Small business server solution (storage and raid config)

[wescom_agcs]

Hi all, 

 

  I'm working for a pharmacy that is looking to upgrade their old server and they've asked me to help them out. I've been looking into the lenovo thinkservers but I'm not sure what would be the best storage or raid configuration for it. The server will be running an sql server database and several other tasks like data backups, file sharing, and some light web services. There are about 10 clients each with several apps which the database will serve. Most of the data is sensitive and mission critical which means that if there's a failure we must recover the data as fast as possible. Cloud solution is not an option since the internet is not very stable. If you need more clarifications, please ask. I'm fairly new to something like this so any suggestions would be much appreciated. 

 

Thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you have a MSP? Id probably get someone in that knows what there doing here, esp when there is a business that needs this.

 

Whats your backup solution?

 

What os are you running? Id get a hypervisor and run it off there.

 

How much storage do you need? Id go ssd for as much of it as you can.

 

 

[wescom_agcs]

22 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you have a MSP? Id probably get someone in that knows what there doing here, esp when there is a business that needs this.

 

Whats your backup solution?

 

What os are you running? Id get a hypervisor and run it off there.

 

How much storage do you need? Id go ssd for as much of it as you can.

 

 

Our backup solution is through a software that backs up the data to an external device. This is done manually and automatically through a task schedule. We also have a daily cloud backup with azure. 

 

This server would be running windows server 2016 STD. 

 

We would need at least 1TB for now. What would be a good server grade ssd and what raid configuration would you suggest? We really need some redundancy and security here. 

 

Thanks!

[Electronics Wizardy]

24 minutes ago, wescom_agcs said:

This server would be running windows server 2016 STD. 

Are you using hyper-v?

 

Why not go 2019?

 

25 minutes ago, wescom_agcs said:

We would need at least 1TB for now. What would be a good server grade ssd and what raid configuration would you suggest? We really need some redundancy and security here. 

Id probably get a 2tb raid 1 of ssds if you only need 1tb of space. What type of drives? Sata? sas? Pcie? Id probably get something like micron 5200, or a intel d3 s4510 for sata drives.

[gt2416]

Are you fixed on using windows server ?  

FreeNAS is a great software for small business's because of ZFS. ZFS is a really good file system that is being currently worked on and updated unlike ntfs (made in 1993, yikes!) which Windows uses. Seriously google zfs and you'll see how much more reliable it is. FreeNAS also has built in backup to b2 cloud providers like Azure. 

Raid 5 is a good medium for reliability. Raid 5 means, half of your total disks can fail. If you 4 512GB ssd's you'll get your 1tb and 2 of the ssd's can fail before data loss. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, gt2416 said:

(made in 1993, yikes!)

Ntfs is also being update a lot.

 

And if your running hyper-v you can use storage spaces + refs that will give you basically the same features. Its basically on par with ZFS features wise and and some things that zfs doesn't like mixed raid levels, easy growing and shrinking of pools, tiered storage, clusterin guspport.

 

2 minutes ago, gt2416 said:

Raid 5 means, half of your total disks can fail.

No it means one drive can fail, raid 10 can have up to half the drives fail, but can lose all the data with two drive failures.

 

[gt2416]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

No it means one drive can fail, raid 10 can have up to half the drives fail, but can lose all the data with two drive failures.

 

Yes sorry I meant raid 10!  NTFS while being updated is not close to being as currently updated as zfs and not as reliable as zfs which is software raid, whereas ntfs relies on your hardware to be reliable as well. 

But yea upgrading is not AS easy on zfs and it is different from using standard raid. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, gt2416 said:

Yes sorry I meant raid 10!  NTFS while being updated is not close to being as currently updated as zfs and not as reliable as zfs which is software raid, whereas ntfs relies on your hardware to be reliable as well. 

But yea upgrading is not AS easy on zfs and it is different from using standard raid. 

well if your using refs + storage spaces, its just as reliable as zfs and will do checksums and fix bitrot on the drives. Thats what you should run for a hyper-v host. For a small buiness server hyper-v server or esxi makes much more sense than freenas

[jake9000]

Hardware: Dell Poweredge. ProSupport is way too good. They will overnight parts to you and the callcenter is in Texas.  HP Enterprise is awful to work with and lenovo will ask you to ship stuff to their depot. 

Get 4 drives and do a raid10. The reason we don't like Raid5 is that larger disk drives are more likely to encounter an Unrecoverable Read Error. When the array is running well, these are healed by redundancy. When you have no redundancy, these UREs get upgraded to Data Loss which is no bueno.

There's plenty to debate on the merits of ZFS but at the end of the day you gotta find the requirements for the software you are running and do what they say. 99% of small business software is written for Windows. 

Besides, as far as bare metal goes, VMFS is the only valid filesystem  

[leadeater]

14 hours ago, jake9000 said:

HP Enterprise is awful to work with

Never had an issue with them, not for the last 10+ years. All my servers log hardware faults directly with HPE through OneView, they call to confirm case then immediately ship the part with a technician if I request one. Sounds like you might just have problems with the contracted support company HPE uses, most of the time you're not dealing with actual HPE beyond logging the support case. We've put blocks on companies to avoid these problems, HPE contracts to a few different companies in my region but we only allow a few of them. You know you have a problem when a toaster repair man turns up with a replacement CPU for a DL580, no thanks I'll install it and you can leave.

 

14 hours ago, jake9000 said:

lenovo will ask you to ship stuff to their depot

Lenovo does onsite replacement, just need to purchase the correct support option when buying the product. Their support is way worse than HPE though, or was last time I had to use it, but it was actually IBM back then so...?

[jake9000]

No, I have difficulty actually interacting with the actual HPE sales and support people. You can send them the invoice of something you purchased and say you want 6 more of them and they will tell you that those part numbers do not exist and have never existed. List them the specs and they'll tell you that isn't something they sell. Real great when you want to have a fleet of identical virt hosts. 

 Any URL on their site more than 6 hours old fails to resolve. Really great when they email you a download to www23498129.hpe.com/whatever/whatever/whatever/proliantsupportpack.exe and it works one day but fails the next. 

Had a tech bring out the wrong part twice. The account manager called the client and asked them to pay for it. 

SPP downloads hidden behind a paywall for some products. Other products not even on the website. Now look at downloads.dell.com and despair. 

I once submitted a ticket requesting an alternative download because the FTP site was only serving me 10kbps on a 6GB file. After a few weeks the download finished and they closed the ticket as self-healed. 

 

Things might be different at the blingy support tiers where you get a dedicated team of engineers, but prosupport is easily the winner for the category its in. 

Most of my clients come to me with their stuff already built out by whoever serviced them before, so I interact with every vendor pretty regularly. HP hardware racks up more consultant charge time than other manufacturer. Tickets for HP hardware are more likely to be placed in 'waiting for vendor' than other manufacturers. Maybe I and my entire team is just doing it wrong, or maybe I am just a shill. HP account reps have accused me of both while on conference calls with clients. 

 

If you ever have the chance to do a support call for an IBM Mainframe I recommend it. Every interaction with those guys is a master class. They know the product inside and out and it isn't unusual to get a phone call with one of the guys who developed the specific feature you're having an issue with.