For many years I've been running a 2nd-hand "desktop" machine as a home server, which runs print, file & email services and a few others. It's an least 10 Y/O Pentium (5?) with 3GB RAM and is usually not taxed by these services.
I have asked before, but I've never actually got round to doing anything about it, but I've got executive approval from the S/O BUT....
I'm in two minds. Do I go for
A) a traditional box, plenty of room, RAIDed disk but comparatively high power consumption
e.g.
https://www.entroware.com/store/desktops/nyx
or
https://secure.zeta.systems/store/desktops/D540/
which seem to have PSUs rated about 650W
or
B) a small NUC style box, low power consumption thingy like
https://www.entroware.com/store/desktops/aura
or
Something like the mini-itx jobbies available here
https://www.logicsupply.com/uk-en/products/commercial-computers/mc500-series...
These seem to consume about 65W.
I will be running some flavour of Ubuntu on it. I'd probably prefer it was 64Bit. I want it to be a "standard architecture" processor so that there will be a full-range of apps available to install from the ubuntu repositories.
I would like to have a low-power-consumption as it's an always on device, and it doesn't seem to need much processing power. I'd also like to have raid (mirroring), but most low power-consumption machines don't seem to have space for raid.
Does anyone have any comments or recommendations, especially of any companies they have dealt with, or products they have purchased that work well?
Thanks in advance.
Steve
On 19/12/17 16:03, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
For many years I've been running a 2nd-hand "desktop" machine as a home server, which runs print, file & email services and a few others. It's an least 10 Y/O Pentium (5?) with 3GB RAM and is usually not taxed by these services.
[BIG SNIP]
FWIW, I use a Pi2 running Ubuntu 14.04 for OpenVPN and SSH portal, DHCP/Caching DNS (using dnsmasq - it's brilliant) and a few other small services, and a QNAP NAS for SMB file sharing with 2Tb RAID1 in it running a few services as well, such as a media server and Dokuwiki (it can do lots more).
The whole setup is trouble-free, uses little power and is hardly stressed, ever. It supports a mixed environment of client devices quite happily.
Cheers, Laurie.
On 19/12/17 17:00, Laurie Brown wrote:
On 19/12/17 16:03, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
For many years I've been running a 2nd-hand "desktop" machine as a home server, which runs print, file & email services and a few others. It's an least 10 Y/O Pentium (5?) with 3GB RAM and is usually not taxed by these services.
[BIG SNIP]
FWIW, I use a Pi2 running Ubuntu 14.04 for OpenVPN and SSH portal, DHCP/Caching DNS (using dnsmasq - it's brilliant) and a few other small services, and a QNAP NAS for SMB file sharing with 2Tb RAID1 in it running a few services as well, such as a media server and Dokuwiki (it can do lots more).
Hmm, interesting. I'll have a look.
The whole setup is trouble-free, uses little power and is hardly stressed, ever. It supports a mixed environment of client devices quite happily.
Cheers, Laurie.
Thanks for the ideas!
Steve
On 19 December 2017 at 16:03, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
For many years I've been running a 2nd-hand "desktop" machine as a home server, which runs print, file & email services and a few others. It's an least 10 Y/O Pentium (5?) with 3GB RAM and is usually not taxed by these services.
It's worth remembering that a Pi with some external disks would do all of the above quite easily.
It would possibly let you down on the speed of network/disk access though, depending on your requirements, but if so there are some less well known Pi-like boards (same form factor, better hardware) that do give USB3, Gigabit LAN, more RAM, etc.
I'd be disappointed if Pi 4 (if/when there is one) doesn't have USB3/Gigabit LAN as those are really the only two weak links for a lot of applications, although I assume they do push up the power requirements.
Mark
On 19/12/17 17:07, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 19 December 2017 at 16:03, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
For many years I've been running a 2nd-hand "desktop" machine as a home server, which runs print, file & email services and a few others. It's an least 10 Y/O Pentium (5?) with 3GB RAM and is usually not taxed by these services.
It's worth remembering that a Pi with some external disks would do all of the above quite easily.
Hmmmm..... I do like me a Pi :-)
So I'd need a USB to SATA connector for each drive and a beefy PSU?
