Raid0+1 vs Raid5 for network (gigabit) to harddrive backup server?

[markm75]

Anyone have any thoughts on which is going to give me better write speeds.. I know raid0 should be much better and if i combine it with raid1, redundant..

But I'm assuming when I backup my servers to (this backup server) across the gigabit network, my write speeds would max out at say 60 MB/s wouldnt they?

I think right now on Raid5, sataII, i'm getting a write speed of 57 MB/s (bypassing windows cache, using SIsandra to benchmark).. if you dont bypass the windows cache this becomes more like 38 MB/s..

Any thoughts?

Any thoughts on SCSI vs SATAII? (IE: does each drive on scsi cable share bandwidth or have independent bandwith, same question for SATAII drives on a controller, each cable independent or shared?)

 

[Sybje]

Are the back-ups to DAS- or SAN-attached disks?

If SAN, what kind of storage system do you need?

Regards, Bart

 

[markm75]

Its just a storage server with SATAII drives..

 

[Sybje]

Another question is, do you need speed or do you need capacity?

Is your backup window sufficient if you use RAID5? If so, RAID5 is much cheaper...

If you have to back-up more quickly and you can lose some data due to disk failure, I should choose RAID0...

Do you plan to migrate data from the disks to tape for offsite storage?

I back-up over 400 GB daily to my RAID5 SCSI luns. On a 1 GB network, I reach 60 GB an hour... Good enough for me...

 

[markm75]

I was going to do full backups weekly (we currently do it every month.. i would think weekly would be better).

We have from friday night till monday morning, though even when data is in use it still goes well.

What are you using to do your 400gb backups daily?

Here is a snippet from another post I made elsewhere.. note that I had horrific trouble with my initial tests with an existing SATAII (pentium D 2GB ram ) server... It wasnt until I tried Acronis imaging or ShadowProtect that my local disk to disk speeds reached reasonable levels.. Over the network Symantec was aweful.. 9 hours or more for 330GB.. while Acronis was about the same, until i switched to 50GB backup file sizes, something about network share cache polution/windows registry glitch.. i didnt find out where this windows glitch is, just settled for the file size of 50gb and the backup over network went from 9 hours to 4 hours 40 minutes, but this made no difference with Symantec BackupExec sadly.

We will have to use BE to do tape backups, later in the year when we get the LTO3 tape loader library unit via SCSI U320 on the storage server. This server will run 2003 Storage Server R2 once up and running. For now we are just going to backup the data on the storage server to two external harddrives and take that offsite each week (originally we had external backups, in sets of 2, cycling each week on all 4 servers, with an internal HD backup in each server, now with the new storage server, all the internals become the storage server itself).

I prefer Raid5.. or maybe raid6, if faster, i'm not sold on RAID0, as going across the network we max out at around 60 MB/sec anyway.. I know some raid0 configs yield twice that performance, but with the network (gigabit) as bottleneck I dont see wasting the cash, nor fitting them in an 8 drive 2U case either:

Here is the snippet and my current plan:

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Anyone have any thoughts on this PCIe card, motherboard combo with this server rack:

Server rack device: Supermicro 2U SC825TQ-560LP (only supports low profile cards)

with this:

Motherboard: Asus DSBV-D

http://www.atacom.com/program/print_...24&USER_ID=www

(PCIe x8)

EDIT: actually I'm not sure if this motherboard will work with the supermicro, I may have to go with this one instead, which they recommended:

http://www.atacom.com/program/print_...04&USER_ID=www

and this for the storage controller:

Low profile 3ware PCIex4: 9650SE-8LPML

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?p=3WA...fc57abfbe62883

I cant seem to find PCIe x8 controller boards to match the max speed of the motherboard recommended for this server rack device.

WIll these 3 give me the best speed for the money (keeping costs down). I'll be backing up data across the network, most likely using Acronis or ShadowProtect with 50gb file splits (as this gave me 4 hour backup times on a similar server for 332GB vs across network backup times of 8hr 20 minutes with BackupExec 11d, where acronis over the network with 50gb splits took 4hr 40 minutes at most!)


As a side note.. the CPU will be woodcrest 2.0 5130 with 2GB of ddr2 667mhz ram.
The harddrives will be SATAII in a 2.2TB array (5 drives of 500gb each)..

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...odlist=froogle

Seagate ES ST3500630NS type drives (does the ES really make a difference for an org with about 40 users, but most not using the backup server, it will just backup 5 other server's data, or can I use regular Seagate 500gb drives to save a few bucks)?

Update:
Ram will be this ram:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820134330,

now decided on 4gb total.

Should I opt for RAID6 over RAID5 (RAID01 is out as we will only have 8 drive capacity, 2 of which will be the mirrored OS).


Thanks

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