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Server Redundancy for a Small Business?
SadPenguin asks: "I am currently working for a small company of about 15 people each with one to two workstation/laptop machines a piece. We are looking for a new server solution, as our last one crashed, and lacking any server redundancy, we nearly lost all of our data since our last backup (it was only a few days, but an important few). What the kind of server (and redundancy) solution would be appropriate for a company of my size? Most advertisements are for large scale enterprise serving solutions, but these are costly and excessive for my situation. I'm sure that there is a simple Redundant Server technology out there that is a bit less costly, but won't result in any downtime in the event of a motherboard component failing (like we faced this time when our mysterious surface soldered VRM failed). So what do you use? What should I use?"
I actually run a computer consulting firm specializing in small businesses. I'll outline some of the more common recommendations - with what I think is the most important first.
From my experience, the best approach is to layer your defenses. I'd REALLY recommend a UPS (I generally assume this is purchased with a server, but it isn't always) at very least. Your local power company is only required to provide you with something CLOSE to 120v. They generally can't keep it consistent enough for power supplies (and electronic componentry in general). Protect your investment, UPSes are generally relatively cheap.
The fact that you've got a backup solution is good, but (as you've seen) not enough. Evaluate it, and see if it's consistent with best practices - i.e., is it a tape (or optical) backup system that is done in rotation and taken offsite by somebody in the company? If not, set that in motion first.
Next, some sort of drive redundancy is in order. At very least, mirror your drives. I generally recommend RAID5 (or one of its variants), but in very small companies RAID5 isn't either required or affordable or both. IMO, the jury's still out on the long-term viability of IDE RAID, but I think it looks promising.
Finally, redundant power supplies and NICs (for those of us that are REALLY paranoid ;) ). I've had a couple of servers' power supplies die on me, but the server kept right on ticking thanks to a redundant unit.
If it's affordable to your company, consider hot-swappable server components, as well. This significantly reduces downtime to your coworkers... and expense to your company.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Oh yeah, FP ;)
We all get along together like tornadoes and trailer parks.
a relatively cheap setup for data/service redundancy for a small business.
* two identical servers, running linux (of course).
* heartbeat
* drbd
* two UPS
Notes, Ins, Outs and What Have You's
service redundancy
heartbeat is used to make 2 servers look as if they were one. if one of the servers dies, heartbeat makes sure the other assumes the ip address and has all the relevant services started.
data redundancy
drbd is a network block device. again, it looks like one device, but when data is written to it, its actually being written to 2 seperate locations. if one box goes down, heartbeat makes sure drbd makes the other box primary.
hardware
these two call for a dedicated network and serial connection. so 2 nics and a serial port per box.
definitely raid array of some sort.
see drbd.org for more details.
this is not a 100% proof setup, but its cheap and covers most of the bases.
of course, it requires a linux dude to get it all to work.