[Tfug] Server purchase (!)

[Bexley Hall]

Hi,

--- Claude Rubinson <rubinson at u.arizona.edu> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 08:41:53PM -0700, Bexley
> Hall wrote:
> > 
> > Ask yourself:  "What would I do if this
> > machine/disk/etc. *died*?"
> > 
> > Would you p*ss and moan and just "deal with it"?
> > Or, would you fall to your knees and cry out,
> > "Why *me*?  Why?  Why?  Why???" in despair?  :>
> 
> Where does "I want to die" fall on your list? 

<grin>

> I'm really not exaggerating that much.
> 
> My notebook is my work; all of my data, research,
> analysis, and, most importantly, my writings in
> progress.

What are you looking at in terms of capacity?
1GB? 10GB? 100GB?

Of that, how much is truly "critical" and how much
is "gee, I sure wouldn't *like* to loose this (but
could live without it if need be)"?

Is any of this archived already?  I.e. have you
moved some things *off* of the laptop to secondary
storage?

> And as important as it is--as fragile as notebooks
> are--I do not consistently perform manual backups.

(sigh)  I hae never understood this "reality" -- but
find it quite commonplace (even in businesses!)

> And it certainly doesn't happen when I'm travelling.
> That's the whole purpose of buying a server; to have
> something that I can stick on the network so that I
> can set up a cron job on my notebook
> for an incremental backup everyday, wherever I may
> be.

So, you are assuming you'll have a big enough pipe
back to the server to satisfy your incremental needs
(though not necessarily enough for a level 0 backup)?
Even while traveling...

> You've convinced me that my original course of
> action was correct.  I need to find a vendor who 
> can build me a new machine in a "real"
> server case, who offers a warranty and support in
> case anything goes wrong.

(sigh)  I fell bad as I have recycled two servers in
the past month  :<  The latest was a 500MHz P3 with
hardware RAID (though I only had 4 drive sleds that
would fit in it so you'd need to size you drives
accordingly  :<  )

You might also check WorldCare to see if they have
a cheap server that fits your needs.  Note that if
you are just using it as a "backup" server, you
don't need much CPU *or* memory.  A "little"
5500R might work fine.  Probably even something
smaller.

One thing you will find is that running it 24/7/365
will use a fair bit of electricity.  And, it will
throw many BTU's!  (which is why I have been getting
rid of these types of machines... I don't need any
extra heat in my office even in what folks *call*
"winter" around here  :>  )

With that in mind, you might, instead, want to
leave the machine powered *off* and spin it up
just before you want to use it.  Do your thing
and then power it down.  This is a bit more 
stressful on the hardware than leaving it up
but I think you will find the fan noise/etc.
gets REALLY irritating.

It's hard to make any concrete recommendations without
an idea of disk requirements.  I can dig up some
hardware RAID controllers but you'll then need to
find an enclosure that could hold however many
drives you need, etc.

> You've also convinced me that I need to find
> some form of external, offsite storage for
> semi-regular backups of the server (I'm
> looking at external USB drives as tape drives are

I keep a 40G drive in an external USB case for
carrying files around.  You can buy 2G "thumb"
drives.  And, *tiny* (physically) drives with
USB i/f's (~10G).  But, this gets expensive...

I've started using a small thumb drive for
keeping *financial* records. This has the advantage
of being small, easy to toss into a fireproof safe
or safety deposit box, and easy to grab in case
of "disaster" (while I'd love to be able to rescue
my data archive in such a case, I am far more 
concerned about having access to *money* and
health records, etc. in times like that!  :>  )

> too expensive for my budget but if anyone has other
> suggestions, I'd love to hear them).

You can often find used tape drives for cheap.
But, have to know about what you are purchasing
in order not to get screwed.  Many higher end drives
(SCSI) have internal statistics that you can query
to determine the likely quality of the drive.

E.g., my DLT's will tell me how many hours they
have been powered up, how many hours the tape
has been in motion (which gives you some idea
of how much wear the head has seen), how many
TB of data written, a log of the past N errors
signaled (so you can see if they are indicative
of a certain failure pattern) etc.

> What's irritating me is that I've called and/or
> emailed a few different vendors and the only time
> that I've gotten through to a human being,
> it was a salesperson who couldn't help me.
> He promised
> me that someone would get back to me but nobody's
> called.  Doesn't
> give me much faith in their service and support.

Even if you find such a vendor, note that hardware
changes so fast nowadays that *he* might not be able
to find a replacement part (in the unlikely event)
a year or two from now.  Especially if he is
gearing his solution to a more affordable approach.

I don't know your skillset nor level of involvement
(i.e. maintaining this system) that you are willing
to engage in (e.g., many folks "can't be bothered" to
change the oil in their automobiles, etc.).  In my
case, I have found that keeping a couple of
"compatible" machines available as cold backups
has proven to be very affordable and reliable.

E.g., I currently use a U60 for my primary workstation
(thanks, Stephen!  :> ) with a U1 as my cold backup.
Both run Solaris 8 so I can phyically move a disk
drive from one to the other in the event of a failure
and only "lose" a few minutes in the process.  Of
course, this leaves me vulnerable at *that* point
but I can either fix the failed machine *or* find
a *third* machine to act as my current cold backup.

[as an aside, I am always interested in any non-PC
machines that would otherwise be headed to the
trash  :>  ]

You might be able to adopt a similar strategy.
Then, you could rely on less expensive machines
to give you a desired level of "reassurance".

N.B.  I've never had a system *die* on me.  And,
my only potential data lossage was due to a bug
in a driver (which trashed *two* copies of a small
archive I had before I caught the problem and
recovered from a *third* copy of that portion of
the archive).  My point being that if you are
*engaged* in the maintenance of your data, you
can usually protect yourself from lossage.

--don

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