Typical HDD setup for small business server?

Question

I have google this quite a lot btw but i still can't get my head around what HDDs i would be ideal for say a small business server setup, or any 1 x PDC server setup for say up to about 15 users, i mean what would be reasonable. Assuming that the motherboard has a built in RAID controller. Note that i have never actually setup a RAID before, i am just trying to learn by theory at the moment, but should have the hardware soon.

My thinking is to buy 2 x 320Gig sata drivesfor a RAID 1 for the OS(system drive). So i plug both drives in then go into the bios and it should give the option to allow me to select both these drives into a RAID 1 array?? This seems ok.

Now i have 2 other problems.

a) I hear about hot swap drives(are these the same as hot spares)??
b) backup drives, do i use a standard sata or do i use a sas drive, should these be hot swap, should these be in RAID etc

So basically how do i add a hot spare, what should i use for a backup drive, should the backup drive be in a RAID also, do i need hot swap drive?

I am confused about the hot swap and what controllor i need to allow for it...

thanks for any help.

Answer 1

RAID has two purposes:

Building resilience into a system by having a 'redundant' disk as a fail-over

Configuring several disks to work as a single array.



The configuration depends on what the server is to be used for.



Depending on the server, you may have up to 8 drive bays. I recommend that you have your system drive mirrored (RAID1), as you suggest, so that if one drive fails, you have the mirrored drive operating.



You may use 3 of the remaining drives in a RAID5 configuration. Using 320gb HDDs, this will give 640gb of data space, with the third disk being used for parity. This means that if one of the HDDs fails, the array will still run and you can swap out the failed HDD without taking the array down. This is what 'Hot Swap' means. A 'hot spare' is a HDD that can be installed in the system but not used or it can be ready to be plugged in in place of a failed drive.



The other 3 drives can be used for backing up your system/data, either as a RAID array or independently.



Configuring a RAID arrray can be done in three ways:

1) Via the BIOS

2) Using the server manufacturers array configuration software

or

3) In Windows Server Disk Manager.



I recommend the second option.



For more information on the various RAID configurations see:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID



If you are really worried about doing this yourself, discuss it with the company from whom you are buying the server. Most dealers will offer a configuration service with the hardware.

Answer 2

If you're willing to shut the computer down to replace a failed drive, you don't need hot swap. Hot swap and hot spares are different things.



Hot swap: This means that you can replace a hard drive without taking the system down. You simply remove the failed drive from the RAID (if it didn't remove itself), replace it with a new drive, add that drive to the RAID array, and the RAID array repairs itself so that both drives contain the same data.



Hot spare: This means that you already have an extra hard drive installed in the computer. If a drive fails, it will automatically be removed from the array, the hot spare added to the array, and the array repaired.



You can use these two technologies together to hot swap the failed drive for a new drive which then becomes your hot spare.



Again, if it's okay to take the machine down to replace a failed drive, you need neither of these technologies. However, if the other drive fails before you can replace a failed drive, you will need your backup.



Ideally, the backup drive would be removable from the computer. An external drive is great for this.

Answer 3

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