I recently took over a network with three Proliant servers, all of which have have 4-(physical)drive SCSI configurations (Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000). I have two general questions:
1) I inhereted a major storage problem (most of the drives on two of the servers are almost completly full) and am going to need to expand their capacity soon. My question is how I can be sure EXACTLY how the drives are configured (for example, are they RAID, are the separate drives partitions or physical, or a combination?) so I don't wipe out a bunch of data - and - once I figure this out, what is the easiest way to migrate the old data to the new drives?
2) All of these servers have internal 20/40GB tape back-ups built in, and running three back-ups is a major pain in the rear as they are often multi-tape and take FOREVER. Adding to this is the bosses desire to begin backing up a HUGE photo library, which is located on a workstation. I really don't want to purchase and maintain yet another peripheral for just this purpose (it seems like overkill- I already have a mountain of little tapes as it is!). Can I just get a stand-alone high capacity FAST tape drive and port everything to it in one back-up, through the Exchange server?
EXTRA CREDIT: Can I get something like a Dell Powervault rack mounted storage device and configure it as a slave to one of the Proliants? That would be SWEET!
Thanks
-Shrubble
1) I inhereted a major storage problem (most of the drives on two of the servers are almost completly full) and am going to need to expand their capacity soon. My question is how I can be sure EXACTLY how the drives are configured (for example, are they RAID, are the separate drives partitions or physical, or a combination?) so I don't wipe out a bunch of data - and - once I figure this out, what is the easiest way to migrate the old data to the new drives?
2) All of these servers have internal 20/40GB tape back-ups built in, and running three back-ups is a major pain in the rear as they are often multi-tape and take FOREVER. Adding to this is the bosses desire to begin backing up a HUGE photo library, which is located on a workstation. I really don't want to purchase and maintain yet another peripheral for just this purpose (it seems like overkill- I already have a mountain of little tapes as it is!). Can I just get a stand-alone high capacity FAST tape drive and port everything to it in one back-up, through the Exchange server?
EXTRA CREDIT: Can I get something like a Dell Powervault rack mounted storage device and configure it as a slave to one of the Proliants? That would be SWEET!
Thanks
-Shrubble