It would possibly let you down on the speed of network/disk access though, depending on your requirements, but if so there are some less well known Pi-like boards (same form factor, better hardware) that do give USB3, Gigabit LAN, more RAM, etc.
Any suggestions on where to look?
I'd be disappointed if Pi 4 (if/when there is one) doesn't have USB3/Gigabit LAN as those are really the only two weak links for a lot of applications, although I assume they do push up the power requirements.
Roll on Pi 4! :-)
Thanks Mark
Steve
On 19 December 2017 at 18:23, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
I do like me a Pi :-)
So I'd need a USB to SATA connector for each drive and a beefy PSU?
I'd use external drives which come with USB and their own power supplies (if the smaller 2.5" external drives will suffice then you likely would be able to power them through the Pi, in which case a beefy PSU would be needed).
It would possibly let you down on the speed of network/disk access though, depending on your requirements, but if so there are some less well known Pi-like boards (same form factor, better hardware) that do give USB3, Gigabit LAN, more RAM, etc.
Any suggestions on where to look?
I've "ordered" one of these: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/renegade-arm-computer-with-usb-3-on-andro...
It being crowd funding there's no guarantee I'll ever get it, never mind that it'll be any good, but on balance I decided to take a punt on it. The funding period hasn't quite finished yet so that's a option.
Otherwise Googling for "Pi alternative USB3 gigabit" throws up a few threads discussing alternatives (fr me it also shows a few products which turn out not to be USB3 or gigabit...)
Of-course you could also just do it all with a standard Pi and see whether the performance is sufficient for your needs before going further, maybe with a view to upgrading to Pi4 if/when such a thing exists.
On 19 December 2017 at 16:03, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
For many years I've been running a 2nd-hand "desktop" machine as a home server, which runs print, file & email services and a few others. It's an least 10 Y/O Pentium (5?) with 3GB RAM and is usually not taxed by these services. I will be running some flavour of Ubuntu on it. I'd probably prefer it was 64Bit. I want it to be a "standard architecture" processor so that there will be a full-range of apps available to install from the ubuntu repositories.
I would like to have a low-power-consumption as it's an always on device, and it doesn't seem to need much processing power. I'd also like to have raid (mirroring), but most low power-consumption machines don't seem to have space for raid.
Does anyone have any comments or recommendations, especially of any companies they have dealt with, or products they have purchased that work well?
I've been running four servers for the last 3 years at home.
My main work server has a raid10 with WD 4tb drives, and is a lenovo thinkserver similar to this: https://www.ebuyer.com/770312-lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-70lv-pentium-g4400-3-... The power usage won't be that of a mini-server but that doesn't mean you're consuming hoards of electricity. I find my bills pretty low considering I'm working from home and have these powered up 24/7. This machine has proven to be extremely robust, and haven't had any issues. A UPS has made sure it's stayed on for over 45 min whenever there were any power outages when doing work on the house. One not so great feature is the HDD slots are pretty basic. I've got 5 drives in mine, and some are more difficult than others to install. As I've only changed 1 faulty drive from the raid in 3 years, this hasn't been much of an issue. The price on thinkservers are incredibly competitive, so you can spend more on drives.
My other machine is an old Asus eeebox, which is only 32bit and yes, I agree you'll be limited with software compatibility and isn't that futureproof if you want mainstream OS/software. It does consume very little power and is also *very robust*. Had it running for over 5 years without issues.
The other two are Pis. (a 2 and a 3) Yes, they're super cheap, and consume very little power. However they do crash occasionally, especially when under strain, so I only use them for file shares, media playback and other non-critical functions. The asus kicks ass compared to these. Also they are not usb3 or gigabit ethernet. When dealing with hoards of data for backups etc, it's not a great option. For simple NAS setups, they're great.
On 20/12/17 12:25, John Cohen wrote:
On 19 December 2017 at 16:03, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote: [] I've been running four servers for the last 3 years at home.
