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swolodkin
Rated PG
Joined: 10 Feb 2009
Posts: 1
Location: United States
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 Posted: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:24:13 Post Subject: TB32 Appropriate for Exchange Server Storage? |
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I am consulting for a company with an Exchange server that needed some work. The server was out of SATA ports and physical space so they bought be this box to serve as dedicated log file storage for Exchange. I was a little concerned that this seemed more a "consumer-oriented" device and was not made for high-speed server backend storage. I did insist that we use the eSATA interface and purchased a good eSATA PCIe card for the coputer. Both devices advertised a full 3Gbs throughput speed, so I went ahead and deployed it.
Therefore I am seeking your oppinion since you reviewed this device in some detail. I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to benchmark all the storage because the machine must remain in production as much as possible. So what do you think??? Thanks in advance. -Steve. |
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acruxksa
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Joined: 17 Oct 2003
Posts: 1045
Location: The Cradle of Storms
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| Posted: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:00:23 Post Subject: |
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Swolodkin,
I would be concerned about using this device in a mission critical environment. I have no trouble recommending this enclosure to the average consumer for file and media storage. However, I'm hesitant to recommend it for commercial use primarily because I have no idea how large the company is and what kind of traffic volume we are talking about. Typically hardware developed for commercial use will offer redundancy in more than just their data (power supplies and cooling fans). To be honest it sounds like a temporary solution to the problem and I'm not sure it's the best place to save a couple $$$.
In a RAID 1 configuration it should be fast enough assuming we are talking about a small business with a modest number of transactions, it just doesn't have the needed hardware redundancy you should have for the type of use you're proposing. I'm not an exchange guru, but it's my understanding that the transaction logs can be essential to repairing databases if you have a failure. I guess it all depends on just how important the company thinks their databases are.
I would also add that it's better to separate the transaction logs from the databases, so if they won't be able to do this unless they use the Mapower enclosure, then it's probably better than nothing, but If life has taught me anything it's that you can tell them a hundred times that it's only a temporary solution, but as soon as it's installed and working they will forget all about finding something better until it fails. Then no one will remember you telling them it was temporary.
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Dfreak
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Joined: 03 Dec 2008
Posts: 7
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| Posted: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:06:37 Post Subject: |
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Hi, here I am again 
My TB32 worked fine until a few days ago  . When I started up the enclosure, it starts to do a Disk Rebuild (Middle LED: Blinking blue + red on). But after about 20 seconds the Power LED becomes purple (HDD volume degradation) and the middle LED is blinking blue + blinking red (error state). I tried everything: removed all partitions, tried other modes: I always used SAFE50 mode, so I tried also another mode: SAFE33 and RAID1; these 2 also don't work.
All other modes (SPAN, Normal, RAID0) just work fine. So every mode which involves RAID1 doesn't work... Is it possible that the RAID controller of the enclosure is defect?
Dfreak |
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acruxksa
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Joined: 17 Oct 2003
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Location: The Cradle of Storms
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| Posted: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:08:12 Post Subject: |
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It is possible, but I'd be more inclined to think there's a hard drive issue. Especially since the other modes still work.
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TS1981
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Joined: 22 Apr 2009
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:49:15 Post Subject: |
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Hi
I have the same problem as Dfreak.
No RAID1, Safe33 and Safe50.
HDD's are ok (2 x 1TG Western Digital). New. And I already exchanged the HDD's without success among themselves.
(sorry, my englisch is no good, i'm german)
any one an idea? |
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TS1981
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Joined: 22 Apr 2009
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:37:01 Post Subject: |
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It lasts to provide 5 hours a RAID1 with 2 1TB HDD.  |
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acruxksa
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Joined: 17 Oct 2003
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Location: The Cradle of Storms
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| Posted: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:12:25 Post Subject: |
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| TS1981 wrote: | | It lasts to provide 5 hours a RAID1 with 2 1TB HDD. |
TS198,
Did your enclosure work at one point and then quite working? I'm not clear on what the issue was for you. Raid-1 systems take several hours to build with the larger hard drives and both Safe 33 and Safe 50 have raid-1 partitions, so they take quite awhile to build also.
Dfreaks situation seemed to be that hes system worked fine one minute and then stopped working, the first thing to suspect here is some sort of error on one of the drives. I'm not sure it in fact that was his problem though because he never posted back.
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TS1981
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Joined: 22 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:31:53 Post Subject: |
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I had not counted on which lasts it so for a long time. I am accustomed it, which a structure of a RAID1 lasts a few seconds.
But it seems now to function. All LEDs show that it its work fine. |
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acruxksa
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Joined: 17 Oct 2003
Posts: 1045
Location: The Cradle of Storms
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| Posted: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:39:29 Post Subject: |
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| TS1981 wrote: | I had not counted on which lasts it so for a long time. I am accustomed it, which a structure of a RAID1 lasts a few seconds.
But it seems now to function. All LEDs show that it its work fine. |
It essentially does a bit for bit copy from drive 0 to drive 1 even if both drives are blank (It's copying all those zero's to a drive filled with zero's  ), which can take an awful long time if your talking hundreds of gigabytes.
There are probably better implementations, but not at this price. 
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Dfreak
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Joined: 03 Dec 2008
Posts: 7
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| Posted: Sun, 10 May 2009 08:49:57 Post Subject: |
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I thought it was working fine in the normal, span, ... modes, but it didn't, when you started copying, it failed after a couple of minutes. So I took out the drives and tested them both with HDtune, the result: one of the drives had lots of corrupted clusters. So I did a RTM and 2 days later I received already a new one. I placed it into the TB32, started to copy and after a couple of hours it was finished.
Happy end. |
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