My Dad axed me an IT question for his retail mall rental business. Does he need a Hardware RAID Server or just ZFS Server ? The HW RAID Server is very expensive. Supposedly ZFS does the same level of reliability but is very cheap since it uses regular server parts. What should we buy ? We are totally Mac with SUN Servers. My dad wants to take advantage of the 100% tax deductions allowed this year.
Looks like you are for the chop
RAID servers are typically for medium size businesses (and larger) who need significant storage space and redundancy. I am assuming at least RAID 5 with my remark. A single storage device backed up to an online service, like carbonite, would accomplish the same thing. You don't have your data until it exists in three locations...old rule of data storage. Disaster recovery is nothing more than standard, regular line of business, electronic insurance these days.
what else did he axe you?
If he axed you, you'd be dead.
Why did he ask (you accidently wroted axed which is a common mistake) you this. Are you an IT guy and if so why would you have to post the question on a message board for running?
I'm a not an IT guy. My Dad had to layoff 1/2 the office staff given the economy and he has no IT anymore. He wants to upgrade his servers by the end of the year to take advantage of the capital equipments tax breaks. The quotes we have are very different in cost.
Got a summary of the gear and price quotes?
Is he trying to avoid paying an IT guy? Well look at the prices and call people with each system to get their thoughts. I just bought an 8k more expensive metabolic cart which was justified this way.
HARDWARE RAID IS OBSOLETE WITH ZFS (SOFTWARE RAID). MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT BUY ANY RAID HARDWARE BECAUSE IT WOULD BE A RIPOFF FOR YOUR POPS. AND KEEP USING MACS. THEY BAD !!!
HARDWARE RAID OBSOLETE wrote:
HARDWARE RAID IS OBSOLETE WITH ZFS (SOFTWARE RAID).
On the other hand, the Google engineers who are authoring the Chrome OS seem to feel that the "Caps Lock" key is obsolete, but apparently you don't share that sentiment.
All kidding aside, if it's a relatively small business I would go with either the ZFS server or a simple RAID solution. You can buy a business-class desktop with a RAID 1 configuration for a fairly reasonable price.
BE WARY OF THE ADVICE OF NON-ENGINEERS. ZFS EXCEEDS RAID 1 AND RAID 5 FOR A FRACTION ON THE PRICE. TAKE THE LOW COST BID IF AND ONLY IF IT SPECIFIES ZFS AND NO HARDWARE RAID.
HARDWARE RAID OBSOLETE wrote:
BE WARY OF THE ADVICE OF NON-ENGINEERS.
Thanks for looking out for us! If I bump into any non-engineers, I will proceed with caution.
Your salesman is correct when he says hardware RAID is obsolete. Alls you need is a ZFS server. No special expensive hardware is needed. You just need a SATA array rack. The junk necessary are cheap commodities now.