My main work server has a raid10 with WD 4tb drives, and is a lenovo thinkserver similar to this: https://www.ebuyer.com/770312-lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-70lv-pentium-g4400-3-... The power usage won't be that of a mini-server but that doesn't mean you're consuming hoards of electricity. I find my bills pretty low considering I'm working from home and have these powered up 24/7. This machine has proven to be extremely robust, and haven't had any issues. A UPS has made sure it's stayed on for over 45 min whenever there were any power outages when doing work on the house. One not so great feature is the HDD slots are pretty basic. I've got 5 drives in mine, and some are more difficult than others to install. As I've only changed 1 faulty drive from the raid in 3 years, this hasn't been much of an issue. The price on thinkservers are incredibly competitive, so you can spend more on drives.
Thanks. I had spotted that at another supplier and have asked them if it'd run ubuntu but as yet no reply. I think that it's gone up my list now! :-)
My other machine is an old Asus eeebox, which is only 32bit and yes, I agree you'll be limited with software compatibility and isn't that futureproof if you want mainstream OS/software. It does consume very little power and is also *very robust*. Had it running for over 5 years without issues.
The other two are Pis. (a 2 and a 3) Yes, they're super cheap, and consume very little power. However they do crash occasionally, especially when under strain, so I only use them for file shares, media playback and other non-critical functions. The asus kicks ass compared to these. Also they are not usb3 or gigabit ethernet. When dealing with hoards of data for backups etc, it's not a great option. For simple NAS setups, they're great.
Thanks!
Steve
On 20/12/17 12:25, John Cohen wrote:
[]
I've been running four servers for the last 3 years at home.
My main work server has a raid10 with WD 4tb drives, and is a lenovo thinkserver similar to this: https://www.ebuyer.com/770312-lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-70lv-pentium-g4400-3-... The power usage won't be that of a mini-server but that doesn't mean you're consuming hoards of electricity. I find my bills pretty low considering I'm working from home and have these powered up 24/7. This machine has proven to be extremely robust, and haven't had any issues.
OK, with the link you found on ebuyer https://www.ebuyer.com/770312-lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-70lv-pentium-g4400-3-... and I think the same machine here https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/p/1182461/lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-intel-pen...
and a PDF here https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/PDFs/70LV003EEA_2_3400225_Original.pdf?v=7
Ebuyer has the "Official" disks, but they cost £Megabucks, so I am disinclined to use them. https://www.ebuyer.com/792385-lenovo-2tb-sata-6gb-s-3-5-hard-drive-4xb0g8875...
Did you use Lenovo or IBM disks, or generic ones?
Comments make mention of a drive holder/drive caddy that is not supplied with the machine. Does yours require these?
Steve
On 20 December 2017 at 23:21, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
OK, with the link you found on ebuyer https://www.ebuyer.com/770312-lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-70lv-pentium-g4400-3-... and I think the same machine here https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/p/1182461/lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-intel-pen...
and a PDF here https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/PDFs/70LV003EEA_2_3400225_Original.pdf?v=7
yes, similar machine. I believe the one I actually have is discontinued: Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 4GB Xeon E3-1225 v3 3.2GHz Tower Server. So a Xeon not pentium and came with 4GB ram. Chassis looks exactly like mine from the outside, wouldn't surprise me if it is the same tower.
Ebuyer has the "Official" disks, but they cost £Megabucks, so I am disinclined to use them. https://www.ebuyer.com/792385-lenovo-2tb-sata-6gb-s-3-5-hard-drive-4xb0g8875...
Did you use Lenovo or IBM disks, or generic ones?
I went for WD Red Nas 4tb drives. Seem pretty durable. Had a 3 or 4 yr warranty on them too. When one of them failed 3 yrs into its use, I simply asked for an advanced RMA which meant they shipped a new drive (free including postage from EU) ready for replacement before I sent the faulty one to a UK service centre (so I only paid Uk postage for this drive). Registration interface for WD drives is pretty good, and customer services were really good too.
Comments make mention of a drive holder/drive caddy that is not supplied with the machine. Does yours require these?
Physically there's space for 5 drives in mine, but some of them are adapted a bit, so the DVD drive space is one of them, you screw the drive into the back of that slot instead of a DVD drive. They're not 5 equal slots, more like a desktop machine adapting the spaces to accommodate the drives wherever they fit. But of course they did supply the screws and plastic rails, and some are easier than other to slot in. Enough SATA ports for all the drives in the motherboard itself.
