new file server and Raid?

stargate

Well-known member
I am looking for a new file server and raid for prepress dept. About 9 people per shift. What do you suggest? Xserve with what? I really liked XRaid...
 
Well something like an HP Proliant DL380 storage server would work exceptionally well. It's got 8, I think, SAS slots, 2 gigabit NIC's, hot-swap drives, etc for about $7,000 not including Windows. If you put Redhat Enterprise Linux on it you're going to have a screaming machine for cheap.

Nothing wrong with an xServe or the Promise RAID except that the Promise RAID's are about $12,000 by themselves. Not including the $4,000 or so for a decent xServe.
 
They can be problematic depending on your network configuration and IT policies. Long term service and support can be a real issue. How many hands have the SNAP appliances gone through?

Don't get me wrong, NAS devices are a real and viable option if you first think about how you want to use them, how they will integrate and your long term plans.
 
Cheap Solutions

Cheap Solutions

My suggestion is keep everything Mac OSX base for file server to save you time to convert some filenames with special character if most of your files are from Mac workstation.

For the file server purpose, why don't you buy a Drobo and put 4x 1TB hard drive in there. It got Raid protection and no need to config it. It just works right out of the box. They have a Firewire 800 model just come out and selling for $500 + 4 x 1TB hard may cost around $700 = $1200. Find a old Power Mac G5 with 800 firewire connection and hook it up. You have 4TB with Raid protection for your file server instantly which fully compatible to OS X. Happy ending! Go to drobo.com to find out more about it.
 
We use a similar setup to the one suggested by Matt, except we have 3x RAID5 SUSE Linux servers, 2 on our site, linked up to artworkers etc. via gigabit copper and 1 colocated in a major DC. That one gives our clients fast access to us and then syncs to our own site. Reasonably cheap, easy to integrate with the rest of the network and extremely fast, but you also need to budget for someone to set up and maintain them. My only regret is the servers were spec'ed as heavy duty "industrial" type servers and they are LOUD and not suitable for placing in an office, so they had to have their own room :( Possibly smaller PC based servers like the HP would have done the job just as well. On the Mac suggestion, I'm no expert, but I would want to make sure it could keep up with large file access for a 9 person dept. Time is money, and some of those files are awful big!
 
We use Xinet FullPress on OS X client using a G5 with around 10 users. The drives are not RAID, however I do disk-to-disk backup every night to FireWire drives. Moving to a MacPro should fix the small performance issues I see. All our other servers are Fedora Linux running netatalk and samba. The hardware was purchased as parts - we assembled them. In our video department we use a RAID 0 on two 500 GB drives for the shared volume. I get over 90 MB/sec without going to jumbo frames with a MacPro client.

Chasd.
 

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