RAID

[Spring+]

Im starting a business and someone recommend me to use RAID. Which RAID do you think is the best for my business?

[ImNotThere]

whats your business? lol

[kirashi]

6 minutes ago, Spring+ said:

Im starting a business and someone recommend me to use RAID. Which RAID do you think is the best for my business?

Cannot recommend any type of storage solution until we have more information on your business. Are you a creative company? Legal office? Doctors office? Mortician? Do you need an email server? Are you running more than 3-5 computers, or do you have more than 3-5 employees who will be using the computers / need email addresses? These are all important questions to figure out first before we talk about implementing RAID or any other kind of storage solution.

[Vandorlot]

Raid 0- Increases speed, data is split into 2 parts. If one drive is lost all info is lost. Requires 2 drives, keeps all storage. Functions at speeds of 2 drives

Raid 1- Increases numer of copies of info, one drive copies the other and then you have 2 if the same drive. If one fails you still have another copy. Requires 2, only has the storage of 1 drive. Function at speed of 2 drives

Raid 10- A mixture of both, two drives where data is split and two more where data is backed up off the primary 2. Requires 4 drives. Speed of 2 drives, storage of 2.

If the info you keep on your drives is super important like if your a doctor go for 1 or 10. 

[dizmo]

@Spring+ I'm starting a business too. Which vehicle should I buy?

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, Vandorlot said:

Raid 0- Increases speed, data is split into 2 parts. If one drive is lost all info is lost. Requires 2 drives, keeps all storage. Functions at speeds of 2 drives

Raid 1- Increases numer of copies of info, one drive copies the other and then you have 2 if the same drive. If one fails you still have another copy. Requires 2, only has the storage of 1 drive. Function at speed of 2 drives

Raid 10- A mixture of both, two drives where data is split and two more where data is backed up off the primary 2. Requires 4 drives. Speed of 2 drives, storage of 2.

If the info you keep on your drives is super important like if your a doctor go for 1 or 10. 

I wouldn't consider any of these for a business environment really. RAID 0 is just bad for everyone, RAID 1 is kind of pointless for a business use unless downtime on individual systems is completely unacceptable (it also doesn't function at the speed of 2 drives. It can have striped reads, but not everything supports that and writes remain as they would with 1 drive). RAID 10 is just inefficient use of space and has a bad worst case scenario and lack of expansion when using 4 drives or more. 

 

For a business, unless looking at RAID 5 or 6, I would just leave it. Even when considering RAID 5 and 6, a good backup and snapshot system is more useful and flexible. 

 

@Spring+Do you have a full backup system planned or already in place? If not, don't even consider RAID until you do. RAID can be good for avoiding downtime, but doesn't protect you like a good backup system does. 

[Spring+]

8 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Cannot recommend any type of storage solution until we have more information on your business. Are you a creative company? Legal office? Doctors office? Mortician? Do you need an email server? Are you running more than 3-5 computers, or do you have more than 3-5 employees who will be using the computers / need email addresses? These are all important questions to figure out first before we talk about implementing RAID or any other kind of storage solution.

I'm having a small accounting firm which offers accounting services and financial consulting. So basically, system units will be used for recording transactions etc.

[Vandorlot]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I wouldn't consider any of these for a business environment really. RAID 0 is just bad for everyone, RAID 1 is kind of pointless for a business use unless downtime on individual systems is completely unacceptable (it also doesn't function at the speed of 2 drives. It can have striped reads, but not everything supports that and writes remain as they would with 1 drive). RAID 10 is just inefficient use of space and has a bad worst case scenario and lack of expansion when using 4 drives or more. 

 

For a business, unless looking at RAID 5 or 6, I would just leave it. Even when considering RAID 5 and 6, a good backup and snapshot system is more useful and flexible. 

 

@Spring+Do you have a full backup system planned or already in place? If not, don't even consider RAID until you do. RAID can be good for avoiding downtime, but doesn't protect you like a good backup system does. 

I was just listing the raids i know off the top of my head. I only know 0 1 and 10 cause those are the most common ones.

[kirashi]

2 minutes ago, Spring+ said:

I'm having a small accounting firm which offers accounting services and financial consulting. So basically, system units will be used for recording transactions etc.

Then I'd highly recommend hiring an IT firm or IT consultant to plan out exactly what you need so you never have data loss of any kind. Simply knowing how to setup RAID is not good enough when you're dealing with financial or health records, and I know I would never trust a company for these services if I knew they were backing up data using RAID locally on what I presume isn't enterprise grade equipment. Also be sure whatever setup you choose meets PCI and HIPPA compliance. (Yes I'm aware that HIPPA is for health records, but I'd expect the same level of security for financial data as well.)

 

That being said, if I'm repeating things you already know you should be doing, then my apologies. I'd still personally hire an IT professional to assist with the initial planning and setup of both an on-site and off-site server for backups, and would look into any operating system using ZFS for backups. ZFS is better than RAID in every single way (except the additional knowledge needed for initial setup and configuration) and would be the better choice in the long term for its' data durability.

 

Now, if you need to run a local Simply/SAGE or QuickBooks server, you'll probably need Windows, in which case I'm going to NOPE right out of this conversation because I'm basically John Snow when it comes to anything requiring Windows Server, and have ZERO desire to care about Windows Server. I'm not the right guy for that topic, which is where a Windows Server / Active Directory / Exchange Server expert would come in handy.

[dalekphalm]

On 21/08/2017 at 8:53 PM, kirashi said:

Then I'd highly recommend hiring an IT firm or IT consultant to plan out exactly what you need so you never have data loss of any kind. Simply knowing how to setup RAID is not good enough when you're dealing with financial or health records, and I know I would never trust a company for these services if I knew they were backing up data using RAID locally on what I presume isn't enterprise grade equipment. Also be sure whatever setup you choose meets PCI and HIPPA compliance. (Yes I'm aware that HIPPA is for health records, but I'd expect the same level of security for financial data as well.)

 

That being said, if I'm repeating things you already know you should be doing, then my apologies. I'd still personally hire an IT professional to assist with the initial planning and setup of both an on-site and off-site server for backups, and would look into any operating system using ZFS for backups. ZFS is better than RAID in every single way (except the additional knowledge needed for initial setup and configuration) and would be the better choice in the long term for its' data durability.

 

Now, if you need to run a local Simply/SAGE or QuickBooks server, you'll probably need Windows, in which case I'm going to NOPE right out of this conversation because I'm basically John Snow when it comes to anything requiring Windows Server, and have ZERO desire to care about Windows Server. I'm not the right guy for that topic, which is where a Windows Server / Active Directory / Exchange Server expert would come in handy.

He could still do everything you recommend in the 2nd paragraph while also having a Windows Server running Sage, etc. Ideally, using a Hypervisor like ESXi to virtualize both FreeNAS (Or Linux - since both support ZFS) and Windows. FreeNAS works extremely well on a VM, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

 

But I 100% agree with your overall suggestion. The OP should hire an IT Firm to propose a solution based on his requirements, and then setup that solution (and a good thing to include in the contract is training on how to operate/manage the setup).

[Dlog]

Raid isn't the end all answer or what  you need. You need resiliency in your local storage but you also need a backup strategy. Raids can fail, if your data is important back it up. I highly suggest you contact someone from google, MS, Amazon, Backblaze about cloud storage that is compliant with regulatory guidelines for financial information. Let these folks do the work for you.

 

Keep complexity down and look into something like

https://gsuite.google.com/solutions/small-business/?tab_activeEl=tabset-companies