Help with dangerous IT admin, 3 drive 6TB RAID5

[dwright1542]

'I need to build a document helping my wife convince her boss to bring outside people in to fix her IT issues. (I'm apparently not allowed to...)
Her current IT admin "upgraded" their 4x1G, 12x500G HP SAN to a 10GbE 3x6TB, RAID 5.

For 120 people. Exchange / Autocad / SQL, DC's. 6 sites.

Yup.

After questioned, he added 4x2TB in a RAID 10 just for the SQL stuff. Whoopie.

I've got the Dell Equalogic doc, of course the ZD link, some spiceworks links about RAID5 issues....

Does anyone have actual data / docs / or links that can show what a bad idea this is? (Outside of the speed/iops issue. Pure data integrity issue)

TIA

 

[capn_pineapple]

Hate to say it but you can't prevent stupid. All you can really say is that your wife should make sure she has backups.
It sounds like the business (boss) is accepting this risk based on their "expert"s advice, for better or worse. That's what he's employed for.

 

[i386]

RAID Reliability Calculator - Simple MTTDL Model - ServeTheHome

 

[Evan]

If it performs crap then the boss and staff will know.
So long as they have backups then whatever... 3 disk raid5 is not end of the world for sure.

As has been said can't prevent stupid, not ideal but no backups is the worst possible situation.

 

[niekbergboer]

Hate to say it but you can't prevent stupid. All you can really say is that your wife should make sure she has backups.
It sounds like the business (boss) is accepting this risk based on their "expert"s advice, for better or worse. That's what he's employed for.

I'd agree: at its core this is not a technical problem but a social one; you can't solve it with technical means and trying to do so has the potential to hurt your wife's work atmosphere. The backup idea sounds good, but keep it on company equipment (only!).

 

[pricklypunter]

Looks like he bumped up access speed and minimised his energy consumption. By moving to larger, more modern disks, he may actually have improved their failure rate, even if not intentionally. It really depends on the disks used, the environment they are in etc. As raid 5 goes, it's perhaps not the best plan in the world and with only 3 disks and no hot spare available, it's borderline in my book, especially so for a commercial installation. Good, reliable backups, will at least allow disaster recovery should the worst happen, but the real question is the down time involved, can the business sustain that downtime, in the event of total loss of data? What is the current policy for backup/ disaster planning? Does it need reviewed etc. These are the questions I would asking, along with is the current upgraded installation performing to the satisfaction of the users and business generally. The outcome of visiting that process, may well shape any future upgrade path taken and further configurations/ optimisations being done etc.

As things go, I have seen much worse decisions made, by those, who in my opinion should know better. The admin staff are paid to be responsible for it, no matter how illformed their decisions appear to be from the outside. They have the numbers, baselines etc to work from and base their decisions on, the rest of us can only guess. I dare say if you were to ask 10 of us here, how to go about it, you would get 10 different answers. It is at the end of the day, their decision. A good one or a bad one time alone will tell

 

[vl1969]

I am afraid to ask , but 2x2TB in raid10 is good or not ?

that is what I have on my DELL hyper-v server setup.

 

[dwright1542]

I am afraid to ask , but 2x2TB in raid10 is good or not ?

that is what I have on my DELL hyper-v server setup.

It's a heck of alot better than 3x6TB in a RAID5. IF it's just file server access, you're probably fine. But only you can tell if speed is an issue.

 

[dwright1542]

Looks like he bumped up access speed and minimised his energy consumption. By moving to larger, more modern disks, he may actually have improved their failure rate, even if not intentionally. It really depends on the disks used, the environment they are in etc. As raid 5 goes, it's perhaps not the best plan in the world and with only 3 disks and no hot spare available, it's borderline in my book, especially so for a commercial installation. Good, reliable backups, will at least allow disaster recovery should the worst happen, but the real question is the down time involved, can the business sustain that downtime, in the event of total loss of data? What is the current policy for backup/ disaster planning? Does it need reviewed etc. These are the questions I would asking, along with is the current upgraded installation performing to the satisfaction of the users and business generally. The outcome of visiting that process, may well shape any future upgrade path taken and further configurations/ optimisations being done etc.

