Server upgrade

ghost

ghost

Active Member
Hello all, soon I will be taking over as network admin from my colleague who is leaving our company soon. I will be looking after 6 xeon dual core rack mount server computers and one extra. I know quite abit about them but this will be my first time as a admin :o and need to insure everything runs smoothly. I have about one month left to work with our current network admin and all it going well.

There is one thing he did mention though and I will need some sorta guidance in doing so.

"The servers will probably need upgrading soon"

The servers at the minute are running windows server 2003, specs are 2GB DDR2 RAM (12GB max), 2x Xeon CPU`s (dual core) @ 3GHz (x86), 2x Hot swap SCSI HDD bays with 36GB HP 15K HP HDDs in RAID 1.

I think the models are "HP ProLiant DL360" but i`ll have to check on that.

My question is they are getting quite full and not running as well as they could be. On one or two of them they don`t have much HDD space left :/
I`m thinking of getting more RAM for them but what should I do about the HDD`s. Was looking at a SAS rack server but dunno weather to just get one of them or upgrade the SCSI HDD to a bigger capacity.

Am pretty new to this so if you see summin that isn't quite right please correct me :) and I would like to think what you guys n gals think of the matter.

Cheers ppl
 
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well if i were you i'd get a raid 1 configuration setup with bigger drives and a hot swap cage. That way if a hard drive died you could pull it and put in a new one that would automatically mirror it over so you wouldn't have any data loss. That would be how i would go about it, but then again i'm not sure how you'd go about installing something like that unless the servers can actually be taken offline for a period of time while you do the upgrade. As for ram thats about the cheapest performance boost you can buy so as long as the board supports more and you have the money to buy it, go for it. Hope that helps a little bit.
 
We run HP Proliant servers at my work as well, the DL380 models and up. A few things here to consider, and you need to work this out with management or anyone who is in charge of spending money. One of the most expensive and hardest tasks a network admin has is data management. First off any kind of data solution is expensive, and I really don't think you should be running RAID 1, RAID 5 is way more viable and stable for that type of environment. Now, that you are running HP Proliant servers, you can simply purchase one of their attached storage works rack mounted servers. These come in a variety of configurations but the best bet for the buck would be SAS (serial attached SCSI). This will allow you to simply add a rack mount set of storage to your existing servers. I doubt the dual core xeons need upgrading since those are fairly new the market.

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/storage/index.html

We have many HP proliant servers at my work (probably over 50 of them) plus several xserves from Apple.

Here is what I would recommend, but realize there is always like a billion different ways to accomplish the same goals in computers. I would take all user data off the server completely and migrate it to a RAID 5 storage works solution with SAS. Once that is completed, I would then set up some sort of tape system for redundant back ups. The tape solution will cost you probably around $4k. Which is nothing because your data is probably worth more than that. Then I would keep the server running the OS as RAID 1 (in case a drive fails) and strictly run the OS and any server side applications off of it. Then once you get it up and running exactly how you want it, make an image of it via ghost, acronis, zen, whatever solution you end up using or have for imaging computers.

Attach your server to your RAID 5 attached storage rack and then manage data that way.

Why this is a good idea?

1) Centralize all data into a RAID 5 solution, which is reliable and allows you to manage the data from one central location. RAID 5 is also scalable so you can always add to it. Run at least 4 drives so you have one spare, so if a drive fails your RAID will not go down, and you can simply hot swap a replacement drive and let it rebuild itself.

2) Tape back ups are a must. This allows you to migrate older data to tape freeing up more space and if previous data gets over written from the user (which trust me it happens) you can restore a previous copy of the file via tape back up. Plus if you have complete catastrophic hardware failure, you have your data on tape.

3) Once it is up and running it will make you look like you did a great job, which is the most important thing about work, the ability to perform at your job.

For windows 2k3 (which we run but don't mainly use) I think you can use SMS to set up and schedule back ups across servers. I personally like to use rysnc via Linux/Unix because of how easy it is to set up a cron job to automate mass back ups. Like I said there are many ways to accomplish this, google is your best friend.
 
^ Awesome thats exactly what i`m looking for.

2) Tape back ups are a must. This allows you to migrate older data to tape freeing up more space and if previous data gets over written from the user (which trust me it happens) you can restore a previous copy of the file via tape back up. Plus if you have complete catastrophic hardware failure, you have your data on tape.
Click to expand...

Yeah we have a tape backup rack that I use every day, does up to 400GB of data in about 2 hours which is great.

As for the Servers I should see about getting a RAID 5 Disk storage system. Our servers are getting full quite quickly and is starting to take its toll.

What do ya think about summin like this...
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/storage/disk_storage/msa_diskarrays/drive_enclosures/msa60/specs.html

At the min our network has about 400-500GB on data on it all on different servers. Its going ok at the minute but like you say it could be alot better.

Also how hard would it be to set something like that up?
 
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Cool cheers for your help, I`ll put your thoughts across to the MD and see what happens.

Thx again, much appreciated.
 
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