Resolved ProLiant setup as NAS Box - advice wanted

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Hi Chaps,

Working in Germany currently, and i'm being sent off to the Frankfurt office for 2 days from monday next week with a new hp server to setup and install.

It's been basically dumped on me half hour ago, because some other nause has completely mucked up - and I'm not entirely confident about what is there and if it's the correct setup - if anyone would mind reading through this and letting me know what you think, and any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I havn't even seen the machine yet, but according to invoice: (Things of relevance)

Server - HP ProLiant DL360R05 4M CTO
Two internal 146gb 10k SAS drives
P400i FIO Controller
P400i FIO Controller 256mb cache

Now, this is only going to be used as a NAS box, to run backups from the main date filer. there is an MSA20 shelf, for which i've got 6 x 500gb drives

What i was thinking:

Keep internal drives as they are on a RAID 1 setup with the OS
Within the MSA20 shelf have a RAID 5 setup with 4 x 500gb drives to total 2tb, 1 as parity drive, and keep the other as a spare in case of failure

Also, if i get hold of a HP SmartStart setup disk - is there the option to configure RAID setups in that? - All i've been given is a hard copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 - and nothing else.

Any advice or suggestions guys would be mucho appreciated

Cheeers
Jack

 

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Hi Jack, if its a new server they come with all the setup disks, however on first boot I would setup the RAID's after the POST and then reinstall the factory image over the top, allowing you the disk space you need and without having windows worry about doing a software RAID.

Good Luck.

 

It is new but the douchebag who bodged it first time round lost them! lol

Thanks Dave, i'll aim to do the RAID setups first

 

Hi Jack,

Sounds like you've got it sourced out in terms of your thinking on how to configure the new servers. I too would got for having the OS on RAID 1 and RAID 5 setup for the data drives.

I recently setup a similar setup at work on a Dell PowerEdge 6850 purely for storage purposes to assist our regular backups taking off the strain.

However, I did have a Dell PowerVault 220s attached to the server via a SCSI cable giving over 1.2 TB. I wouldn't worry as the servers are new and should come with a SmartStart CD for initial setup.

If however, the hardware RAID doesn't work as you intend windows software RAID would kick in and does a good job two. Well as long as you stick to the above intended configuration you'd be fine.

Best wishes and cheerio

 

RAID 5 sucks :P

 

Helpful

For what he needs it for RAID5 will be fine I'm sure.

 

Thanks Dave, I aim to please

 

Fixed that for you.

 

No - he's right - RAID5 does suck. For larger volumes at least. Anyone who's ever suffered from a punctured stripe (even more painful than it sounds) knows what I mean. Back in the day when disks were 146Gb each, RAID 5 was fine. Nowadays, with much larger capacity disks, RAID-50/RAID-DP is the way to go.

 

There is a lot of situations where RAID 5 is good.

Not sure if NAS is one of them but off the top of my head:
- Exchange DAG
- SQL DB (as long as logs are on different array)

I might be wrong though.

... and it seems I am.

 

No need BM, I still stand by my orginal post but thanks anyway

 

All done! I shall change this status to solved lol.

thx for replies all

edit: turns out i can't edit original post! it can stay as problem

 

Cheers

 

Was it straight forward enough mate?

 

Yup indeed, in the end only i had 5 drives as somebody nicked one for another site before i got there, tossers... so i ended up with 3 x500gb drives ~1.43tb - one parity and one spare

All sat in the MSA20 shelf ticking away nicely, iLO configured and setup - and I'm just configuring the robocopy scripts for daily transfers now

Having a fight with Symantec SEP to update, but apart from that all is good

Cheers for the help dave and checking up - +Rep

 

Glad to hear it all worked out and thanks for the feedback. Cheerio

 

Glad to went well for you, and thanks for the rep.

 

3 drives for RAID5? eek! hope performance isn't an issue - because if it is, that would suck royally.

 

Think its 4 zeb and one spare but even at that eek

p.s look at FRS as well so your not writing needless data to the poor thing


[added]
I would be intrested to know the drive model number that your using