Share This [+]
January 20th, 2010 by Rich H.
RAID-5 was long hailed as the enterprise-level storage solution and a fit for nearly every application. The truth is, RAID-5 was designed back in the 80’s to save cost without completely sacrificing redundancy. Back then the cost per byte for storage on enterprise-class drives was so expensive that researchers were scrambling for a solution to store more data for less money.
Let’s say you needed 100MB of storage space and disk-level redundancy. Let’s also say, a 20MB SCSI drive cost $1,000.00. Before RAID-5, you’d buy 10 drives, create 5 RAID-1 arrays at 20MB each, and split your data set up to fit across these 5 separate arrays. Not only is this expensive at $10,000.00, but the storage space you require is split across 5 arrays. With RAID-5, 6 20MB disks gave you 100MB of space, and redundancy. That saves $4,000.00 per storage unit implemented! Sure, there were caveats, but with those kinds of savings, nobody was paying attention.
Welcome to the 21st century. The database is king, and everyone wants performance! Unfortunately, one of RAID-5’s biggest caveats is sacrificing performance, and developers and admins are finally starting to notice. Let’s take a look at the 5 biggest caveats of the RAID level most synonymous with enterprise storage for so many years:
- Performance, Performance, Performance! RAID-5 has significant write penalties all the time due to the requirement for parity calculation. Most implementations also suffer poor read performance, even though RAID-5 proponents consider this one of the “strengths” of RAID-5.
- Rebuild times are horrifying slow. Try days instead of hours for large storage arrays due to the need to read, calculate parity and write every disk in the array for each megabyte rebuilt. This can literally translate to days of downtime for a single disk failure depending on the I/O performance required for the storage to be usable.
Read the full post »
Tags: array, controller, database, DB, I/O, performance, RAID, RAID-10, RAID-5, rebuild, spindles, storage
Share This [+]
December 9th, 2009 by Rich H.
Do you know who your internet neighbors are?
Would you buy a lot, build a house, and move your family in if the next-door neighbor was a notorious drug kingpin? Of course not!
It’s important to consider that “where” your business “lives” online is just as important. I’m not talking about your URL or domain name; I’m talking about the Net block your IP addresses are assigned from, and who the company providing them is.
Spam, adult-oriented sites, and gambling sites generate lots of revenue. They can afford the same servers, support, and bandwidth your business can. They also attract a lot of negative attention in the form of Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attacks, hacking attempts, and probably the worst: blocking and filtering from legitimate networks and mail servers.
When network operators and email system administrators see lots of spam or non-legitimate traffic from a given network, they’ll often block it. Sure, some legitimate traffic is blocked along with the bad, but it’s typically impossible or too costly to differentiate the good from the bad. If the owner of a Net block has a reputation for continuing to do business with clients that generate “negative attention”, an administrator will often block/filter all of the net blocks owned or operated by that provider.
This all happens behind the scenes and often completely unknown to you.
Read the full post »
Tags: ddos, hacking, spam, web hosting
Share This [+]
August 3rd, 2009 by Rich H.
Shopped for storage lately? There’s a seemingly endless list of options, from full-blown enterprise level high-performance SAN/NAS units to big cheap disks in simple enclosures that connect directly to one computer via USB or eSATA and even cloud storage. How do you choose the right one for your storage needs?
When faced with this dilemma, I always ask myself these five questions:
- How many people need to access the data simultaneously?
- How large is the data?
- What is the impact of the data being lost or corrupted?
- How long do I need to keep the data?
- Where do I need to access the data from?
Read the full post »
Tags: cloud storage, data management, nas, san, storage options
Share This [+]
June 3rd, 2009 by Rich H.
It’s every IT person’s dream: you’re lounging on the beach in the Bahamas, sipping piña coladas from a tall glass with the little umbrella, laptop in hand, getting all of your work done remotely. Remote administration grants you the flexibility to turn that dream into reality.
But don’t book that flight without first considering the differences between “administration” and “remote administration.”
Whether your plans including moving to the Bahamas, or even just working from home in your PJs every now and again, we should talk about the security best practices for remote administration that will get you there.
- Use strong passwords for ALL logins.
Read the full post »
Tags: https, remote admin, security, vpn
Share This [+]
April 28th, 2009 by Rich H.
I don’t care if you’re selling bulk widgets or providing financial information on emerging markets, if you rely on data and servers for any function of your business, backups should be the single most important item on your IT checklist.
An all-time favorite question of mine to ask business owners or IT managers, following “do you have backups”, is “how do you know your backups work”? The resounding silence and dumbfounded looks this question summons are almost a guarantee.
If you’re sporting that same look right now, here are 5 simple steps to follow that can help ensure when disaster strikes, you can strike back with a successful data recovery.
1. Perform a test recovery.
This sounds so obvious and simple, but hardly anyone actually does it. This is as simple as it sounds. Attempt to recover you data to an alternate location (don’t overwrite your production data), and test the dataset.
Read the full post »
Tags: backup, list, recovery
![[]](/imagesb/reflection02.gif)