New server is born do-tech

It has been a while since I’d be talking about re-purposing the 2 Mac RAIDs that used to be for Exchange and Mimosa, to use them as internal storage. Here’s a little bit of the plan, as this will be a big change in some aspects:

I have created a new server called do-tech. This server is connected to two XServe RAID arrays. These are fast arrays connected via 2Gb fiber over high speed RAID  0+1, which means they are fast, and they are redundant. 

The Goal:

The big picture purpose of all of this shuffling is to get to a point where all the user data resides on appropriate redundant, safe, and backed up medium. In other words:

• Move all user data, and group data that currently resides on \\do-fs2\user$\ and \\do-fs2\group$  (XServe RAID) to the Compellent SAN. These locations currently contain quite a bit of data that belongs to us (Technology/Information Services/Utils/Help Desk Info)
• Move all users that are currently on cvusd-do-nas to the same location as everybody else, ultimately, on the Compellen SAN. This server is on the verge of dying, and I plan to rescue it before it dies and we find ourselves without a viable backup.
• Move all data that currently resides on the – currently do-fs2  storage – to the newly allocate storage on the remaining to XServe RAIDS.
• Repurpose the current do-fs2 XServe RAID to connect it directly to the LANDesk server (do-ld-core), to have a dedicated image / package and software patch repository.
• Have a dedicated, safe, fast and redundant array of storage that isn’t expensive as the Compellent SAN that we can use internally for our department. Currently, we have TONS of data scattered on our desktops, external hard drives ranging from installers, files, to machine ghost images.

The Plan:

In the next days / weeks, I will be shuffling some data around. For now, I will be working mostly with our technology data. As I make any changes, I will be sending updates as to what changes have been made. Some of you us have static mappings to drives, in which case, I cannot change this for you via a script, so you have to keep up with these changes, and change your mappings accordingly.

I will do my best to remember if anything is being accessed by a script / package  etc … and update those accordingly. However, some stuff will be missed and will have to be dealt with on a case by case basis.

I will do my best, where it makes sense to keep the share names the same: i.e: \\do-fs2\group$\technology will become \\do-tech\group$\technology. In some cases this may change, but I will make sure to post all the changes, from old to new path, so that you are able to update your mappings.

I will be speaking with some of you individually to see about your needs for some storage (excluding David S.  :) ), and will be creating shares for these needs accordingly.

Your part:

Though we do have some additional storage available, we also have an insane amount of space wasted with junk, old files, and duplicates. Unfortunately, I am not able to, nor willing to go out there and clean up everyone’s files, mostly because I don’t know what’s what. I ran a duplicate file check yesterday, one of our shares, and I found that we have Gigs of files that are duplicates.

I would REALLY appreciate it each of us can take some time to do some house cleaning and clean up some of these files in  these shares.

If you are interested in getting a report about the duplicates in a particular share of your interest, Please let me know, and I’d be happy to provide you with that.

FAQ:

Should I worry about losing any data?

No. I am doing the migrations in the evening, and am running a server data sync before taking any resource offline.

Will I still be able to access the data on do-fs2?

I will be removing access to the shares on FS2 as they are moved to do-tech. Due to the fact that most everyone currently has domain admin access, I will likely explicitly remove everyone except myself, so that the data is available temporarily, yet not too available as to cause confusion about where the real live data is.

How much data do we have available on the RAID?

I managed to come up with 2xx715Gb (RAID 0+1) volumes, 1x1300Gb (RAID 0+1) , and 1x465Gb (RAID 1)

Is all of this space spoken for? or can I have some?

A lot of is is already allocated for big files that is currently scattered across different servers and external drives. However if you have a need for some space for legitimate data. Please talk to me, and we may be able to work something out.

Why do you keep annoying us with all these changes when everything is working just fine the way it is?

I am doing this because, being at the back end, I see much more visibly than people on the outside what kind of risk we are running in keeping things in the way they are, and I chose to do something about it with the resources I have at my disposal. So before this start, I want to thank you for cooperating with me to maintain our data, servers, and environment as best we can.