Thursday, November 9, 2017

Time sure flies, technology doesn't.

Once there was a linux, an user and hardware, none of them got along - bad ending.

So I have been a bit data hoarding when I purchased Seagate Archive 8TB (TeraByte) drive and used it as regular drive (you know what, it works! Also putting SSD (Solid State Disk) cache for it and you have basically very fast hybrid drive). 

Well that raised a question about windows backups, what files I want to backup, what I should back up. My old NAS (Network Attached Storage) suddenly decided to start writing bad sectors all over the place and almost lost my picture collection. My NAS was just single USB (Universal Serial Bus) enclosure attached to router, so not ideal.

So my grand plan was after a lan party that I want to build a beefy file server, nas, dedicated game server and host my pictures on website with gallery software so I can access them with my phone when I ever need those rare meme pics from my collection. 

I decided to use Linux/GNU (GNU's Not Unix) distro, I last time used one in 2008 and after that haven't touched them. Why? End user unfriendliness, bad GUI (Graphic User Interface) choices or lack of them. I have been using GUIs mostly since windows 3.1 and suddenly I have again to use CLIs (Command Line Interface) to config everything and use very badly made manuals? So yes, most Linux distros were not for me. 

I have always loved how Windows year after year has kept its ecosystem same, fine tuning here and there so users can adapt slowly... well up until Windows 8/10. For those who are reading this in future Windows 8 introduced whole new GUI layout for Windows OS (Operating System) ecosystem while having old one running under it. Windows 10 technically removed old one and forced everybody to use the horrendous GUI without ability to rollback to older ecosystem style. This is another reason why I am starting to warm up idea for using Linux distro and if you can use server one, you can use desktop one, right?

Well you might have already guessed what I am about to say what has happened during last 10 years in Linux enviroment? Problems installing NICS? Yes, especially if you're using "freedom" distros, where freedom means all drivers has to be open source. These distros ARE NOT FOR BEGINNERS! Trust me, I have been there 10 years ago and I am here again with same problem on 2017. So I purchased older server rack unit from fleamarket, quite cheap, and decided to use Debian because at the time it offered the best network GUI for NAS. OMV (Open Media Vault) is basically just a NAS software that runs on Debian. Because I want to do a lot more with my server I will be installing OMV after Debian distro. 

So what is the problem with Linux? I say in generally the lack of money profits for firms. Linux is seen as a free software and nobody wants to buy softwares on free OS. Another problem that I see Linux kernel APIs and so are constantly being rewritten without any sense for backward or forward compatibility. So newer software won't work on older kernel and older software won't work on new kernel. This is why the main reason why things that attract users won't adopt to Linux distros and it is a huge problem. When windows 7 support ends in 2020 we are pretty forced to migrate to Windows 10 or any other OS because Microsoft won't give anymore updates and probably shut downs update service like they did when Windows XP support ended.

Well if you managed to read all the way here lets go back to my plan. I purchased Dell Poweredge R410 server rack, just a bit under 100 euros including shipping. Didn't check much details when I purchased it, looked it has dual LGA 1366 socket Xeons processors, DDR3 ECC memory, Raid controller and reduntant power supply in 1U chassis, seems great eh? Well Raid controller supports only 2TB drives and there goes my plan to use 4TB drives with RAID controller... Of course I could purchase newer raid card but those support just 3TB drives, so no luck there. Luckily for me motherboard has 5 SATA ports also, so my ultimate plan is to use software raid, newer ZFS filesystem. So far my plan is this: 60GB SSD for OS, 3-4x 4TB drives in RAID5/6/10 and 8TB external drive for unpowered backups. 

Now to those who don't know anything about RAID. Reduntant Array of Inexpensive Disks is a way to give less down time for system when a drive or two goes bad. It is a misconception to think RAID equals as a back up, oh no. Usually when you buy hard drives you get pretty much same batch hard disks, these same batch disks usually are very close to break down at same time and when you're rebuilding array you could lose another disk and depending on your RAID level you might lose all your data. You can look up about this Linus Tech Tips video where they almost lost all the archived videos they made because they didn't have secondary backup, preferably offside backup.

It is very real scenario and should not be taken lightly as more and more your digital memories might not have another copy in safe place. So basically my back up plan: Client -> NAS (snapshot backup) daily/weekly -> Cloud + external drive backup (weekly/monthly).

This technically should give me 2-3 levels of failure until I lose my data. First I need to lose my Client data or NAS data, then I would have to lose external backup data and finally offside cloud backup. All happening at same time should be virtually impossible unless nuclear war starts, so my house can burn down but cloud data still should be there.

I will update how this setup works in next year when i have configured everything and tested them.


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