Please help me design/choose a storage solution

StewartR

StewartR

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I know there have been many threads like this, but I couldn't find answers to my specific requirements. So I'd appreciate any help I can get.

Unlike many people here, I'm not a photographer(*) so I'm not primarily interested in Lightroom catalogues etc. What I want is a robust storage solution for my office. I have a network of about 5 Windows-based PCs, and I want to ensure that the data we have is (a) shareable and (b) safe from accidental loss. I currently have a little server box running Windows Home Server (WHS), which addresses (a) and part of (b). But I really don't like WHS, and working out how to configure it to fully address (b) is too much hard work. So I'm looking for a better / easier solution and I guess it's probably some sort of NAS.

The data volumes aren't huge. Probably no more than 1-2 TB, plus whatever I required to back up the networked PCs. And I don't have a requirement for blinding speed. But here's what I do want:

(1) I want to be able to make files accessible from all the PCs in the office.
(2) I want to ensure that a single hard disk failure doesn't cause me any grief.
(3) I want to be able to automatically back up the contents of each PC's hard disk (programs, configuration, etc. - not user data which is covered by (1)) so that if a PC dies I can configure a replacement with the minimum of hassle.
(4) I want everything on the storage solution backed up or replicated off site.
and most importantly of all
(5) I want the system to be as easy as possible to configure and use.

I guess any old NAS box running RAID 5 will solve (1) and (2). I'm really not sure about how best to approach (3) and (4) though. My WHS box does (3), but I don't have a lot of confidence in the ability to restore from its backups. Maybe I should use something like Acronis for that instead? And I'm particularly uncertain about (4). I can't help thinking that having another storage device at home and backing up the office one over the internet might be more cost-effective than having my backups in the cloud somewhere. I wonder whether I might also have a NAS box for the home network (2 PCs) and get them to back up one another?

With (5) in mind I'm really attracted to Drobo products. They really do look to be easy to set up and run, and some of them have a built-in capability to sync with one another. That sounds very attractive. I've heard people say good things about the likes of Synology and Qnap, but they really seem to require much more IT knowledge than I have. (Plus, even trying to decide which of their products would be appropriate for me is too much hard work!)

Budget: as much as is necessary, but no more.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for your help.


(*) Of course I own and use a camera. But I also own and use a car, and various pots and pans, but I don't describe myself as a driver or a chef.
 
Sbs essentials on a HP micro server with 4 drives and dual raid 1. Back this up to an external hard disk and take off site.

We dropped from a full server to this setup using office 365 for email.
 
"b" is always going to require a fair bit of set up. i was always under the impression that WHS was fairly simple to set up compared to some.

that aside, either a good NAS (at least a 4-5 bay synology/qnap) or a microserver (theres a big microserver thread in this section - here) should be a good performing starter for multiple users.

personally i wouldnt touch drobo, too many horror stories involving their proprietary FS and rubbish support.

how much data do you need to store? also if you havent already, look at specing a UPS for 24/7 equipment.

is there a budget for this project?
 
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Dale_tem said:
Back this up to an external hard disk and take off site.
Click to expand...
No thanks. I want a solution which doesn't depend on me lugging disks around. (Not least because, in order to lug disks around, I have to physically be there.)
 
Then cloud backup. It needs to be off site.

Amazon Glacier would be my choice at $0.01 per GB
 
neil_g said:
"b" is always going to require a fair bit of set up. i was always under the impression that WHS was fairly simple to set up compared to some.
Click to expand...
Well, it's a Windows server so it's kinda fussy about user names and passwords, and passwords on desktop PCs matching passwords on the server and stuff like that. I don't think that should be required for what is just a storage box, but it's not an insurmountable problem.

It is reasonably straightforward to set it up to backup each networked PC. But I *think* it's just backing up the files on each PC, rather than the entire contents of the hard disk. Plus, if a PC dies and has to be replaced, the replacement is unlikely to be physically the same, and I don't have confidence that the WHS backup will cope with that. Do you know?

As far as backing up the WHS system remotely is concerned, I have no idea how to do that.
 
First rule of disaster recovery is to have an offsite back up that is done regularly! Even having an old fashioned tape drive and walking away with the tape is better than nothing. If you don't have decent broadband at the office location someone needs to walk away with a back up over night so if the building burns down you still have a company.
 
