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  1. #1
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    Purchasing a Dedicated Backup server

    Hello WHT members,
    I'm planning on purchasing two servers. One which is going to be used to host people's websites and the other which is going to be used as backup. I'm planning on using R1Soft to generate backups from the webhosting server to the backup server. How much ram would you suggest for the backup server? And what type of CPU or the backup server at least? The backup server itself will be RAID 10 with 12 x 3.5" SATA Hard Drives. I just don't want to over kill my backup server. I'm planning on taking backups every day.

    Also regarding SATA drives. I heard that WD Re are the most reliable out there, so I'm planning on purchasing them. Any other suggestions?

    Thanks.
    Last edited by MPOV-Matas; 09-24-2014 at 06:41 AM.

  2. #2
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    Well, quad core E3, 16GB RAM will be ok with 12 hard drives. Which RAID level you are going use with backup server?
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  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by BalticServers Andrius View Post
    Well, quad core E3, 16GB RAM will be ok with 12 hard drives. Which RAID level you are going use with backup server?
    I was thinking of using RAID 10 on both of my server. I'm well aware of the capacity that's required, but it keeps the data safe. Better safe than sorry. Do you have any other suggestions for RAID?

    I was initially looking at 16 GB with Intel Xeon Quad Core 3.00GHz (E5450). What's your opinion?

    Many thanks!

  4. #4
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    The backup server does not need to be RAID-10. Since it will be taking daily backups, speed is not a factor but integrity being the goal. You can do a software RAID-6 with a hot spare leaving you with aprox. 9 disks worth of space. Also with the software RAID, you wont have to worry about data loss due to an exact RAID card replacement not being available.
    Michael Vinocur
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  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by matas View Post
    I was thinking of using RAID 10 on both of my server. I'm well aware of the capacity that's required, but it keeps the data safe. Better safe than sorry. Do you have any other suggestions for RAID?

    I was initially looking at 16 GB with Intel Xeon Quad Core 3.00GHz (E5450). What's your opinion?

    Many thanks!
    I also recommend to configure it with RAID6. RAID10 is worthless with backup servers ( wasting of hard drives ).

    For example if you create RAID6 with 12 x 2TB, you will get 20TB disk space.

    RAID10 - 12xHDD = 12TB disk space.

    Xeon Quad Core 3.00GHz (E5450) with 16GB RAM is good choose.
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  6. #6
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    How much storage do you actually require?
    Respectfully,
    Mr. Terrence

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by helix247 View Post
    The backup server does not need to be RAID-10. Since it will be taking daily backups, speed is not a factor but integrity being the goal. You can do a software RAID-6 with a hot spare leaving you with aprox. 9 disks worth of space. Also with the software RAID, you wont have to worry about data loss due to an exact RAID card replacement not being available.
    Thanks for your suggestion.

    Quote Originally Posted by BalticServers Andrius View Post
    I also recommend to configure it with RAID6. RAID10 is worthless with backup servers ( wasting of hard drives ).

    For example if you create RAID6 with 12 x 2TB, you will get 20TB disk space.

    RAID10 - 12xHDD = 12TB disk space.

    Xeon Quad Core 3.00GHz (E5450) with 16GB RAM is good choose.
    Thanks for your help!

    Quote Originally Posted by Terrence-J View Post
    How much storage do you actually require?
    Quote Originally Posted by Terrence-J View Post
    How much storage do you actually require?
    At first I won't be requiring much. Very little actually. I'm purchasing a server with 12 x 3.5" to allow me to expand whenever I want.

  8. #8
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    Have you considered server mirroring solution? It would be quite expensive choice, but very effective; replicates files and information between servers in real time, ensures high-availability and disaster recovery as well.

  9. #9
    Do you mean backup server as in it will purely store backups, or backup server as in it will take on the job of the main server if it goes down?

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by paullopez View Post
    Have you considered server mirroring solution? It would be quite expensive choice, but very effective; replicates files and information between servers in real time, ensures high-availability and disaster recovery as well.
    No, I haven't. I'll take a look into that.

