Hello,
I'm seeking your advice or suggestions about where to go from my current setup.
I have a WHSv1 for the last few years that's been working in my home office fine. A couple of days ago a drive failed. This resulted in 2 days + of down time. While the drive failure didn't cause any data loss, the down time has made me reconsider my current server and backup scheme.
I'm a part time professional photographer with aspersions of going full time within the next few years. Right now I generate around 50 gigs of data per job (guesstimation). Right now I work around 10 jobs a year. In the future I will be shooting more like 25 jobs a year. In addition to this, my wife and I work on a couple different computers. Centralized data helps us keep organized. I don't really download movies or anything like that, the bulk of my data comes in the form or raw camera data + the resulting exports.
Things that work well for me and I hold as important:
1) Automatic PC backups (both machines are windows 7)
2) Pool style storage so I can add space on the fly
3) Very low management time (I have a full time day job, a 2 year old, another one on the way on top of my photography business).
4) Easy backup process for the whole server. As it is, I backup regularly to 2 offsite locations manually on a regular basis. (backup is about 1TB of data so far, but this will start growing very quickly soon).
Things I'm not a fan of:
1) Custom setups that require time - I'm technical, but I just don't have the time to manage a complex system (although I've considered freenas and amahi and am currently checking them out under a virtualbox setup)
2) Cloud based backup - I guess you could say I'm not trusting, but I just don't like the idea of someone else playing with my data. I like the fact that if I have a massive failure (hardware or house fire) I can just go get a backup drive and I'm good to go.
I've looked into a few things, but I'm feeling a little overwhelmed at this point. Windows 8 or windows server looks OK, but the pool system they setup seems goofy (does not balance storage across all drives?!) NAS solutions seem OK, but then I'm managing RAID and when I need to expand it, I can't just drop a drive into it. Drobo looks pretty awesome, but the price is astronomical and proprietary hardware and support scares me; I've read some horror stories with Drobo.
I was hoping for some suggestions on what works for other people and what does not. Any input is greatly appreciated.
Spencer
I'm seeking your advice or suggestions about where to go from my current setup.
I have a WHSv1 for the last few years that's been working in my home office fine. A couple of days ago a drive failed. This resulted in 2 days + of down time. While the drive failure didn't cause any data loss, the down time has made me reconsider my current server and backup scheme.
I'm a part time professional photographer with aspersions of going full time within the next few years. Right now I generate around 50 gigs of data per job (guesstimation). Right now I work around 10 jobs a year. In the future I will be shooting more like 25 jobs a year. In addition to this, my wife and I work on a couple different computers. Centralized data helps us keep organized. I don't really download movies or anything like that, the bulk of my data comes in the form or raw camera data + the resulting exports.
Things that work well for me and I hold as important:
1) Automatic PC backups (both machines are windows 7)
2) Pool style storage so I can add space on the fly
3) Very low management time (I have a full time day job, a 2 year old, another one on the way on top of my photography business).
4) Easy backup process for the whole server. As it is, I backup regularly to 2 offsite locations manually on a regular basis. (backup is about 1TB of data so far, but this will start growing very quickly soon).
Things I'm not a fan of:
1) Custom setups that require time - I'm technical, but I just don't have the time to manage a complex system (although I've considered freenas and amahi and am currently checking them out under a virtualbox setup)
2) Cloud based backup - I guess you could say I'm not trusting, but I just don't like the idea of someone else playing with my data. I like the fact that if I have a massive failure (hardware or house fire) I can just go get a backup drive and I'm good to go.
I've looked into a few things, but I'm feeling a little overwhelmed at this point. Windows 8 or windows server looks OK, but the pool system they setup seems goofy (does not balance storage across all drives?!) NAS solutions seem OK, but then I'm managing RAID and when I need to expand it, I can't just drop a drive into it. Drobo looks pretty awesome, but the price is astronomical and proprietary hardware and support scares me; I've read some horror stories with Drobo.
I was hoping for some suggestions on what works for other people and what does not. Any input is greatly appreciated.
Spencer