WHS 2011 hits every single point you list above you know. Client auto backup and full out file restore plus backup of the whole server to an additional disk. You could look at Server 2012 essentials too but it needs a bit more technical thought to setup. Happy to help with WHS queries, I think it's a great product. Have it running on my loft on a headless HP Micro server stuffed full of disks which is the perfect hardware to go with it.
 
Dale_tem said:
Then cloud backup. It needs to be off site.

Amazon Glacier would be my choice at $0.01 per GB
Click to expand...
Thanks. That's $10 per month for 1 TB, so I guess it's a ot cheaper than having another storage box at home.

neil_g said:
just watch glacier if its business critical data, it can take a while to get the cold storage back online.
Click to expand...

Good point. But it seems to me that the scenario in which I would need access to the Glacier backup is where my server/NAS has completely died. So surely the critical path is the time taken to get replacement hardware, not a few hours waiting to get the data back? Or have I missed something?
 
PS to your points above - WHS backs the clients up to VHD files. By default it backs up EVERYTHING including OS (you can check in the Dashboard). You can do a bare metal restore over the LAN from these or you can just mount the vhd file from the server or any other PC anywhere and it'll appear as a disk drive. The while server backs itself up in a similar way to a vhd file, usually on a separate disk. So if your laptop dies and you replace with another type, you'd probably be best just using Disk Management on the new laptop to open the VHD backup, which would then appear as a new drive letter, allowing you to restore what you want.
(Bear in mind no backup solution is going to allow you to restore a full OS backup to new random hardware with any guarantees or success)
 
neil_g said:
how much data do you need to store?
Click to expand...
Not much. Maybe 1-2 TB tops for the office data. If I wanted to to a two-way replication with the home netwerk, so they could back each other up, then that would be another 1-2 TB tops.

neil_g said:
also if you havent already, look at specing a UPS for 24/7 equipment.
Click to expand...
Good point. Does a NAS box come with enough battery backup capability to shut down gracefully in the event of a power outage? What about a server?

neil_g said:
is there a budget for this project?
Click to expand...
StewartR said:
Budget: as much as is necessary, but no more.
Click to expand...
 
neil_g said:
personally i wouldnt touch drobo, too many horror stories involving their proprietary FS...
Click to expand...
WHS uses a proprietary file system though, doesn't it? I know my WHS box has hot-swap capability and it just manages the disk allocation automatically (which is great as far as I'm concerned). Isn't that the same as Drobo?
 
landwomble said:
(Bear in mind no backup solution is going to allow you to restore a full OS backup to new random hardware with any guarantees or success
Click to expand...
Really? I thought it was possible. The Acronis "Universal Restore" product claims to do this - link.
 
StewartR said:
Really? I thought it was possible. The Acronis "Universal Restore" product claims to do this - link.
Click to expand...

I think that is only in the virtual machine subsystem where the hardware is relatively restricted. Sort of thing for vps or shared web server back up. I wouldn't imagine it would do the same thing for an ordinary pc running windows that could be using anything. If it does do that then it is quite impressive!
 
landwomble said:
WHS 2011 hits every single point you list above you know. Client auto backup and full out file restore plus backup of the whole server to an additional disk. ...
Click to expand...
Hmmm. Given that I have a server running WHS v1, perhaps my first step should be just to upgrade the OS to 2011 and see how I get on with that?
 
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft but having said that I still think WHS2011 is one of the best things we made that no-one's ever heard of. I'm a member of a lot of internal WHS distribution lists at MS and part of our internal geek-related DLs too and there are a lot of us who think the same. I'm not sure of the upgrade path between v1 and 2011 - I usually do clean installs. I *might* go with Server 2012 Essentials as an upgrade at some point, but only because a) I can get it at v low cost and b) I might hit the 2TB VHD limit in 2011 at some point in the near future.

You *can* restore a client image to a completely different PC but it's non trivial as the Hardware Abstraction Layer is likely v different. There are things you can do (much as you can sysprep a PC image and have it work on multiple PCs to install Windows) but it's non trivial. To be honest, in that scenario you'd probably find it easier/safer/cleaner to just restore data onto the new machine. The Acronis software looks like it handles this but the thing I like about WHS2011 client backup is it's invisible, it's automatic, and so it gets done. Every night my machines wake, backup and go back to sleep without me having to do anything, and the server then backs up itself to an external hard disk. This automation is worth far more to me than anything else - if it needs manual intervention, someone isn't going to do it, and eventually you're going to lose data!

