Enterprise Data Storage Solutions on a Budget are Hard to Find

Have you have ever tried to build a storage server with good disk I/O performance on a budget with as few drives as possible? If so, you know how difficult this task can be. The hard drive shortage that caught the market unaware in 2011 and into 2012 only exacerbated this further. We had all gotten spoiled over the past few years with the incredibly low hard drive prices.

Have You Changed Your RAID Batteries?

You’ve done all the right things in your server configs; great RAID level for the server role, RAID Battery Backup (BBU), and installed a correct sized UPS to give the server plenty of time to run while everything shuts down.  After a year or two, do you make a regularly scheduled maintenance visit to change the RAID BBU? Yes sadly it is true; the RAID BBU needs to be replaced periodically. Leaving an uncharged battery on the RAID card leaves the cache exposed in the rare case of a power outage.. In my 20 plus years in the business I can confidently say that this has happened exactly twice to two different customers.  In both cases the customers attempted to re-build the array and both had the same outcome; the RAID array failed to recover, leaving both clients stuck without their systems for multiple days. What can be done to protect your clients and your reputation?

I was walking through our sales area recently and overheard a conversation one of our reps was having with a customer and what caught my ear was our rep asking, somewhat surprised, “You need me to build you a server with SCSI drives?” After asking why the customer wanted a SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) drive, the representative went through a nice brief overview of the current hard drive offerings and eventually offered an alternate configuration. This got me thinking though, if one person asked about SCSI there must be others.

Hard drives are essential for digital security and surveillance Network Video Recorder (NVR) solutions; especially for solutions that require around the clock monitoring and event archiving. No matter how well you maintain your security and surveillance system, hard drives can and will fail. These failures are a significant problem for end users and integrators; so what what do you do when it does happen?

The call you dread comes into your voicemail. “Hi this is Steve from XYZ Company, our server is down.”  You think to yourself, not to worry, they have a RAID enabled server. Then Steve drops this on you, “the screen says a whole bunch of numbers and stuff and at the bottom it says – No boot device available.” Then your heart sinks...

Basic Server Hardware Redundancy Options

Proper server design can radically affect the outcomes of service and repair work. Make certain that you offer all the parachutes, seatbelts and airbags to your customers during the consultation phase, in order to make any unforeseen crashes more palatable for both you and your customer. Just what basic precautions should you take?

SSDs eliminate bottlenecks

Workers who rely on their computer for more than normal office work, such as Computer Aided Design (CAD), Graphic Design or Scientific Computation, a very fast CPU, GPU and sufficient RAM are important.  However, an often overlooked piece of the performance puzzle is your primary hard drive.  SSD (Solid State Drives) can eliminate the bottleneck created by traditional platter based drives and thoroughly optimize system performance.