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koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu to jaa

MVM

to jaa

Re: Storage Array

Regardless of who/what company you go with, please make sure you do two things: 1) get a support contract and keep it active, and 2) do regular backups. I cannot stress these two points enough when relying on a black-box vendor.

When/if you have issues with your filer, all questions/issues should go to the vendor -- you have to be 100% reliant on them for everything (that's both a blessing and a curse).

The need for backups (preferably to something that you have full control over and involves less vendor lock-in) is important, because you should assume that at some point you will encounter problems with your filer. And of course make sure you actually do/try a restoration in advance, rather than wait until that dreadful day when everything goes belly-up only to find out that your backups are hosed.

I also recommend asking whichever vendor you go with up front if they provide the hard disks for you or if you can use/purchase your own. You'd be surprised how much this matters. In the case of NetApp, for example, the filers I've worked with require you use disks sent to you from NetApp directly. There are a lot of (very justified) reasons for this, but it also means taking drive failures seriously, as (depending on your support contract terms) it might take multiple days to get a replacement drive from the vendor. On the flip side, if you're able to use your own disks, you might be unhappily surprised one day when model XYZ123 disappears from the market and XYZ124 appears, only to find that the LBA counts have changed and the filer requires all media to have matching LBA counts -- or possibly you get bit by a drive firmware issue (they're becoming more and more common).

Just stuff to consider before making a purchase.

jaa
Premium Member
join:2000-06-13

jaa

Premium Member

I will look at support contracts. No backups though. It is storing surveillance video, if it is lost no big deal - just reformat and start over.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu

MVM

Ah good. As long as everything can be lost in the case of utter failure, you'll be fine. Otherwise stories like this are ones I use to drive my point home:

»it.slashdot.org/comments ··· 43325049

Let us know what you end up going with + what you roll out!