Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : Want to buy ATOM Server. Need some help

[troboy]

Hi everybody,
I am looking for cheap dedicated server i.e. ATOM server with 250GB X 2 HDD with RAID, 1GB RAM.

I am going to provide File backup service.

• How can I do Hard Disk cloning ?
• How RAID works ? Why it is used ?
• Can I use RAID for cloning HDD or for backup of HDD-1 on HDD-2

I am pretty confused about it
http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk/glossary/raid-1.htm

Where can I get ATOM servers ? Following are in my list
SingleHop - But they do not provide RAID for ATOM
iWeb - Their Managed services are expensive (from my point of view)
Gigenet - They also do not provide 2nd drive. So no question of RAID

Need help, thanks

[FastServ]

You can do software RAID on an Atom if the host will support it for you. We ran some tests and the performance is actually about 15% better on unixbench with software RAID1. Highly recommended.

[Kusai]

what is the budget we are looking at ??

[ByteMaster]

Troboy,

You can add hardware RAID to an ATOM, but by the time you do, the cost is prohibitive.

If your using this server for backups, then you need reliability. You might consider an E6600 or E7200.

[FastServ]

Originally Posted by ByteMaster

Troboy,

You can add hardware RAID to an ATOM, but by the time you do, the cost is prohibitive.

If your using this server for backups, then you need reliability. You might consider an E6600 or E7200.

How can you say Atom is less 'reliable' than any other CPU?

Also, what makes hardware RAID more reliable? In my opinion, the hardware RAID card is just another point of failure.

Bottom line...you want hardware RAID for performance, not reliability.

[eonhost]

Well I have seen software RAID 1 working fine with 2.500GB hdds on intel atom 330. I can confirm it supports it.

And yes, RAID is used for the described purpose. Copy or say mirror HDD 1 data to HDD 2.

[bernardo11]

Digicube.fr:

Atom 230 1,6 GHz
1Gb DDR2
2x 80Gb (Raid1)
100/100MBps Unmetered

= 20€/mth or 15€ without 2nd disk

[NoSupportLinuxHostin]

RAID is used to protect against hard drive failures. It is completely different from a backup, even though at a glance the ideas seem similar. A backup is a copy of all of the important files. Backups are important, even when you already use RAID. For example, if a hacker gets into your server and deletes some important files, the backup is what you use to restore the server. Or if you accidentally delete some files that you need, the backup is where you can restore those files from.

RAID is important for solving a different problem. Hard drives fail, especially when they are used constantly in server environments. With certain RAID levels, your data is stored on multiple drives. If one drive fails, nothing is lost. You just slam a new, empty drive in place of the failed drive, and everything goes on without a hitch. I've even set up RAID solutions with a spare empty drive already in place. When a drive fails, the RAID enclosure starts rebuilding onto the hot spare automatically and even emails me to let me know all about it. Then I can replace the failed drive with a fresh drive when I get a chance. It works slick. Hard drives can fail without every losing data. It's great.

I mentioned that this only applies to certain RAID levels. RAID0, for example, improves performance but does not improve reliability. In fact, RAID0 can actually reduce reliability. With RAID0, you can lose all of your data if either drive fails. That is why admins never use RAID0 in servers.

My advice is to run RAID1 if you only have two drives, and use RAID10 or RAID1e if you have more than two drives. Avoid RAID5 simply because RAID5 performs poorly when writing data. Web servers write a lot of data into log files each day, and RAID5 performs quite poorly at that task.

[SwarmHost]

Originally Posted by troboy

• How can I do Hard Disk cloning ?
  

• Essentially, Raid 1 is cloning hard drives in real time. You have the primary hard drive doing all the work and the secondary drive copying everything that is written to the primary.
  

  Originally Posted by troboy

  How RAID works ? Why it is used ?

  Raid is for performance or redundancy (or both). It uses multiple disks to reach either goal. Some types are more complicated than others. You are looking for Raid 1, which simply mirrors the drives like stated above. This is only for redundancy. In a perfect world, if the primary drive fails, the secondary takes over immediately.
  
  

  Originally Posted by troboy

  Can I use RAID for cloning HDD or for backup of HDD-1 on HDD-2

It's not used for backup. Backup and redundancy are two separate issues with regards to data integrity.

[NuCode]

Just don't go with Digicube. It's the worst provider i've had the "delight" to deal with.

Very slow deliveries, very slow support, hardware unstable, network even worse (min. 10% packet loss" etc. everything was fine until we spent over 2000€ within a week on new server orders.