Regarding the RAID10, I agree with everyone about backups. OS backups handled by duplicity nightly and data via rsync to offline drives manually. This setup was meant for read/write speed over gigabit ethernet and uptime. Wouldn't go back to anything else, but then again if it was for just media playback and a few file/mail/apache/etc servers it could definitely be an overkill. If you're used to a desktop machine and want durability, flexibility and expandability.. why not??
On 21/12/17 10:06, John Cohen wrote:
yes, similar machine. I believe the one I actually have is discontinued: Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 4GB Xeon E3-1225 v3 3.2GHz Tower Server. So a Xeon not pentium and came with 4GB ram. Chassis looks exactly like mine from the outside, wouldn't surprise me if it is the same tower.
[etc.]
Thanks
Steve
** steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk [2017-12-19 16:05]:
For many years I've been running a 2nd-hand "desktop" machine as a home server, which runs print, file & email services and a few others. It's an least 10 Y/O Pentium (5?) with 3GB RAM and is usually not taxed by these services.
I have asked before, but I've never actually got round to doing anything about it, but I've got executive approval from the S/O BUT....
I'm in two minds. Do I go for
A) a traditional box, plenty of room, RAIDed disk but comparatively high power consumption
e.g.
https://www.entroware.com/store/desktops/nyx
or
https://secure.zeta.systems/store/desktops/D540/
which seem to have PSUs rated about 650W
or
B) a small NUC style box, low power consumption thingy like
https://www.entroware.com/store/desktops/aura
or
Something like the mini-itx jobbies available here
https://www.logicsupply.com/uk-en/products/commercial-computers/mc500-series...
These seem to consume about 65W.
I will be running some flavour of Ubuntu on it. I'd probably prefer it was 64Bit. I want it to be a "standard architecture" processor so that there will be a full-range of apps available to install from the ubuntu repositories.
I would like to have a low-power-consumption as it's an always on device, and it doesn't seem to need much processing power. I'd also like to have raid (mirroring), but most low power-consumption machines don't seem to have space for raid.
Does anyone have any comments or recommendations, especially of any companies they have dealt with, or products they have purchased that work well?
** end quote [steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk]
I've run servers at home since probably '99 at a guess. I've always used retired desktops because they have enough power for a server and it is easy to replace parts without paying a fortune. For quite some time I had a pair of matching Celeron 366MHz boards. These were replaced a few years ago (actually, probably around 10 years thinking about it!) with a pair of Atom 330 based boards.
This came about because I was given a 48U rack with five dual Athlon MP based servers. When I looked at the power use of these I found they used 180W with just a single HD, so it seemed to be cheaper to sell these boards on eBay and invest in the Atom boards which only used around 45W. I still have those, and the boards may get re-used for something, but I currently have a couple of old desktop boards again (one isn't in commission yet), along with a pair of HP Microservers which once in a while turn up on eBuyer on offer at pretty good prices (although mine are old Turion based ones that were given to me. I also have a Raspberry Pi running Nextcloud.
Fiver servers may seem overkill, but I do work from home and experiment quite a bit with them. The Raspberry Pi probably shouldn't count as that is a Nextcloud Box that I was playing with (with a WD PiDrive - 1TB 2.5"HD with built in USB connectivity and custom Pi cables) that ended up being used rather than just played with - I'll be moving it onto on of the other servers soon. Performance has been adequate, but it hasn't been under serious load. Managing the HD and network over the USB bus probably isn't ideal.
The HP Microservers may be worth a look. They are nicely put together with the HDs fitted into removable caddies and can be bought, iirc, without an OS. Working on them involves disconnecting wires to slide parts out, which is neat but does involve fairly custom parts (although what compact computer doesn't). I've added a couple of extra NICs so one will likely be configured as a firewall eventually - they use half height cards, but I had access to some very cheap Intel based ones from Novatech.
RAID wise, I always use the Linux software RAID to mirror my drives. If you are short on physical space have you thought about using 2.5" drives and fitting two onto a single bracket in a 3.5" bay? That either involves replacing the existing drive (not ideal with a warranty), buying setup with no HD (less easy) or building your own (usually my preferred option, but the new builds tend to be desktops). If you are doing this on a pre built / part built setup check the motherboard has enough SATA ports though.
