So HA it is
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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.
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@RojoLoco said:
@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.
For when you just need to "get away"?
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@coliver said:
@RojoLoco said:
@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.
For when you just need to "get away"?
I like going over there. 25 minute drive, great places for lunch nearby (especially if you like Asian food), and yes, it gets me away from my cube of the same size where people can bug me. When I go to the colo, I basically get paid for an extra hour, even if I finish up quickly.
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@coliver said:
@RojoLoco said:
@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.
For when you just need to "get away"?
To those lovely high 60 temperatures..
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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.
You can't keep incrementals offsite without the fulls. Incrementals only are useful with fulls. The two are part of the same package.
