Backup VS RAID

[Scott15239]

Okay,
Here's the scenario. I currently have an NT 4 SP6 server which has a pair of Maxtor 60gig ATA 133 drives currently hooked up, using a Maxtor controller card. Through a manual process using Norton Ghost, I clone physical drive #1 to physical drive #2 (drive #1 is logically partitioned into two 30gig drives, hence drive #2 is as well, via the cloning). This job has only been a part-time gig (one day a week), which in the future I won't even be able to devote even this muuch time to. The other people at the place of business are VERY computer illiterate. One thing I've been considering doing instead of having them clone the drive via Ghost manually all the time would be to install a RAID controller and implement RAID 1. I've never attempted this before and was wondering what the pros and cons of doing such would be. I also have a six gig drive that I could conceivably use as a boot drive, in addition to what would be the pair of RAID-ed data drives. Thoughts, suggestions, concerns??????????

Thanks for the words of wisdom,
Scott

 

[williambishop]

There are no cons to a raid solution, other than if the controller dies. If money is not an issue, you might consider duplexing the controller and disk array that way you have complete protection. The controller is the most likely point of failure in my experience, I have seen them go tits up before drives that have been spinning for 6 years straight.

 

[reversecj]

Raid-1 is a good option to keep your people up and working. However, I wouldnt look at RAID as an alternative to backup. You still need to backup data no matter what, due to viruses, accidental deletion, corruption and anything that can alter data against someones will.

 

[williambishop]

reversecj is correct in this, backup is THE most important thing to consider when building a rig. Antivirus being second. Throughput and utilization(the main goals of an array) is a close third.

 

[Cubixs]

RAID is a great 1st layer for data availability however would not recomend as an alternitive to a backup. I would recomend a disk2disk solution using a company called unitrends. they have a way cool super fast solution that includes what they call baremetal, kinda like ghost but it's not a cloning util. they can backup to disk, tape and I think even CDR/DVDR.... So if a server crashes you can boot from the recovery media and everything is back fast. no more tapes errors for me if I can help it. I am trying to get these tapes out the door. good luck.

 

[gwichman]

The bottom line here is RAID helps protect you from losing your data due to a disk crash. Nothing more.. If a disk dies you'll be ok. If two disks die, it's bye bye data. You may think that's unlikely but tell that to my executive management who had 2 drives die over a weekend just a few months ago in their 500GB RAID-5 array that didn't have any hot spares. Prior to that they figured the likelyhood of losing 2 disks at once was an acceptable risk despite our objections. Now they finally get it and we have disks to spare as well as backups.

Backups protect you further by protecting from actual data corruption or loss due to user error, viruses, or other similar events. They can go undetected for some time. It also allows you to keep a copy offsite in case of fire or a major disaster. It sounds like in a small environment like you're referring to though, perhaps mirroring your disks is enough as i doubt the data on that server is all that critical. It certainly would beat the hell out of cloning the disk using norton ghost.. blech

 

[sgtbaker]

Here, here! DO NOT confuse RAID with 'backup', as they are not the same. RAID can fail and you can loose your information, period! Working in the past for companies that make RAID equipment and test several other brands, I can say I've seen it all.

You have to impliment a good backup stratagy, unless your data is unimportant and your using RAID0 for speed. Depending on the amount of data you create will aid in purchasing the right solution. CDR, DVD, or Tape are your considerations.

Good luck.