Hmm, that was longer than planned - o/ if you made it to the end :-)
On 20 December 2017 at 14:52, Paul Tansom paul@aptanet.com wrote:
RAID wise, I always use the Linux software RAID to mirror my drives.
Agreed.
There is a very big advantage when your hardware fails (it will!!) that you have a RAID technology that transfers between hardware, and that you can take your drive out of the failed hardware, stick it into a USB caddy and access the data from any Linux PC.
For that reason, I only use RAID1 whenever possible; recovering your data from one drive of a redundant pair is much easier than trying to reconfigure a (eg) RAID5 array to get data off.
Mark
On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 04:38:04PM +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 20 December 2017 at 14:52, Paul Tansom paul@aptanet.com wrote:
RAID wise, I always use the Linux software RAID to mirror my drives.
Agreed.
There is a very big advantage when your hardware fails (it will!!) that you have a RAID technology that transfers between hardware, and that you can take your drive out of the failed hardware, stick it into a USB caddy and access the data from any Linux PC.
For that reason, I only use RAID1 whenever possible; recovering your data from one drive of a redundant pair is much easier than trying to reconfigure a (eg) RAID5 array to get data off.
I've never really seen any need for RAID on a home system. I make sure everything is safely backed up and go with the OS on an SSD and /home on a big rotating one.
The only drive I've had die within the last few years was the short-term backup one which lives in my desktop server. It wasn't *totally* dead so I simply copied what was OK onto a new drive and carried on. Even if it had been totally dead all I would have lost would have been incremental backups for the past few hours.
On 20 December 2017 at 17:07, Chris Green cl@isbd.net wrote:
I've never really seen any need for RAID on a home system. I make sure everything is safely backed up and go with the OS on an SSD and /home on a big rotating one.
Preaching to the choir I am sure, but anyway:
If you have adequate backups and uptime isn't important then yes, RAID is unnecessary. As long as you remember that any data stored only in one place isn't a backup, it's an archive (unless it's your live working copy).
Eg: You backup incrementally daily to a second disk. It includes yesterday's copy of a project you're working on, the day before's, etc. Each of those historic files, unless they're unchanged subsequently, only now exist in that one place, so if that disk fails and you then need to roll back you can't.
It may be sufficiently unlikely to not worry about it, but as long as that's a judgement made that's fine. Personally I'd have my backups on RAID even if my main drives aren't (unless they're duplicated elsewhere, eg to the cloud).
Too many people "back things up" onto an external drive so that they can delete them from their laptop to free up space, without understanding that they're no longer backups once you delete the original copy.
The only drive I've had die within the last few years was the short-term backup one which lives in my desktop server. It wasn't *totally* dead so I simply copied what was OK onto a new drive and carried on. Even if it had been totally dead all I would have lost would have been incremental backups for the past few hours.
To date I've only once lost a hard disk that I couldn't recover data I needed from. (I thought we had a backup but it turned out that wasn't the case.) On that occassion I used a data recovery service and they got everything back (the disk wouldn't even spin up for me; prior to that I'd usually been successful with testdisk/photorec/scalpel/etc). It cost me £500-ish.
But one day I'm going to have a catastrophic failure and be glad I do generally have backups. Or rather upset when it turns out they're not working the way I expect. (Another truism: A backup that's not tested isn't a backup.)
On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 05:26:57PM +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 20 December 2017 at 17:07, Chris Green cl@isbd.net wrote:
I've never really seen any need for RAID on a home system. I make sure everything is safely backed up and go with the OS on an SSD and /home on a big rotating one.
Preaching to the choir I am sure, but anyway:
If you have adequate backups and uptime isn't important then yes, RAID is unnecessary. As long as you remember that any data stored only in one place isn't a backup, it's an archive (unless it's your live working copy).
Eg: You backup incrementally daily to a second disk. It includes yesterday's copy of a project you're working on, the day before's, etc. Each of those historic files, unless they're unchanged subsequently, only now exist in that one place, so if that disk fails and you then need to roll back you can't.
