So HA it is
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@JaredBusch said:
@coliver said:
@JaredBusch said:
I like the potentional not use a backup to get it offsite. I have not done the replication myself, but know another group that has. very little data replicating in each change.
They brought in the server locally, seeded the initial replicas, moved it to the colocation facility, and then let it catch back up.
I've never done replication over a high latency wire. Not sure how it would work.
Latency does not affect replication. That is the benefit of it.
Good to know.
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@coliver said:
I've never done replication over a high latency wire. Not sure how it would work.
If it is async, hardly affects it at all. As long as you are replicating in the "minutes" range and not in the "seconds" range. High latency wire is normally no more than 300ms and 2,000ms tops.
Full Sync is super latency sensitive because every write has to be confirmed before anything continues.
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@coliver said:
Good to know.
It is basically just like transaction logging in SQL server. It writes the changes to a log file and then ships the log file. There is not a concern for latency. Obviously, you need to still have enough bandwidth for these changes. or you will always be getting farther behind, but because it is replicating, there is never a problem like a new full backup.
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Another point I made is that if we really need HA between the host that we could simply increase our existing XenServer (which also answers several of the above questions) to support these future Virtual Servers and configure a single new Dell R720xd for fail over between the two.
This idea was declined with "I'd rather leave that server for development VM's"
So there is still some critical things that still need to be thought out.
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@DustinB3403 said:
The next choice that must be made is what hypervisor are we going to use. XenServer or Hyper-V or lastly ESXi. As deciding this really refines our backup choices.
KVM would come in long before ESXi. ESXi would be like installing OpenVMS today. Just makes no sense on a new install. Costly and without benefits. Your budget doesn't allow it anyway.
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Dustin, what does your company do?
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@DustinB3403 said:
Specifically to try and find some pricing for Windstream, Amazon and BackBlaze as the top 3 contenders.
Windstream? Seriously? Why not just set the data on fire? That's not a business class company. They are infamous scammers and can't support their own links. Never do business with them, ever. They are so bad that they had to change their name to hide their bad reputation. As they are based around the corner from you, I'm shocked that anyone there would even allow their name to come up.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Another point I made is that if we really need HA between the host that we could simply increase our existing XenServer (which also answers several of the above questions) to support these future Virtual Servers and configure a single new Dell R720xd for fail over between the two.
This idea was declined with "I'd rather leave that server for development VM's"
So there is still some critical things that still need to be thought out.
Ask him why he wants a newer server for development stuff. You usually put your old crap for your labs.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Even though we couldn't possibly push a full month's backup (~24TB [this would comprise 4 weeks of full backups]) offsite it might be viable for the incremental backups. Which is what I now need to look into, and our weekly delta is low enough that we need to weigh the options of taking tapes / disks home weekly with the cost to restore from an online storage provider.
Most backup products will support a direct connection to cloud hosted storage so you do a one time full and then it can do incrementals for forever or whatever so the traffic and total storage is not that outrageous. But you need to work with that through the backup product and not as a separate decision.
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One of the biggest things here is that this decision, the plan, needs to be holistic. Which drives to use, which server(s) to buy, where to put them, having HA, the backup strategy, the fault tolerance strategy.... all of it is a single plan. It can't be pieced out as a bunch of separate pieces and then put together.
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So let's start at the very beginning. This is super hard as the goals are set by emotion, not by a business need, so there is no means to achieve the goal reliably. The true answer is, only the person emotionally driving the decisions can make any of the decisions because this is their personal desires alone and not an IT nor a business thing. So no amount of logic, planning, business, cost, reliability or math are going to actually matter.
HA is not needed, warranted, suggested or realistically possible. But it is not what is being requested either. The emotional driver isn't for HA but for something being called HA. We need to determine what that is and service the emotional factor, not the business or IT ones.
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@scottalanmiller said:
So let's start at the very beginning. This is super hard as the goals are set by emotion, not by a business need, so there is no means to achieve the goal reliably. The true answer is, only the person emotionally driving the decisions can make any of the decisions because this is their personal desires alone and not an IT nor a business thing. So no amount of logic, planning, business, cost, reliability or math are going to actually matter.
HA is not needed, warranted, suggested or realistically possible. But it is not what is being requested either. The emotional driver isn't for HA but for something being called HA. We need to determine what that is and service the emotional factor, not the business or IT ones.
So what's the question here? What does @DustinB3403's boss want from their systems?
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If we were really looking at HA, the first step is facilities. How do we get the facilities to a point where they can handle HA? Do we put the servers in a datacenter? Do we upgrade the existing facility to handle HA needs? Generally on premises can't do HA without a major investment.
The cheapest path to HA is an enterprise datacenter and good, redundant ISPs, in most cases.
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@coliver said:
So what's the question here? What does @DustinB3403's boss want from their systems?
That's what we just don't know. What emotion is making him want the words, but not the reality, of HA? What is making him want to spend money for no reason? What aspects of overspending and under-delivering will satisfy an unidentified emotional reaction?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@DustinB3403 said:
Even though we couldn't possibly push a full month's backup (~24TB [this would comprise 4 weeks of full backups]) offsite it might be viable for the incremental backups. Which is what I now need to look into, and our weekly delta is low enough that we need to weigh the options of taking tapes / disks home weekly with the cost to restore from an online storage provider.
Most backup products will support a direct connection to cloud hosted storage so you do a one time full and then it can do incrementals for forever or whatever so the traffic and total storage is not that outrageous. But you need to work with that through the backup product and not as a separate decision.
How does that work when you take new full backups? Say Unitrends, you do a full backup today, and you do one monthly to the local appliance, but you use their cloud backup offering as well - is the cloud piece able to keep doing the incrementals only even though a full backup was done? And if that is the case, then why did you bother doing another full backup, why couldn't the appliance do the same thing?
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@Dashrender said:
How does that work when you take new full backups? Say Unitrends, you do a full backup today, and you do one monthly to the local appliance, but you use their cloud backup offering as well - is the cloud piece able to keep doing the incrementals only even though a full backup was done? And if that is the case, then why did you bother doing another full backup, why couldn't the appliance do the same thing?
If you need fulls, like Unitrends, then from time to time you just need fulls. Nothing more to it. If you want to avoid fulls always, you take on some corruption risk and need to choose a product that will do nothing but incrementals.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
So what's the question here? What does @DustinB3403's boss want from their systems?
That's what we just don't know. What emotion is making him want the words, but not the reality, of HA? What is making him want to spend money for no reason? What aspects of overspending and under-delivering will satisfy an unidentified emotional reaction?
A complete lack of understanding of what HA really means (aka doing HA, not buying it).
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@Dashrender said:
A complete lack of understanding of what HA really means (aka doing HA, not buying it).
Yes, but we are stuck wondering what does he believe it to be.
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@scottalanmiller said:
If we were really looking at HA, the first step is facilities. How do we get the facilities to a point where they can handle HA? Do we put the servers in a datacenter? Do we upgrade the existing facility to handle HA needs? Generally on premises can't do HA without a major investment.
The cheapest path to HA is an enterprise datacenter and good, redundant ISPs, in most cases.
Show him the bill for the Liebert UPS (The NX and NXL) System like we use, HVAC and back generators and then he'll change his mind.. It's likely more than an SMB's whole IT budget.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Key steps to HA involve redundant generators, good fuel supply plan, high availability and very intensive HVAC solutions, that kind of stuff. Your plant is 10 fold as important as your gear.
^^^ These are the very reasons we decided to colo some systems. It was far more cost effective for us, and we got a whole 8x8 cage, so I have a table and chairs, monitor/kbd/mouse onsite. Like an office away from work.