    Quote Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq View Post
    Do you mean backup server as in it will purely store backups, or backup server as in it will take on the job of the main server if it goes down?
    A backup server which just purely stores data.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by matas View Post
    I was thinking of using RAID 10 on both of my server. I'm well aware of the capacity that's required, but it keeps the data safe. Better safe than sorry. Do you have any other suggestions for RAID?

    I was initially looking at 16 GB with Intel Xeon Quad Core 3.00GHz (E5450). What's your opinion?

    Many thanks!
    The E5450 is a very old CPU now (7 years). It will be sufficient for you as a backup server, but if you have the option I would go for one of the E3 CPUs.
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  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Snoork Hosting View Post
    The E5450 is a very old CPU now (7 years). It will be sufficient for you as a backup server, but if you have the option I would go for one of the E3 CPUs.

    What will an E3 allow him to do that his current cpu choice would not when running purely as a backup server?
    Michael Vinocur
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  13. #13
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    E3 CPU + 16GB RAM is enough. Use software RAID over hardware RAID.
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  14. #14
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    Thank you for your contributions all.

  15. #15
    I think E3-1270 With 32 GB RAM and Raid 6 Will best option for you.
    PS: Try to use hardware RAID with BBU
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  16. #16
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    What spec did you end up going with?
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  17. #17
    Ok so i thing you have a bit of problem in your thinking. I dont know maybe I'm wrong but still i need to ask you some question.

    first of all do yo like to have back up as data back up or you like to have some kind of a failover so in case of something failed on the main server you other server can continue working.

    Second question is what type of OS do you use?

    Third question is do you really need Dedicated servers? Quad core processors and 16 gig of ram dont need to be dedicated hardware all the time. Personally in failover situation it better not to be. Whey ? Because you dont need to worry about clusters or/and replication.

    why i'm asking you? It is one thing to have all the data backed up. That good and you should do that but that dont need to be done on a whole server. In fact you can do it on lot of chipper and no any processor power or low processor power needed hardware. A simple FTP storage with 5-6 TB can even be ok for you.
    What is the problem here? Problem is a full backup of some 500GB or 1 TB or more is extremely expensive process from performance and time perspective. You need some time to create the backup which will ask big spike in performance in this time. Also you will have a network blow coping the all the data. Ok i know there is mart system that have fool backup just the first time and afterwords they just pool he last changes but this is still expansive process so usually is done once a day or twice a day max. This means you have opportunity for max of 24/12 ours of lost data in case of total disaster on the first server.

    This is not a perfect solution but you may survive this depending of the type of website you host. in any case i will not like to suffer something like this. What will be even scarier than the 24 our potencial data lost is the down time you will have restoring from a backup that have size of a 1 TB + (for 20 gigs this is easy and you should not worry so mach)

    This my block you for ours or days.

    So what you should do if you invest in two servers and dont be afraid from data lost or down time.

    First go with some kind of server failover. In windows you have server casters on metal level or data replication if you do virtulization. On Linux i dont know. I know that using hyper-v you can replicate linux server no problem.

    Second spend more money on your main server. Have a server which have some kind of a system for hardware monitoring and management like the DELL servers have iDrac. This programs can save your live because it will give you worming before things get critical. For example i have servers dell poweredge R720. I have a Window Storage JBOD configuration with mirroring but that another story what disk configuration you need to use. 3 weeks ago on of my disk start having bad blocks and my server send me a warning email sang that i should change the disk or expect a disk failure. Normally i change the disk.

    And finally it will be chipper for you and easier to find a VPS which offer replication so you will not need to worry abut this things.

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Profuse-Jimmy View Post
    What spec did you end up going with?
    I haven't decided on anything yet, still in the process.

