Burned by Eschewing Best Practices
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:05 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
cavemanager wrote: Basically, we are a Dell shop, and we have about 18 Dell servers and I have seen that the majority of them have the OS on a RAID 1 volume (2 drives) and then any additional data volumes are always in a RAID 5 config. This seems to be their thing and that's how my VAR wants to set this new server up as well.So first things first... your server vendor and your VAR are not your friends nor do they provide RAID advice. They are sales people and they use random defaults for testing purposes. They do not have a "thing" as applies to you and what they use for testing is not a recommendation as to how you should use their servers. You honestly should never even know what they do because the first thing that you do when getting a server is blow it away and do a proper install - always, no exceptions. That includes wiping the RAID configs away and setting it up for YOUR needs, not for THEIR needs.
Also, never get advice from a VAR, ever. VARs are sales organizations. Get advice from IT, products from a VAR.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:06 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
Evan7191 wrote: I won't say that you should fire your VAR, but you should not let a sales person design a system for you.Same here. The fault is in expecting technical competence or guidance from sales people. That's not to imply that the salesman isn't good.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:22 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
cavemanager wrote: Can you show me any sources that say one big RAID 10 volume is recommended? I notice a lot of you are saying that, and it would be nice to have something to show my VAR plus I would just like to see it. + expandhttps://community.spiceworks.com/topic/262196-one-big-raid-10-the-new-standard-in-server-storage
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/one-big-raid-10-a-new-standard-in-server-storage/
However, this is not a discussion for your VAR, at all. This isn't their expertise, there is no reason for them to know about this. They aren't IT people. If they just find this an interesting conversation, sure, show it to them. Nothing wrong with that. But there is no reason for your VAR to have any visibility into what you are doing. Salespeople don't design servers.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:25 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
CrimsonKidA wrote: Google "pros and cons of moving to O365" and you will find a LOT of information against it!There is another thread on this right now. Just be aware that hosted email doesn't imply O365. O365 is a premium luxury service, as is Exchange in general, and people often use it as the high cost example to debunk. But there are services at a fraction of that cost like Rackspace and Zoho and Appadillo, that run enterprise email so cheaply that it is those that make for the "you can't afford to run it in house" arguments. O365 is only if you are comparing Exchange to Exchange, not email to email.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:26 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
cavemanager wrote: Basically, we are a Dell shop, and we have about 18 Dell servers ...That's a LOT of servers. How big are you? We'd normally expect that from 1,000+ users.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:28 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
cavemanager wrote: What I want to do is to set up a single physical RAID 10 volume made up of 4x 600GB disks and then create two logical partitions, one for OS and one for data. To me, this makes sense and will be fast and provide enough storage to meet our needs for the next five years or so.You are correct, with four disks there is no other option.
You'll want this under your belt as well...
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/12/the-history-of-array-splitting/
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:30 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
cavemanager wrote: volume... Then he finally just responds that I need to trust him on this one and that he has X amount of years of experience, etc. He had also told me that "nobody uses RAID 10", which, according to the Internet, is not true. I don't want to disrespect someone with more experience....Just read this bit. Fire him, now. This is an INTERN level of incompetence. The problem here is that he's just an incompetent salesman who is trying to trick you by implying he's an experienced IT pro. He's not. He's just a scumbag looking to take your money. That statement is beyond unprofessional and it means you can't trust him.... ever. This is such a degree of improper pressure and incompetence, walk away, right now. That guy is reckless and willing to hurt you to make a quick buck.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:33 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
cavemanager wrote: I also forgot to mention that in my original post that I had also been considering doing a virtual Exchange server. My CTO is also a bit old-school and feels more comfortable having a separate physical server for email, just in case. But we did just get a brand new Dell SAN this year and we have a pretty killer virtual environment (vmware 6) and this is probably the direction we should be going. Maybe I will try to convince him again.. + expandWow, just wow. So things here...
- Your CTO is NOT old school, he's incompetent. Never use "old school" to mean "can't do his job and is clueless." We've virtualized critical workloads since 1964. What he's telling you isn't "old school" it's just "wrong."
- A CTO is not an IT job role, why is a CTO involved in this conversation?
