Typophile - Server for small office? - Comments

Hi I have this for backing

concrete — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:49:03 -0700

Hi I have this for backing up of old archived jobs that I end up needing daily... sort of use as a server...
http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hddmulti/taurus/pdd_lan
also see this one
http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hddmulti/hydra/hydra_lan

though you have to be careful with naming of files, no crazy characters I use a freeware app Mac2Fat that sorts that.

and this one for backing up to as a portable backup:
http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hdd3/pleiades/pd_scombo

Thanks guys! You’ve given

mauphie — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:06:21 -0700

Thanks guys!
You’ve given me some good options!

Blade servers? I don’t wanna even know.

> Oh, all this makes my

Gus Winterbottom — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:48:36 -0700

> Oh, all this makes my brain hurt.

Good thing I didn’t mention blade servers, then. ;-)

For network-attached storage (NAS), this PC Magazine guide will get you started.

I thought file servers were

James Puckett — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:43:46 -0700

I thought file servers were less likely to fail (versus a regular old harddrive)?

Server-grade high speed hard drives are actually more prone to failure than consumer stuff because they use newer parts that haven’t had the kinks worked out (and because corporate clients buy expensive service contracts). But redundant arrays of drives can be put together to safeguard against a single drive failing. These devices can be as simple as an external drive with two discs in a mirrored configuration, which is probably what you want.

Just don’t count on this as a backup solution—99% of catastrophic data loss is a result of fire/flood/earthquake damage, and for a small office theft is next on the list. No matter how good the server is, keep a backup off site.

Oh, all this makes my brain

mauphie — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:22:33 -0700

Oh, all this makes my brain hurt. There are days when I miss being in a big corporate office, when I didn’t have to deal with any of this!

SAN, RAID, NAS....time for me to do some research on these acronyms....

I’m thinking of a SAN for

aluminum — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:04:04 -0700

I’m thinking of a SAN for home soon.

Especially since I have a few Windows boxes. I just got hit with a nasty virus and looks like I’m going to be reinstalling windows this weekend. Having my files on the C: Drive, in hindsight, is stupid. ;0)

A file server is just a computer with hard drives in it, so it’s going to fail as often as any hard drive would. Remember, hard drives have a 100% failure rate, so the key is redundancy. Ideally, that’d be a RAID set up, with an off-site rotation of another backup (tape or external HD).

@Gus I hadn’t considered a

mauphie — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:24:29 -0700

@Gus
I hadn’t considered a SAN, as that seemed more than we needed. And I had never heard of a NAS.
Thanks for giving me other paths to investigate.

@James
I thought file servers were less likely to fail (versus a regular old harddrive)? Right now we have a couple external harddrives that we back up old files, etc etc and I know that they won’t last forever. I though file servers had a longer life, right?

The nice thing about a files

James Puckett — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:40:00 -0700

The nice thing about a files server is that you can have everyone keep their job files on it—well, you can try to make them do it, anyway—and then have one centralized location for file storage and backup. Hard disks are so cheap that its often less expensive to buy more space than it is to pay an intern to clean up job directories and archive old files. Need more storage? Slap another firewire drive on the chain. Designer calls in sick? Great, just open the job files and work on it without having to dig around on his machines for files.

Just make sure that you test your storage/backup/recover system often. Because this will also be a single point of failure!

If all you need is more

Gus Winterbottom — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:22:37 -0700

If all you need is more storage space, perhaps a NAS or a SAN would be easier to deal with than a server.

Server for small office?

mauphie — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:10:54 -0700

[Technical Post (not type related)]

Our office is small usually 3, sometimes 4 people. And I’m the designated IT person, even though I know zilch about it. Anyway, the office continues to plug along, connected locally via routers and ethernet cables and we had to recently buy another external harddrive.

My questions to the Typophiles are:

Do any of you have a server for your small office?
What made you decide to get one?
Any suggestions/warnings about taking this road?

I’m not sure if our office even needs a server. But, the network I’ve managed to just patch together, combined with the ever-increasing need for storing/backing up files, makes me think that something needs to be done.

I’d love to hear your experiences!

Thanks