It may be sufficiently unlikely to not worry about it, but as long as that's a judgement made that's fine. Personally I'd have my backups on RAID even if my main drives aren't (unless they're duplicated elsewhere, eg to the cloud).
Too many people "back things up" onto an external drive so that they can delete them from their laptop to free up space, without understanding that they're no longer backups once you delete the original copy.
All correct. :-)
My short-term incremental backup is to a separate disk drive on the same machine, covers hourly + a few days daily.
My long-term incremental backup is daily and back for a year or more to another machine in a different building.
Yes, if one of these dies then I don't have the backup but I only need the backup if something goes wrong and with two 'layers' I'm happy that I can recover mostof what I need in case of catastrophe.
The only drive I've had die within the last few years was the short-term backup one which lives in my desktop server. It wasn't *totally* dead so I simply copied what was OK onto a new drive and carried on. Even if it had been totally dead all I would have lost would have been incremental backups for the past few hours.
To date I've only once lost a hard disk that I couldn't recover data I needed from. (I thought we had a backup but it turned out that wasn't the case.) On that occassion I used a data recovery service and they got everything back (the disk wouldn't even spin up for me; prior to that I'd usually been successful with testdisk/photorec/scalpel/etc). It cost me £500-ish.
But one day I'm going to have a catastrophic failure and be glad I do generally have backups. Or rather upset when it turns out they're not working the way I expect. (Another truism: A backup that's not tested isn't a backup.)
Yes, my backups get tested fairly regularly either when I delete a file (or change it) and want to get back to a few hours ago or when someone else in the family says "can you get file xyz.abc from last year".
On 20/12/17 17:26, Mark Rogers wrote: {SNIP GOOD COMMENTS}
Good point that I hadn't considered about a backup only existing in one place & raid-ing a backup drive. I have 3 separate backup systems of various quality, unfortunately 2 share one unraided backup drive! The third is "sneakernet" USBdrive backup.
Steve
** steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk [2017-12-20 21:31]:
On 20/12/17 17:26, Mark Rogers wrote: {SNIP GOOD COMMENTS}
Good point that I hadn't considered about a backup only existing in one place & raid-ing a backup drive. I have 3 separate backup systems of various quality, unfortunately 2 share one unraided backup drive! The third is "sneakernet" USBdrive backup.
** end quote [steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk]
To emphasise the fact that RAID is not a backup I tend to use two situations I've been involved with. One is a Linux server that had software RAID on and had both drives fail together.
The other goes back further, to my NT sysadmin days. We had a Compaq server in San Jose that had a drive fail in the hardware RAID setup. There was another drive giving warnings so we called the Compaq engineer in to sort things out. We had some non-technical staff on site, but were monitoring things from here. It started well as he removed the failed drive and inserted the new one. We told him we would let him know when the RAID had finished recovering so he could swap the second drive (this was RAID 5 iirc). After a while our monitor threw up multiple warnings and we got in touch to find out what was happening. It turned out the engineer had noted that the lights had stopped flashing so had decided to swap the second drive. Unfortunately the RAID hadn't finished recovering so the whole server, OS, data, the lot was corrupted. We sent the engineer away, got one of our IT staff on site and rebuilt the server from the backups - and never let a Compaq engineer near our kit again!
Re Backups:
I have modest requirements (and budget) at home but running old cheap kit HDD fail is always a possibility. After try all sorts of solutions over the years, I've currently got an old PC in my shed running as a Nextcloud server. Every thing of importance on my desktop machine lives in /phil/Nextcloud so is automatically mirrored. Photos on my phone are automatically uploaded too. I know it's possible that the desktop crashes and the restore from Nextcloud fails but I think for home use one backup is enough.
-- Phil Thane
www.pthane.co.uk phil@pthane.co.uk 01767 449759 07582 750607 Twitter @pthane On Thursday, 21 December 2017 00:19:08 GMT Paul Tansom wrote:
** steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk [2017-12-20 21:31]:
On 20/12/17 17:26, Mark Rogers wrote: {SNIP GOOD COMMENTS}
Good point that I hadn't considered about a backup only existing in one place & raid-ing a backup drive. I have 3 separate backup systems of various quality, unfortunately 2 share one unraided backup drive! The third is "sneakernet" USBdrive backup.