- His "emotional needs" put the company in jeopardy and are very possibly for some person goal. This is the kind of thing we hear when someone is funneling money to a buddy at a VAR.
- Why do you have a SAN? Makes no sense given the rest of your environment.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:35 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
CrimsonKidA wrote: Fire your VAR. No, seriously. Like yesterday, FIRE THEM. They are either incompetent or (worse yet) exploiting your for own their bottom line! + expandThis. And your CTO. Show this thread to your CEO. You've got deep rooted problems that could simply be deep seated incompetence, but no one with a CTO title can be excused for being this clueless. This points to corruption and possibly money laundering. I'm not saying that to be dramatic, I deal with this regularly and this is how you spot people stealing money first.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:38 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
CrimsonKidA wrote: It's not "probably" the direction you should be going, it definitely is. Yours (and most companies) should have been moving to a fully virtualized environment 5-7 years ago at least. There are literally no negatives, only positives. Your CTO's "old school" mentality is most likely just rooted in stubbornness and ignorance. Do the research and present it to him. This is really a black-and-white issue at this point. There is some merit to still keeping a physical DC, but that's the only one I know of. + expandCrimson is all over this with good info. He is correct, there is zero excuse for not being virtual. This is 2017, we are a full decade past the last, lingering excuses and those were purely technical in nature. The only thing I'll disagree with here is that there is no excuse for a physical DC, that would suggest all kinds of things that are not accurate. No DC should be physical, ever. The only real "special cases" in not going virtual today are desktops and even that is almost gone.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:45 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
Alex.Gaft wrote: We use exchange on VMware for our 3000 accounts without any problems, no need to record here all the pros for virtualization. Virtualization and cloud are the future.And the past. It's important to not feel like this stuff is new. Virtualization goes back to 1964. Virtualization in the SMB / commodity space to the 1990s. And cloud to 2003. None of these are new or the future, they are the past and the here and now. Not that Alex thought that, I just didn't want that feeling to exist that someone who has been around for a while might not have kept up. These are "computer basics" and have been for generations.
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Scott Alan Miller May 26, 2017 at 9:51 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
ICH wrote: Quite simply you are right and the VAR is wrong. Do NOT trust him, no matter how many years experience he is quoting you. He is simply WAY behind the curve here."Behind the curve" for perspective here... what he is telling you is based off of a 1998 Microsoft recommendation BUT MS was VERY clear when they made the recommendation to explain why they made it so that you would know when it did not apply any longer. And it stopped applying a LONG time ago. That he is repeating it suggests that he memorized a rule of thumb without understanding it which is a standard quick and dirty trick to sound like an IT pro when, in fact, he's just repeating something he heard. It means he doesn't understand what RAID is or how it works. RAID 5 was industry deprecated in 2009, and Dell is so strongly against RAID 5 that they pulled it from some of their interfaces to protect users from themselves and so that no one could claim that Dell supported it by including it as an option! That's how bad your VAR is.
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toby wells May 26, 2017 at 10:08 AM
CrimsonKidA wrote: Toby, while you are right, this is the same kind of lip-service (no offense) he's getting from his VAR. He needs facts here to back up his argument. + expandWell I also posted a link to a thread where Dell (The OP server vendor) state not to use RAID 5 for critical data but I think we are all essentially on the same page here. Physical workloads on R5 = bad. Virtual on R10 = good
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CrimsonKidA May 26, 2017 at 10:33 AM
Scott Alan Miller wrote: There is another thread on this right now. Just be aware that hosted email doesn't imply O365. O365 is a premium luxury service, as is Exchange in general, and people often use it as the high cost example to debunk. But there are services at a fraction of that cost like Rackspace and Zoho and Appadillo, that run enterprise email so cheaply that it is those that make for the "you can't afford to run it in house" arguments. O365 is only if you are comparing Exchange to Exchange, not email to email. + expandGood points here, thanks. SAM is right, it's not an apple-to-apples comparison. I think Hosted Exchange vs on-premise essentially is, but obviously there are still differences. I'd be interested to see the other thread if you have the link, SAM?
