Hi, I currently have my unraid server in a Thermaltake Core X5 case which is huge but only room for 15 Disks so tomorrow I take delivery of a X-Case 24 Hotswap U4 Server Case.  I currently run a single parity disk and backup my server to another unraid server every night but due to this new case using 24 disks I would prefer to have everything in one basket.

 

I am toying with adding a 2nd Parity disk and then loading up the other 22 caddies for storage or running a VM with the spare disks passed through to run backups?

 

Any input/other ideas?

 

Many Thanks

Off-site backup. If your house burns down even dual parity won't protect your data.

 

Backup, because even with dual parity there is still the risk that another drive will fail during a rebuild. You can calculate the probability and risk of that happening.

 

Backup, just because you never know when human error will rear its ugly head. Dual parity won't protect you from someone deleting an important file.

In other words "'(un)RAID' is not a backup".

 

It's fine if you are using it as a backup destination for another computer like Time Machine for Mac. But if it's a primary source of irreplaceable data you should be doing a backup of that data. For the reasons I previously stated. If a disaster were to ever happen that affected all the drives no amount of parity is going to protect it. RAID/unRAID are a means of preventing downtime. They are not a backup.

6 hours ago, mbc0 said:

everything in one basket.

I won't put main and backup in one basket.

 

In normal, the 24bay should be the backup, but you may don't like such arrangement.

3-2-1 rule: 3 copies, 2 different storage media, 1 copy offsite

Many thanks for all your input!

 

I know you are right... need to seriously think about this.. as for off-site how do people manage 50TB?

If you don't want to pay for an online service or don't want to use one you can set up a server which can hold the data lets say at your sisters or your parents house for example and offload your backups to them. Maybe a good idea to get an idea which data is realy important to you. Any data that you can't get back from somewhere else should be backed up. Let's say your personal documents, photos and videos. Media like music and movies i wouldn't consider to backup externaly if you can get them back from different sources anyways. Maybe you can trim down your important stuff so it can fit on an external drive and store them as a cold storage at your parents house for example and update them every couple months.

I have all my Critical Data backed up to the cloud instantaneously as I am lucky enough to have unlimited unthrottled upload speeds, I tried crashplan for a year or so but the upload speeds were so slow it became pointless as it was going to take years not including the data I was adding to all the time.  I do have a firesafe so I think I need a route using the largest capacity disks I can afford to keep the numbers down and find a way perhaps using the hot-swappable bays to run some backups maybe? I want to remove the 2nd server but also thinking about putting the 2nd server at my parents house and running a backup online overnight as well.

Edited February 8, 20197 yr by mbc0

1 hour ago, mbc0 said:

hot-swappable bays to run some backups maybe?

Currently I use a 12 bay to backup a 16 bay main Unraid, I will shift out and in disks at backup server.

Edited February 8, 20197 yr by Benson