** end quote [steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk]
To emphasise the fact that RAID is not a backup I tend to use two situations I've been involved with. One is a Linux server that had software RAID on and had both drives fail together.
The other goes back further, to my NT sysadmin days. We had a Compaq server in San Jose that had a drive fail in the hardware RAID setup. There was another drive giving warnings so we called the Compaq engineer in to sort things out. We had some non-technical staff on site, but were monitoring things from here. It started well as he removed the failed drive and inserted the new one. We told him we would let him know when the RAID had finished recovering so he could swap the second drive (this was RAID 5 iirc). After a while our monitor threw up multiple warnings and we got in touch to find out what was happening. It turned out the engineer had noted that the lights had stopped flashing so had decided to swap the second drive. Unfortunately the RAID hadn't finished recovering so the whole server, OS, data, the lot was corrupted. We sent the engineer away, got one of our IT staff on site and rebuilt the server from the backups - and never let a Compaq engineer near our kit again!
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 10:23:20AM +0000, Phil Thane wrote:
Re Backups:
I have modest requirements (and budget) at home but running old cheap kit HDD fail is always a possibility. After try all sorts of solutions over the years, I've currently got an old PC in my shed running as a Nextcloud server. Every thing of importance on my desktop machine lives in /phil/Nextcloud so is automatically mirrored. Photos on my phone are automatically uploaded too. I know it's possible that the desktop crashes and the restore from Nextcloud fails but I think for home use one backup is enough.
What do you do if you delete a file by mistake? If the backup is mirroring your deskto system the file will be deleted there too.
I find that my main use for backups is to restore something I've deleted by mistake or to get back to an earlier version of something.
On 21 December 2017 at 18:36, Chris Green cl@isbd.net wrote:
What do you do if you delete a file by mistake? If the backup is mirroring your deskto system the file will be deleted there too.
Or, indeed, you get a virus that encrypts all your files, and all your backups get overwritten automatically by the encrypted files.
A sync backup is great for guarding against a disk or other hardware failure but doesn't go far enough unless your cloud server is versioning.
Good point Mark. I guess it depends how you likely perceive the threat, and how big a problem it would be.
-- Phil Thane
www.pthane.co.uk phil@pthane.co.uk 01767 449759 07582 750607 Twitter @pthane On Thursday, 21 December 2017 19:36:35 GMT Mark Rogers wrote:
On 21 December 2017 at 18:36, Chris Green cl@isbd.net wrote:
What do you do if you delete a file by mistake? If the backup is mirroring your deskto system the file will be deleted there too.
Or, indeed, you get a virus that encrypts all your files, and all your backups get overwritten automatically by the encrypted files.
A sync backup is great for guarding against a disk or other hardware failure but doesn't go far enough unless your cloud server is versioning.
I suppose it depends what sort of work you do and how you do it, but I don't often delete things, when I do it's usually a batch of really ancient work. I've still got copies of stuff I wrote 9 years ago! Not much danger of accidentally deleting something important.
I don't have many occasions when I need an earlier version either. With some of my writing if I get bogged down and decide to do a serious re-write/edit I usually do a 'save as' and start a new version
-- Phil Thane
www.pthane.co.uk phil@pthane.co.uk 01767 449759 07582 750607 Twitter @pthane On Thursday, 21 December 2017 18:36:38 GMT Chris Green wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 10:23:20AM +0000, Phil Thane wrote:
Re Backups:
I have modest requirements (and budget) at home but running old cheap kit HDD fail is always a possibility. After try all sorts of solutions over the years, I've currently got an old PC in my shed running as a Nextcloud server. Every thing of importance on my desktop machine lives in /phil/Nextcloud so is automatically mirrored. Photos on my phone are automatically uploaded too. I know it's possible that the desktop crashes and the restore from Nextcloud fails but I think for home use one backup is enough.
What do you do if you delete a file by mistake? If the backup is mirroring your deskto system the file will be deleted there too.
I find that my main use for backups is to restore something I've deleted by mistake or to get back to an earlier version of something.
