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by foz

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Hi all, im looking at purchasing some method of additional storage for our company. I have a budget of ?2500 to get as much storage as possible. At the moment the company just manages on very little (10 gig!!!!!) so its a much needed boost. i was thinking maybe of purchasing some big SCSI hard drives on a RAID 5 system and putting them into a server but if any of you can think of a better solution then please feel free to suggest! What do you think? Thanks all!

7 replies

by pctech

You only have 10 Gig. of storage space???????
I will guess that you have a small number of workstations.
For the most "bang for the buck", I would avoid a server OS, unless security and limiting user rights are needed, W2K Pro or XP Pro will suit your needs installed on a fairly current AMD system ( cheaper than Intel ). The Pro OS is cheaper and you will not need CALs for each client. I would invest in a good SCSI controller and as many matched SCSI drives as the budget allows. RAID 5 is an excellent set up for speed and capacity.

More information on your network configuration and it's intended use would be a big benefit towards getting a more precise answer.

by chrisdent

Okay... some options and pricing. I assumed, because of the current data usage, that your company is small with only the beginnings of a network, I apologise if this is incorrect.

NAS Unit:

IDE based, SCSI NAS units are a lot more expensive. Easy to setup and configure. Will cause problems later if your network is running on hubs (rather than switches). If the network gets too big then drop outs will occur as the hubs become overloaded. Not a problem at all if you plan that in advance and make sure the network is capable of dealing with the traffic.

Check out the Powervault 725N unit from Dell. Its pretty low end, but with hardware / software raid options and a decent amount of storage for its price. For your budget you'd be looking at ~500Gb for that, the maximum size is ~1Tb but that runs over your budget.

Server:

More flexible than a NAS Unit, which can be useful if you decide you want to run other services on the server.

Before you look further down the Server path you should consider the operating system you want to run on it. If you go with Windows Server you'll be adding a lot of extra cost onto the server when you purchase it.

If you go for Linux the cost disapears to a certain extent (free OS), but if you're not already then you'll have to learn some Linux.

If you use a desktop OS on there chances are it'll be limited to a small number of connected users (10 for Windows NT / 2k / XP).

by chrisdent

I write too much...

Now you've considered the Operating system its time to look at the hardware. Obviously Compaq and Dell both produce servers that work well. The fact that those two companies fight over business can be very useful as well.

I ran a quick quote on a small server from Dell, for 4 120Gb IDE Hard disks on hardware Raid 5, including a tape backup drive the cost is ~?1500. That would give you around 360 Gb of storage space to play around with.

I included the tape drive because at some point that issue would have to be considered, and its better to do so sooner rather than right after all the data disapears somewhere. No reason why the backup software that comes with the OS can't deal with the job though which removes one expense. However, the cost (and ongoing cost) of tapes needs to be taken into account.

You could of course build your own server but I don't think you'll notice all that much difference in the cost.

by chrisdent

Nope NAS units are fully capable of system security.

There are a variety of them, we have a Compaq NAS unit which runs Windows 2000 server on there we access it via terminal services. Its a domain member and has permissions assigned in the usual way.

We also have one of the Dell 725N units which uses a web-page based interface to access its administrative end.

The Dell box looks more like a cut down Linux install, however is also capable of having domain users / groups added to directories to handle security.

by foz

youre right! i shouldve given more info about the network, sorry. Ok i am gonna need security on there as its split into dept folders and personal folders. Yep 10 Gig is all this companys manged on for a while would you believe we have 100+ employees! ive been fighting this for so long and ive finally managed to get a budget allowed for it along with some servers but anyway. SO i do need security on these drives am i right in thinking this can only be achieved within a server environment? Thanks for all yer help everyone!

P.S. on another note does anyone run any NEC Express 120RD1 servers at all?

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