WHS2011 server backup has one slight PITA which is it doesn't really support offsite storage automatically - i.e. it won't like it if you daily swap out the server backup drive to take the previous night's off site. When you swap out the server backup drive you have to tell WHS to forget about the first drive and then use the 2nd - which works fine, it's just another step you need to remember.

My WHS2011 box acts as house backup, as a web server for remote access to my files, as a torrent box, as a media streamer and also do to stuff like manage my ebook library centrally and do ebay snipes etc. It all sits on a little HP N40L microserver which consumes about 40W and cost me under £100 after the regular HP rebates. Under the hood it's Server 2008 R2 and can handle most of the same roles (although the licence tells you not to run AD and some other ones on WHS!) should you need to but with the ease of any non-technical user being able to rapidly set it up and get shares/users etc running via a Dashboard.

As you get a remote domain name with each install you can also access your server over the internet at yournameSPAMerver.com via a web interface which is pretty cool. It'll also stream media over the web and to your phone etc, transcoding the audio and video to an appropriate format where needed.
Mine sits in the loft, running headless, and I use Remote Desktop to use it - my thinking was if we get burgled it's unlikely that anyone's going to notice and nick a black box in the loft!

The nice thing about WHS client and server backups is that they're just virtual hard disk (VHD files) and as such can be mounted and used from any Windows PC. As they use the volume shadow copy service they can backup the OS whilst it's running, and given you get an image of the entire machine and all disks you can not only do a full baremetal restore, you can also restore just an individual file from a point in time - e.g. if you accidentally delete it.

What I have considered doing is mirroring the backup of one or more VHDs to an online service like Carbonite as an additional layer of protection.

Anyway, happy to answer any queries about WHS2011 if it helps.

Ric
 
Whs or sbs essentials will do what you want.

Do sbs, set up a domain and get people to log on to the domain and life is simpler.
 
Dale_tem said:
Do sbs, set up a domain and get people to log on to the domain and life is simpler.
Click to expand...
Simpler if you understand all that stuff, I'm sure. Unfortunately it's NOT simpler for those of us who don't.
 
It is simpler than you think. Microsoft have made it very easy.
 
StewartR said:
Well, it's a Windows server so it's kinda fussy about user names and passwords, and passwords on desktop PCs matching passwords on the server and stuff like that. I don't think that should be required for what is just a storage box, but it's not an insurmountable problem.

It is reasonably straightforward to set it up to backup each networked PC. But I *think* it's just backing up the files on each PC, rather than the entire contents of the hard disk. Plus, if a PC dies and has to be replaced, the replacement is unlikely to be physically the same, and I don't have confidence that the WHS backup will cope with that. Do you know?

As far as backing up the WHS system remotely is concerned, I have no idea how to do that.
Click to expand...

Unless you users are actively changing their passwords regularly that shouldn't be a problem. But ultimately you'll need to do that on a NAS device anyway unless you give everyone full access which you could also do with windows (wouldn't recommend it). As dale mentioned the easiest way to deal with changing usernames/passwords would be to set up a domain.

StewartR said:
Good point. But it seems to me that the scenario in which I would need access to the Glacier backup is where my server/NAS has completely died. So surely the critical path is the time taken to get replacement hardware, not a few hours waiting to get the data back? Or have I missed something?
Click to expand...

You could access the data on any other machine though (I.e a borrowed computer), I guess it depends how quickly you need access to your critical data.

StewartR said:
Not much. Maybe 1-2 TB tops for the office data. If I wanted to to a two-way replication with the home netwerk, so they could back each other up, then that would be another 1-2 TB tops.
Good point. Does a NAS box come with enough battery backup capability to shut down gracefully in the event of a power outage? What about a server?
Click to expand...

That's good, 1-2tb drives are relatively cheap.

No device will have a battery backup built in for power failure.

StewartR said:
WHS uses a proprietary file system though, doesn't it? I know my WHS box has hot-swap capability and it just manages the disk allocation automatically (which is great as far as I'm concerned). Isn't that the same as Drobo?
Click to expand...

I don't think so? As far as I'm aware its ntfs. You cannot take a drive from a drobo and access it in another machine though as it won't understand the file system. But like I say drobo support are rubbish, if you want a nas device look at synology or qnap. Synologys support I've had first hand experience of and its fantastic, including being able to set up remote access and diagnostic.

If you're planning in upgrading whs be aware they removed drive extender.
 
The first WHS had its own flexible raid system, they dropped it in the later WHS
 
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