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 07:53:42PM +0000, Phil Thane wrote:
I suppose it depends what sort of work you do and how you do it, but I don't often delete things, when I do it's usually a batch of really ancient work. I've still got copies of stuff I wrote 9 years ago! Not much danger of accidentally deleting something important.
I don't have many occasions when I need an earlier version either. With some of my writing if I get bogged down and decide to do a serious re-write/edit I usually do a 'save as' and start a new version
That's probably what I *try* and do most of the time, but I'm fallible! :-)
On 21 December 2017 at 00:19, Paul Tansom paul@aptanet.com wrote:
To emphasise the fact that RAID is not a backup I tend to use two situations I've been involved with. One is a Linux server that had software RAID on and had both drives fail together.
In the general case, having two independent pieces of hardware fail at the same time is very bad luck, and could happen whatever backup medium you choose.
But specifically for RAID: I always make sure I have different brands (or at the very least different models) of disk in my RAID arrays, so that a batch issue that causes them to fail at roughly the same age doesn't affect both simultaneously. For customers with preventative maintenance contracts we replace one of the two disks every year so that no disk is ever more than 2 years old.
However, both disks are by definition in the same location and connected to the same hardware. A power surge could take them both out together, as could fire or theft.
The flipside is that the most likely failure (one disk failing) is handled automatically and painlessly with little or no downtime, and the effort to rebuild is minimal. Of-course if you don't monitor the health of your array then the degraded array is no longer providing any redundancy but otherwise behaves as normal...
The other goes back further, to my NT sysadmin days. [...] Unfortunately the RAID hadn't finished recovering so the whole server, OS, data, the lot was corrupted. We sent the engineer away, got one of our IT staff on site and rebuilt the server from the backups - and never let a Compaq engineer near our kit again!
An external engineer will never be as careful with your data as you will!
On Wed, 2017-12-20 at 17:07 +0000, Chris Green wrote:
I've never really seen any need for RAID on a home system.
I had two disks fail on my Sun within a few days of one another. I didn't lose a single byte. I didn't have to spend days doing restores.
I see no reason for avoiding it.
On 21/12/17 11:11, Huge wrote:
On Wed, 2017-12-20 at 14:52 +0000, Paul Tansom wrote:
The HP Microservers may be worth a look.
+1
OK, so it seems to be down to
HP Microserver https://www.ebuyer.com/796583-hpe-proliant-gen10-873830-421-entry-opteron-x3...
Cons: (No sound), limited i/o ports Pros: Everything seems to be included
or Lenovo Thinkserver https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/p/1182461/lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-intel-pen...
cons: Doubt about if drive caddies are supplied, & sata cables hard to find Pros: Plenty of space in box
Which way to go folks?
Steve
On 21/12/17 12:04, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 21/12/17 11:11, Huge wrote:
On Wed, 2017-12-20 at 14:52 +0000, Paul Tansom wrote:
The HP Microservers may be worth a look.
+1
OK, so it seems to be down to
HP Microserver https://www.ebuyer.com/796583-hpe-proliant-gen10-873830-421-entry-opteron-x3...
Cons: (No sound), limited i/o ports Pros: Everything seems to be included
OH, and No DVD
or Lenovo Thinkserver https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/p/1182461/lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-intel-pen...
cons: Doubt about if drive caddies are supplied, & sata cables hard to find Pros: Plenty of space in box
Which way to go folks?
Steve
On 21/12/17 12:08, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 21/12/17 12:04, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 21/12/17 11:11, Huge wrote:
On Wed, 2017-12-20 at 14:52 +0000, Paul Tansom wrote:
The HP Microservers may be worth a look.
+1
OK, so it seems to be down to
HP Microserver https://www.ebuyer.com/796583-hpe-proliant-gen10-873830-421-entry-opteron-x3...
Cons: (No sound), limited i/o ports Pros: Everything seems to be included
OH, and No DVD
or Lenovo Thinkserver https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/p/1182461/lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-intel-pen...
cons: Doubt about if drive caddies are supplied, & sata cables hard to find Pros: Plenty of space in box
Which way to go folks?
Steve
__
OK, decided, Lenovo for cost, & space in case, & DVD...
Steve
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