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essjae May 26, 2017 at 3:38 PM
toby wells wrote: Its like asking an architect why arches are good for bridges They just are RAID 5 was deprecated by most vendors many years ago, I think Dell were last to issue something but that was in 2012! https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/251735-new-raid-level-recommendations-from-dell 5 Years since its probably one of the most discussed topics on Spiceworks The maths and practical experience is just overwhelming + expandHere's links to the actual Dell docs:
http://en.community.dell.com/dell-groups/dtcmedia/m/mediagallery/19861480/download.aspx
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cavemanager May 27, 2017 at 12:53 AM
Evan7191 wrote: I agree with the others that you should use one big RAID10. I won't say that you should fire your VAR, but you should not let a sales person design a system for you. Sales exist to sell products in order to make money. Their goal is for you to purchase their goods and/or services. Their goal is not to give you the best solution for your needs. You must look out for your environment and tell them what you need. If they won't sell what you need, then you can find a different VAR who will.I really should have clarified that my Dell VAR is also someone sort of like a sysadmin. He has a company that deploys and manages IT solutions for businesses around the area and he is also a certified Dell re-seller. That being said, he still seems a bit lacking in the up-to-date IT knowledge and best practices arena..
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cavemanager May 27, 2017 at 12:56 AM
Scott Alan Miller wrote: That's a LOT of servers. How big are you? We'd normally expect that from 1,000+ users. + expandNot that big but we are a financial institution and there were several servers running various applications over the last 7 years. We also have a virtual environment so I am including like 3 hosts and a SAN. I am working to eliminate old servers by virtualizing them. So, why the hell do I want to buy a physical server for Exchange? I got talked into it by my VAR.. but now I've changed my mind and am going to make sure we just virtualize the thing.
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OP
cavemanager May 27, 2017 at 1:04 AMtoby wells wrote: Its like asking an architect why arches are good for bridges They just are RAID 5 was deprecated by most vendors many years ago, I think Dell were last to issue something but that was in 2012! https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/251735-new-raid-level-recommendations-from-dell 5 Years since its probably one of the most discussed topics on Spiceworks The maths and practical experience is just overwhelming + expandThat article looks like it's pertaining to Dell's Equallogic arrays, which would be those big SAN racks. My whole question in the OP was about RAID volumes on Dell PowerEdge servers. I should have clarified... unless, somehow, they are both ultimately the same thing?
Also, funny enough, we actually did just get a new Dell SAN (which Dell support has referred to as an "Equallogic device", yet according to the support tech who set it up, it is actually in JBOD with parity. -
cavemanager May 27, 2017 at 1:39 AM
toby wells wrote: Its like asking an architect why arches are good for bridges They just are RAID 5 was deprecated by most vendors many years ago, I think Dell were last to issue something but that was in 2012! https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/251735-new-raid-level-recommendations-from-dell 5 Years since its probably one of the most discussed topics on Spiceworks The maths and practical experience is just overwhelming + expandThat article looks like it's pertaining to Dell's Equallogic arrays, which would be those big SAN racks. My whole question in the OP was about RAID volumes on Dell PowerEdge servers. I should have clarified... unless, somehow, they are both ultimately the same thing?
Also, funny enough, we actually did just get a new Dell SAN (which Dell support has referred to as an "Equallogic device", yet according to the support tech who set it up, it is actually in JBOD with parity.
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Scott Alan Miller May 27, 2017 at 9:13 AM
Niagara Technology Group (NTG) is an IT service provider.
cavemanager wrote: I really should have clarified that my Dell VAR is also someone sort of like a sysadmin. He has a company that deploys and manages IT solutions for businesses around the area and he is also a certified Dell re-seller. That being said, he still seems a bit lacking in the up-to-date IT knowledge and best practices arena.. + expandClearly this is incorrect and makes things SO much worse. But to be clear, a salesman is a salesman. That really idiotic companies hire a salesman to be their IT doesn't change that he's a salesman.
Also, he is NOT out of date, he's trying to not do good IT work. Don't equate being unqualified with being out of date. His information is based off of a MISTAKEN interpretation of info from the 1990s, but had he learned it properly twenty years ago, he'd not be doing what he is doing today. He'd have been incompetent twenty years ago too, just would have been harder to hide it.
