I'd be interested to hear if anyone is using NAS devices and what for ?
One use, I guess, could be for back up - but will data transfer to the NAS (even over a gigabit network) be slower than USB2 or eSATA or even USB3 ??
Does raw data transfer speed make much difference in the real world when running back ups anyway ? I do incremental backups to USB2 and to eSATA drives and there's not a hugh time difference (because of the time spent vefifying the backup). But if I just copy a file onto the drives, the eSATA drives arew much faster.
I use two NAS devices for email and fax archiving. Our agency has a policy to keep every email and every fax forever ::) I keep the archives on an eSATA drive for fast recovery but also on the two NAS for redundancy.
I've considered moving the ATTACH folder off to a NAS. It's the folder that grows the fastest and it would be easier to swap out a larger NAS than a larger drive in the server. Write and read speeds to/from the NAS would be slower than from the server so I've never done it. Of course if the NAS was a RAID array . . . . . something to think about anyway.
We are using 2 Buffalo RAID units for backups - one here and one off-site (backup from here is copied to off-site unit) for redundancy as well as for operations in the event of a hurricane evacuation.
These are LAN connected units that replaced an High Rely e-SATA unit, but I cannot speak to the relative speeds other than to say that the techs tell me it is working fine.
Billy
How do tou copy the on-site back up to the off-site NAS unit ?
Thanks
As far as I know it is being done by the backup software. We were using Symantec BackupExec and maybe we still are - some time back we discussed upgrading that to a better product that could take snapshots during the day, but a quick visit to the console does not appear to show the new product installed.
If you would like more (or should I say any?) specifics just let me know and I will ask the techs. As it is I am now going to ask if we ever upgraded - it's been a year since that meeting.
P. S. We were supposed to upgrade to Acronis. I have an inquiry out as to whether or not we actually did so.
Quote from: Billy Welsh on April 01, 2010, 10:51:28 AM
P. S. We were supposed to upgrade to Acronis. I have an inquiry out as to whether or not we actually did so.
I'd think twice about Acronis right now. I switched back in February and haven't been having good luck with the new version. Your tech could probably tell you more about that than I could, so you may want to have them check into it.