RAM | Reseller Advocate Magazine: Issue 57

By Chris Angelini

Barebone servers by themselves are anemic tools. Though they might be loaded with processing horsepower, there are a number of subsystems—internal and external—that enable servers to store data, protect data, and move data around quickly. Picking the right "extras" to perform those functions is an integral part of building a stable, scalable, high-performance platform. The key is to learn which components will improve the way your customer does business and when it's alright to splurge on higher-end hardware.

Archival For Weeks
Customers processing lots of data need disk backup for the purpose of disaster recovery and an archival procedure to handle long-term storage. Exabyte's VXA-320 PacketLoader 1x10 gives SMBs roughly two weeks of unattended tape storage.

Baby Steps

One of the first issues to address is the divide between data backup and data archiving. Small businesses are increasingly being put in the position to consider both but with limited experience in both applications. Therefore, it's the reseller's job to help roll out the right products and policies. You get to be the expert, once again, in a field that can mean life or death to any small business.

We define backup as, at most, medium-term storage consisting of data sets that change and are used for the purposes of disaster recovery. Meanwhile, archiving involves long-term record-keeping—a solid alternative to boxes of invoices or patient documents that many offices still lock away in a back room or warehouse. Deploying backup should be a given any time a server is involved. Archiving is arguably less common amongst SMBs. Compliance laws and consolidation of paper onto digital media are changing that, though.

Because backup is nearly ubiquitous, you're probably familiar with the basics of configuring storage hardware, defining policies, and configuring schedules. External hard drives connected via USB 2.0 or FireWire are the go-to solutions for many resellers since they're so straightforward to deploy. Generally bundled with entry-level software and configurable in all of 15 minutes, you can easily protect a server and several workstations.

That sort of setup works well for organizations capable of cramming data from a couple of systems into less than 500GB of space. But once you start talking policy—saving one month's worth of restore points or ten years worth of invoices, for example—the guiding hand of prudence encourages roomier repositories, perhaps with a little built-in security against failure.

Bigger, Better Backup

There are a couple of directions to take data storage once your customer grows beyond the simple single-drive backup solution. One is DAS (Direct Attached Storage) and the other is NAS (Network Attached Storage). Of course, a DAS device connects directly to your server, just like the entry-level USB 2.0 drives out there. As you transition to larger enclosures with more capacity, however, it becomes important to lean on a faster interface. Today's connection du jour is eSATA.

Small business owners look to VARs for technology purchasing guidance because they have access to information on the latest and greatest. While tier-one vendors continue slinging enterprise-class storage arrays and mainstream USB 2.0 drives, eSATA gives the reseller community a particularly elegant tool for adding space, enabling great performance, and hitting a price point in between the other options. The interface employs one external SATA cable per drive, similar in appearance to the cables bundled with modern motherboards. Because it talks to the same controller, signaling speeds on every eSATA drive will run up to 3 Gbps, identical to what you can offer with internal disks.

Use that VAR advantage to roll out multi-drive eSATA enclosures in SMB environments. CPU-DataPort sells an attractive chassis available in two- and four-drive trims, arriving with cooling hardware, a power supply, and drive mounting equipment. You simply mix in the hard disks and backup software. Each of the two models supports RAID operation—the dual-drive version running in RAID 0, 1, 10, or JBOD modes and the four-drive model adding RAID 5 support to the equation. With 750GB drives topping today's charts, you can enable protected RAID 5 arrays in excess of 2TB without hitting enterprise price tags.

Cost is one of the principal reasons to go with a direct attached storage array. Simplicity is another. A DAS array is easy to manage, and a software title such as EMC's Retrospect 7.5 has little trouble reaching out to touch networked workstations, consolidating saved data to the server. Unfortunately, licensing and configuration get a little more complex once you start involving multiple servers with unique backup requirements. In that case, networked storage might make more sense.

Small business NAS boxes abound, greatly simplifying situations where customers use two or three servers for different tasks yet want to back data up onto one device. Of course, once you start talking about saving data from multiple servers, scalability becomes a concern. Hammer Storage addresses expandability by infusing its Z-Box HZD4B with Zetera's Z-SAN storage over IP technology. Each HZD4B maxes out at 2TB spread across four hard drives in RAID 0, 1, or 0+1. Z-SAN facilitates aggregation, though. So as your customer outgrows one box, you're able to add one or two more, simultaneously expanding the volume so that multiple units appear as one backup target. Aggregating not only scales capacity, but it also multiplies the 80MBps performance of one unit right up to the peak throughput of your customer's switch.

NAS: A Second Calling

Innovative Network Storage
Thanks to the thinkers at Zetera, Hammer Storage's desktop Z-Box includes SoIP (Storage over IP) technology, enabling remarkable performance and capacity scaling at a true SMB price point.

Hammer Storage charges $2,500 for the 2TB Z-Box HZD4B in desktop trim and $5,500 for the same capacity in a rackmount chassis. Iomega sells a competing rack-ready NAS box that might appeal even more to businesses pursuing the true calling of networked storage—fast file-level access and sharing. The StorCenter Pro 440R similarly boasts 2TB of disk space. Rather than centering on a proprietary hardware backbone, however, Iomega's 400R boasts its own 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB of memory. The 1U platform runs a full copy of Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 with Active Directory Support, Iomega's Automatic Backup Pro software with unlimited client licenses, CA's eTrust Antivirus 7.1 for Windows, and a Web management utility. Of course, you pay a bit more for the high-impact platform.

