscsi box should do the trick too. Just backup the data and replication between the two server might not be necessary if they are in the same rack.

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