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Nervous beginner

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happyhacker posted on Mon, Apr 19 2010 9:44 AM

I volunteer for a charity (UK) and they are buying a new server and SBS2008. My initial question regards the hardware platform. It comes with 160Gbyte drive and we have bought 2 x 1TByte drives to be arranged in a RAID 1 way.

1. Do we keep the 160 drive and use that to install SBS or remove it and install on the RAID setup?

2. Is it normal to default the internal DN to <ourname>.local. I am not sure how this is used by users on the network and want it to be sensible.

Thanks.

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David Overton replied on Sat, Apr 24 2010 7:22 PM

Hi,

normally I would consider installing the OS on some form of protected drive otherwise when (not really if) this fails, you are in a world of pain.  Having said that, depending on the load, you might need more more drives in your raid array to manage throughput.

Thanks

David

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happyhacker replied on Sat, Apr 24 2010 8:12 PM

Hm, assuming I have backed up the OS surely I would just put in a new drive, reinstall the OS and import to latest config. from the backedup file?

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David Overton replied on Sat, Apr 24 2010 8:23 PM

If you have daily backups then yes you can recover, however since disks fail quite frequently, you will have downtime due to recovery that could be completely avoided for the cost of a disk (or two) in the sevrer.

I hope that makes sense.

 

Thanks

David

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happyhacker replied on Sun, Apr 25 2010 1:28 PM

Yes, that does make sense. I'll see if the boss can afford an extra 2 drives. However am I right in my assessment of RAID 1:

a. If I put the OS on a 160Gb RAID 1 and it fails I will get some sort of report. I remove the failed drive and having a spare handy I plug it in and the system looks after itself on boot up? I do not think I can hot plug a RAID 1.

b. Can the extra drive be any make and size?

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David Overton replied on Sun, Apr 25 2010 7:30 PM

RAID 1 means that the disks are exact duplicates, so if one fails, the other should take it's place (as a very simple discription).  My raid controllers will automatically rebuild if a new disk is inserted, but this is down to the raid controller.

If you have 2 sets of raid 2 disks, then idealling the disks in each set should be the same size, but each raid group (a set of disks) can be any size.  Also note that once the disks are raided, you can still partition them to have different size disk partitions as required. 

If you need more information, find a good SBSC consultant to work with.

 

Thanks

David

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happyhacker Big Smile [:D] replied on Sun, Apr 25 2010 9:12 PM

Thanks for your input to this post.

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