    Quote Originally Posted by avarnaliev View Post
    Ok so i thing you have a bit of problem in your thinking. I dont know maybe I'm wrong but still i need to ask you some question.

    first of all do yo like to have back up as data back up or you like to have some kind of a failover so in case of something failed on the main server you other server can continue working.

    Second question is what type of OS do you use?

    Third question is do you really need Dedicated servers? Quad core processors and 16 gig of ram dont need to be dedicated hardware all the time. Personally in failover situation it better not to be. Whey ? Because you dont need to worry about clusters or/and replication.

    why i'm asking you? It is one thing to have all the data backed up. That good and you should do that but that dont need to be done on a whole server. In fact you can do it on lot of chipper and no any processor power or low processor power needed hardware. A simple FTP storage with 5-6 TB can even be ok for you.
    What is the problem here? Problem is a full backup of some 500GB or 1 TB or more is extremely expensive process from performance and time perspective. You need some time to create the backup which will ask big spike in performance in this time. Also you will have a network blow coping the all the data. Ok i know there is mart system that have fool backup just the first time and afterwords they just pool he last changes but this is still expansive process so usually is done once a day or twice a day max. This means you have opportunity for max of 24/12 ours of lost data in case of total disaster on the first server.

    This is not a perfect solution but you may survive this depending of the type of website you host. in any case i will not like to suffer something like this. What will be even scarier than the 24 our potencial data lost is the down time you will have restoring from a backup that have size of a 1 TB + (for 20 gigs this is easy and you should not worry so mach)

    This my block you for ours or days.

    So what you should do if you invest in two servers and dont be afraid from data lost or down time.

    First go with some kind of server failover. In windows you have server casters on metal level or data replication if you do virtulization. On Linux i dont know. I know that using hyper-v you can replicate linux server no problem.

    Second spend more money on your main server. Have a server which have some kind of a system for hardware monitoring and management like the DELL servers have iDrac. This programs can save your live because it will give you worming before things get critical. For example i have servers dell poweredge R720. I have a Window Storage JBOD configuration with mirroring but that another story what disk configuration you need to use. 3 weeks ago on of my disk start having bad blocks and my server send me a warning email sang that i should change the disk or expect a disk failure. Normally i change the disk.

    And finally it will be chipper for you and easier to find a VPS which offer replication so you will not need to worry abut this things.
    You've completely misunderstood what this whole thread is about. It's not about a single website, it's for web hosting. Now the server that I will provide the web hosting on will be much more powerful than a backup server, as the requirements differ and I'm well aware of that. There will be very little lag, as I'll be using a backup service called R1Soft to transfer data from my main web hosting server onto the backup server. The service checks which files have been modified and transfers them onto the backup server. It doesn't generate the whole server backup, only chunks which have been changed. Meaning, there should be very little lag, if any.

    You're also worried about having to restore the data in 24 hours. That wouldn't be the case as the servers will be colocated in the same data facility. The web hosting server will also be equipped with RAID 10.

    VPS wouldn't be ideal. I'm looking for something that is dedicated. I don't want to belong to a shared environment, as I want to manage the server myself. Meaning if any of my hardware failed, I can replace it. I'm not here to lease a dedicated server, I'm here to find out what kind of server I should purchase.

    Matas.
    Last edited by MPOV-Matas; 09-29-2014 at 04:20 AM.

  19. #19
    Ok so why dont you go with a cluster or replication then?
    You still dont answer me what os do you use for the main bigger server.

    And finally dont do backup do a failover.

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by avarnaliev View Post
    Ok so why dont you go with a cluster or replication then?
    You still dont answer me what os do you use for the main bigger server.

    And finally dont do backup do a failover.
    I'll be using CloudLinux for the main server.

    The data backup server will be more ideal for me personally. It will give me space to expand and purchase further servers. I will however have another backup server in place just in case of critical hardware failure.

  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by matas View Post

    Also regarding SATA drives. I heard that WD Re are the most reliable out there, so I'm planning on purchasing them. Any other suggestions?

    Thanks.
    +1 for Western Digital
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