People have asked me why I’m creating what amounts to a NAS. Why don’t I use Drobo or SmartStor for example? The above don’t have ZFS, which is the best solution for redundant storage. I can’t install Bacula on those systems. Sure, Bacula could run on another system and access that storage, but being directly on the system has advantages. Or why don’t you use FreeNAS for example? You’d be running FreeBSD! FreeNAS, […]
Why no Drobo? Or SmartStor? Read More »
Let’s look at this combination: Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping) HP ProLiant ML150 G6 E5506 $850(+$43 shipping) RocketRAID 2300 PCIe 4x SATA $120 (+$8 shipping) Crucial 3x2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping) Total price in cart: $1178.97 + $42.90 shipping = $1,221.87 So the premium for the Supermicro is about $220. Is the hotswap worth the $220? Oh, and the Supermicro will need a video card: VisionTek VTK Rad7K
What about an HP ML150? Read More »
For the file server, perhaps one of these three combinations: Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 4@$300 – $1200 8TB or $150/TB SAMSUNG F1 RAID Class HE103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ 4@$150 – $600 4TB or $150/TB Western Digital RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ 4@$160 – $640 or $160/TB Also in this system would be a gmirrored pair of
Following on from my previous post on my file server, here is what I’m now looking at. It’s based upon various discussions on mailing lists and IRC channels. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping) SuperMicro 5046A $750 (+$43 shipping) RocketRAID 2300 PCIe 4x SATA $120 (+$8 shipping) Crucial 3x2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping) Xeon W3520 $310 Total price in cart: $1389.95 + $52.95 shipping = $1441.90 Not included: HDD,
The File Server (more detail) Read More »
This is the current thinking for my soon-to-be-built storage server. I should consult freebsd-hardware first. Athena Power CA-SWH01BH8 Pedestal case The above case comes with two of these backplanes close up photos of that backplane mother board? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130136 was suggseted. m/b will either need 8 SATA connections or room for several cheap SATA controllers power supply, probably dependent upon the M/B but has to be grunty enough for 8xHDD 4GB RAM? HDD: SATA
Bacula uses flat text files for configuration. From time to time, people, usually new to the project, ask: why isn’t the configuration in the database? Bacula uses the database to store information about what files were backed up, from what client, and when. This information is useful when you need to know how if you have a copy of a file from last Tuesday before you wrote crap into it but after you
Bacula Configuration Read More »
Bacula is a backup system with three different retention periods: Volume Job File I set all three to the same value. It is important to note that these values affect only the Catalog. It determines how long a given record is held in the database. For example, if you set File Retention to be 45 days, it means that there are no records in the database for any files backed up in any
Bacula Retention Periods Read More »
I have about 14,000 data points collected from backups. I started in Oct 2007, but have not done anything with the data. I’d like your help. I have put the data into a PostgreSQL database and dumped it. The dump is here: http://langille.org/tmp/dlt_stats.sql.gz The table looks like: $ psql dan psql (8.4.2) Type “help” for help. dan=# \d dlt_stats Table “public.dlt_stats” Column | Type | Modifiers ————-+—————————–+——————————————————– id | integer | not null
I’m thinking about creating a storage box. One with a lot of disk space. It will be used for backups and stuff. I will continue to backup to tape as well. I’m considering this case, which has 8xSATA hot-swap bays: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811192058 If I was buying a RAID card, I’d buy this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131002&Tpk=areca%201120 But I may go with ZFS instead of hardware RAID.
Both BSDCan and PGCon use Pentabarf for accepting and reviewing proposals for talks. An issue raised in 2009 highlighted the ability to see the speaker name when review the list of submissions. It is a bit of very useful information. This year, I’ve found out that we can see that vital data. Provided the speaker role has been set to confirmed. I think Pentabarf design assumes that you have created a talk, and
Pentabarf – seeing the speakers Read More »