"An entry-level NAS enclosure running Linux addresses basic storage needs and saves the small business on a budget some money," says Tom Kampfer, president and COO of Iomega. "But it doesn't give customers much in the way of manageability, scalable performance, or important value-adds like hot-swap support."

Indeed, while Hammer's Z-Box is rich in speed and scalability, it's heavily reliant on plenty of network throughput and fast client workstations. Purpose-built appliances such as Iomega's 400R are able to better shoulder processing loads that would otherwise bog down slower desktops and aging 100 Mbps infrastructures. If you task an SBS 2003 server already running Exchange, SQL Server, and possibly filtering network traffic through ISA Server with file sharing duties for an office of 60 employees, there's a good chance that box won't perform very well. Breaking shared storage out onto a separate cost-effective server smoothes out those bumps a bit. Ironically, that route doesn't address backup, so you'll have to circle back and add yet another data protection mechanism.

Stashing it All Away

Purpose-Built NAS
A 3GHz Pentium 4, plenty of memory, and Windows Storage Server 2003 combine to give Iomega's StorCenter Pro 400R enough horsepower to handle dedicated workgroup file sharing.

Whereas most backup devices prioritize smoking performance and high availability, guaranteeing that data is easily accessible when it's needed for disaster recovery, archiving involves more careful consideration of value and shelf life. Depending on who you talk to, hard drives are the wrong choice for long-term storage and tapes might last a maximum of 10 years. Iomega peddles yet another product purported to surpass both media in terms of longevity. Sporting a shelf life of 30 years, the company's REV technology physically looks like it might be a descendant of the ZIP or JAZ families. And while single-disk REV drives are available with USB, ATAPI, SATA, and SCSI interfaces, it's the 10-slot SCSI autoloader that stands out as an interesting small business archival solution. The value there is seek performance way ahead of anything you can offer from tape. With REV, you're able to drag and drop individual archived files. Tape makes that process much more time consuming.

One For the Road
Iomega recently revamped its REV family to include a 70GB drive. Though too small for full backups, the technology is small and fast enough to keep busy business owners happy.

REV's tradeoff is capacity. Each cartridge compatible with the autoloader is limited to 35GB of storage space (twice that with 2:1 compression), but as Iomega's Kampfer points out, the ability to remove disks as they're filled and store them offsite is quite appealing.

Unfortunately, you'll have a hard time justifying four-packs of 35GB disks at $200 each to customers handling 100GB of stored data monthly. And while Iomega recently introduced REV technology with up to 70GB of native capacity complemented by EMC's powerful Retrospect Express backup software, a more economical solution is likely in order. The go-to for inexpensive, long-term storage remains tape. Newer drives aren't nearly as finicky as they used to be, and performance is constantly improving.

Single-cartridge drives are some of the most popular for archiving data on small business servers. Given SBS 2003's tendency to encourage consolidating data, email, and databases to a single machine, an internal tape drive actually makes good sense. Quantum's DLT-V4 5.25" strikes small business chords by supporting SATA connectivity, saving the cost of a SCSI controller. Each tape holds up to 320GB of compressed information with transfer rates as high as 20 MBps. Best of all, the tapes are priced reasonably, reducing the cost of storage to just $.12 per GB, according to Quantum.

Keep it Simple
When price plays more of a role than convenience in procuring tape, check out Quantum's DLT-V4. Supported tapes hold up to 320GB and ring in just over $.10 per gigabyte.

The only problem with a single-tape drive is that it requires diligence. Employees have to be tasked with switching, labeling, and storing cartridges. If physical security is an issue, you'll have a tougher time keeping hands off a desktop drive. On the other hand, businesses large enough to store servers in a rack probably need heavier-duty archival hardware. Exabyte's VXA-2 PacketLoader 1x10 Autoloader does the job nicely, sliding into just 1U of rack space yet accommodating up to 10 tapes. Representatives at Exabyte claim that's enough storage for two weeks of unattended intervention. Such convenience doesn't come inexpensively—the autoloader itself ducks in just under $3,000. However, the reliability of VXA-2 Packet Tape drives and efficiency of automation help make the PacketLoader worthwhile.

High-End Costs Less

It's easy to underestimate the needs of a small business customer because you're paying more attention to initial cost than what the organization actually needs. The hesitation is understandable. Plenty of SMBs would flip out after seeing a $6,500 NAS box or $2,500 eSATA enclosure on their invoice, especially those used to wedging SOHO hardware into more intensive roles.

There are a couple of problems with that approach, though. Most importantly, it often takes a serious failure before the thrifty SMB understands your reasoning. Perhaps the problem is SATA drives in a server running 24x7 or maybe it's a 300GB USB drive protecting 10 workstations and filling up after a week of scheduled backups. Either way, when things get messy, you take the fall for underemphasizing the importance of SAS or network attached storage. More to the point, buying SOHO when your SMB customer should be using business-class winds up costing more eventually.

When you take the time to explain how high-end server extras help protect data, improve performance, and leave the door open for scalability, you truly advocate your customer's best interests—this coming from a consultant with plenty of customers hell-bent on saving money wherever possible.