[ale] Central server recommendations?

[Michael B. Trausch]

laytonjb at charter.net, on 08/22/2007 10:55 AM said:
> Good evening gang,
> 
> I want to build a central server that is basically sort of a backup server. I want to
> keep copies of data from the household machines. I've even thought about using
> the machine as an NFS/CIFS server for the house. But, I really want to protect
> the data as best I can. So with that said I'm looking for some recommendations:
> 
> 1. Backups: software and/or hardware recommendations? The data is likely to
> change fairly slowly. What about using DVD's for shorter term backup (less
> than 2 years)?
> 

I use a custom-written script that just basically tars up each of the
home directories on my server, and then dump that to either a tape drive
or a DVD, depending on what I am doing, once per week.

>
> 2. RAID level? I'm not too worried about performance so perhaps RAID-6 or
> RAID-51? Any comments or recommendations about these with mdadm?
> 

Instead of using such a setup, I keep the data on the hard drives of the
home machines, use rsync to move that to the server, and then burn/write
backups from the server.  Of course, I am cheap.

>
> 3. Any hardware preferences for motherboard, etc? AMD dual-cores look too
> cheap to pass up at this time. I'm not fond of Nvidia chipsets, but I can
> easily pop in an Intel GigE NIC.
> 

I have been using AMD and Nvidia hardware on my network now for a while,
and I am loving it.  Wouldn't use anything else at this point; I just
wish that Nvidia would relicense their display drivers under a more
friendly license.

>
> 4. UPS recommendations? I would like something that will gracefully shutdown
> the server if a power failure is detected.
> 

No idea.  I presently tolerate such outages.  Again, though, I am cheap
at home.  I have other things that I unfortunately have to direct my
money towards.

	-- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch              Internet Mail & Jabber: mike at trausch.us
Phone:  (404) 592-5746 x1                        http://www.trausch.us/
Mobile: (678) 522-7934            VoIP: 6453 at sip.trausch.us, 861384 at fwd

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