As things go, I have seen much worse decisions made, by those, who in my opinion should know better. The admin staff are paid to be responsible for it, no matter how illformed their decisions appear to be from the outside. They have the numbers, baselines etc to work from and base their decisions on, the rest of us can only guess. I dare say if you were to ask 10 of us here, how to go about it, you would get 10 different answers. It is at the end of the day, their decision. A good one or a bad one time alone will tell

He certainly did not bump up access speed. We went from 12x500G RAID10 to 3 spindles RAID5. It's not even borderline...I'd consider it reckless. I don't think anyone here would ever consider RAID5 with that size drives ok.

I'm really looking for the "RAID5 is a disaster" links. All of the questions have already been asked, which is why I'm here asking for links.

 

[i386]

Re-Evaluating RAID-5 and RAID-6 for slower larger drives (Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson)

 

[gigatexal]

Lol this guy. Two P3700s (4800Xs?) in Raid-1 would have been better with some spindles for backup. If you're going to be a hooligan with company money you might as well go big.

 

[T_Minus]

YMMV but pushing unsolicited advice usually doesn't have the outcome you'd like.

You shared your opinion, weren't asked for proof/more info, etc, in fact you said you're not "allowed" to work on it... share your opinion/thoughts, let them absorb and then move on. If an issue presents itself in the future you're much more likely to get that 'call' and become a 'go to' vendor vs. being a pushy vendor trying to get a business to "do it your way".

Sometimes businesses need to have problems before they realize their current solution provider isn't going to work out. This is a lot more common than most realize... my 02 at least

 

[i386]

+1 for escalation

 

[vl1969]

It's a heck of alot better than 3x6TB in a RAID5. IF it's just file server access, you're probably fine. But only you can tell if speed is an issue.

speed is not an important spec for me at this time.

considering what we had before it is not an issue.

as for my use, well ...
I had bought 2 DELL PowerEdge 730dx servers with dual 8 core Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10GHz 64GB RAM
each is configured with 2x200GB SSD in Raid-1 for system and 4x2TB hdd in raid10 for local storage.
each have a 4 port 1GB nic and 2 port 10GB nic

I used Windows Server 2012 R2 + StarWind vSAN to build out a 2-node Hyper-V failover cluster using the raid as shared storage via StarWind. the whole data replication is done over 10GB nics , which are direct linked server to server and all 1GB are teamed and connected to main LAN.
I run about 10 VMs , 5 on each node.
one MSSQL server, one File Server, one of 2 DC/DNS/DHCP machine that replicate the data and balance the load. 1 EDI processing machine and several special use machines for automation and other needs.
I also run a PDC as a VM on a separate older server not part of the cluster. and plan to add a third DC as well.
some things are slow but most is ok.
we have about 100 clients here for File Server and about 10 for for SQL. not an overwhelming load.

 

[pricklypunter]

He certainly did not bump up access speed.

I actually meant to say network access speed, sorry about any confusion. One way or another though, it's their decision and they are the ones that have to live with the consequences should the wheels fall off the bus

 

[dwright1542]

YMMV but pushing unsolicited advice usually doesn't have the outcome you'd like.

You shared your opinion, weren't asked for proof/more info, etc, in fact you said you're not "allowed" to work on it... share your opinion/thoughts, let them absorb and then move on. If an issue presents itself in the future you're much more likely to get that 'call' and become a 'go to' vendor vs. being a pushy vendor trying to get a business to "do it your way".

Sometimes businesses need to have problems before they realize their current solution provider isn't going to work out. This is a lot more common than most realize... my 02 at least

This is all going thru my wife, who he actually reports to. She keeps bringing home info / email for me to look at and is just caught in a very difficult place.

I think I've got enough ammo compiled to help. That last link to ISS was a great one.

 

[Tom5051]

How come your wife doesn't have an account here and ask her own questions? Is she one of those IT women who only know how to pick up a phone to ask for help?

 

[dwright1542]

Cause she's not IT. #troll

 

[pricklypunter]

She keeps bringing home info / email for me to look at and is just caught in a very difficult place.

She is likely to be in an even more difficult place if caught sharing company email outside of those authorised to view it. Pretty much anywhere I work, breaking such confidences would be a sackable issue. Anyway, I think you've made your point

 

[dwright1542]

She is likely to be in an even more difficult place if caught sharing company email outside of those authorised to view it. Pretty much anywhere I work, breaking such confidences would be a sackable issue. Anyway, I think you've made your point

Good thing she hasn't then.