Help with an image server, please

[smax]

I have to set up a lab environment where users will be able to store and retrieve their drive images. I plan on using Ghost for the image backups.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to what hardware I should use for the image server? Of course, it'll need a few huge, fast drives. Any recommendations? Is SCSI faster than other drive types? My budget is limited, is SCSI worth the extra money?

Any recommendations for a fast motherboard? The CPU doesn't have to be anything special since disk access isn't CPU intensive, yes?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
John

 

[spidey07]

If you're looking for performance then start with the network.

Gigabit ethernet all around. More than two people ghosting of a single 100 connection will slow considerably.

Then comes processor and memory. Pushing that much data demands as many processors as you can fit in the box and boatloads of memory for cacheing the image.

 

[Oaf357]

It really depends on how many users you're looking at utilizing this server.

But as spidey said gigabit ethernet would be the first place to start.

SCSI and IDE performance comparison. That's easy SCSI wins, hands down. But, the cost and size of drives is an issue. If you're strapped for cash go IDE (ATA-100 or higher). Serial ATA would be best but the overall bus support isn't quite there yet.

 

[skyking]

I've never imaged anything over a LAN. How long would it take to image a 30 gig drive over a 100 connection, in real world terms? Would it get done overnight, with no other users taking bandwidth?
This question has me going now, with the cheap 120 gig ide drives available. I would keep a smaller drive on my current station, and send it over using ghost every week or so.

 

[Oaf357]

Originally posted by: skyking
I've never imaged anything over a LAN. How long would it take to image a 30 gig drive over a 100 connection, in real world terms? Would it get done overnight, with no other users taking bandwidth?
This question has me going now, with the cheap 120 gig ide drives available. I would keep a smaller drive on my current station, and send it over using ghost every week or so.

If my math is right (which it might not be) and it were a perfect world it'd take about 40 hours on a 100 Mbps network to move 30 GB.

I could be wrong so don't hold me to that.

 

[everman]

Gigabit ethernet is almost a must here. It sounds like you won't be doing this incredibly often, or at least that's how I understand it. So IDE drives should be fine, otherwise I'd go scsi. You need to think about scalability also. Will this need to grow significantly?

 

[Fencer128]

Originally posted by: Oaf357

Originally posted by: skyking
I've never imaged anything over a LAN. How long would it take to image a 30 gig drive over a 100 connection, in real world terms? Would it get done overnight, with no other users taking bandwidth?
This question has me going now, with the cheap 120 gig ide drives available. I would keep a smaller drive on my current station, and send it over using ghost every week or so.

If my math is right (which it might not be) and it were a perfect world it'd take about 40 hours on a 100 Mbps network to move 30 GB.

I could be wrong so don't hold me to that.

I would think you're right! (about being wrong!).

In a perfect world you should get through that in:

30GB * 8 = 240Gb

240Gb/100Mb/s = 2400s = 40 minutes

Cheers,

Andy

 

[smax]

>>> 30GB * 8 = 240Gb

Why * 8?

 

[spidey07]

Remeber that if you use multicast then you are only limited by the client and NOT the network.

So no matter if you have 5 or 1000 clients it all takes the same amount of time.

For example:
About 3 minutes per GB = 30 GB in 90 Min.

So for five images then it will take 90 minutes, for 1000 images it will take 90 minutes.

 

[chsh1ca]

Originally posted by: smax
>>> 30GB * 8 = 240Gb

Why * 8?

Because there are 8 bits in a single byte.

GB stands for GigaBytes, while Gb stands for GigaBits. Almost all transfer rates are measured in bps, which is bits per second. A standard ethernet connection nowadays is 100Mbps, which is really 12.5MBps, which per minute, means you can transfer 750MB. So at 750MB/minute, a 30GB file would take 30000 / 750 minutes to transfer, or, 40 minutes on the dot.

Edit: Keep in mind, the numbers are all theoretical. Practically, it's a bit slower.

 

[smax]

>>>I've never imaged anything over a LAN

How do people normally do it? A direct serial connection between the machines? Is it much faster that way?

 

[Oaf357]

Originally posted by: smax
>>>I've never imaged anything over a LAN

How do people normally do it? A direct serial connection between the machines? Is it much faster that way?

No... that would be ridiculously slow.

 

[Joemonkey]

skyking probably meant that he has only imaged things from disks or CDs, never over a LAN environment

and yes, imaging from a ghost server is surprisingly fast and takes the same amoung of time no matter how many PCs you are imaging as spidey07 stated. we do it every day at work

 

[skyking]

You guys are cool. I am going to set up a ghost image server here, and back up my precious configuration and documents on a regular basis. It is one thing to back up docs, but another to get the whole shebang. It will save me hours of work reconfiguring, if I ever do lose my harddrive. It is well worth the 150$ or so to set up.

 

[sabka]

But if you do a image of your drive - and then end up changing some hardware - win2k will complain like mad and throw a few BSODs toward you.

 

[skyking]

Originally posted by: sabka
But if you do a image of your drive - and then end up changing some hardware - win2k will complain like mad and throw a few BSODs toward you.

Been down that trail. Xp would ask for a re-activation!!! We are talking about a weekly image, so the most I would be out of sync is 6 days or so.

 

[SaigonK]

More than two people on a 100mb connection will NOT significantly slow you dowbn, the DOS drivers for your NIC will be the bottleneck.
I can get 7 machines on one subent ghosting from my 2450 server and I still get 240/mb in each system for speed.

It wont take you 8 hours to push 30GB more like 1/2 that or less.
I am not sure where everyone is getting their ideas on power and speed...they arent realistic to be honest.

I have a DELL Poweredge 2450 it is a 1ghz / 2GB ram system and it can server up a ton of systems without a hitch, you dont need multiple CPU's.
SCSI is nice for speed, but frankly it isnt neccessary..i got the same speed out of mt original EIDE machine as I did on my SCSI drives.

As far as BSOD's and Windows 200 use sysprep and some basic imaging practices. See the FAQ's, I made a whole article about it.
Also Windows XP shouldnt ask you for reactivation if you use sysprep as well.


Oh and another important piece, Norton ghost is a PER SEAT license, so you cant just buy the CD for $40 then ghost every single machine you want.
One license is good for only one harddrive..and it basically follows it around. be sure you dont get into a boatload of licensing issues by ghosting 100 machines without the proper coverage. And dont let anyone foll you into thiking their is acorproate version of ghost either (there is one in namesake but you still have to pay per SEAT.

 

[skyking]

Yes, my plan was a cheapo box, not even worthy of workstation status, with a large enough drive to hold a few drive images off my local machines here. Very low budget.

 

[mobogasm]

I reimage workstations everyday using Ghost and a 2 gb image takes about 5 minutes on a 100mb Full Duplex Switch. You have to realize that you can compress the images using Ghost which helps out a lot. You also have to realize you are not sending the entire size of the partition to the other drive, I doubt you are sending 30gb of info to that 30gb drive correct? If you are that's a different store. We are using 40gb drives with only 2gb images. This is also considering this is on a seperate network than all other computers. I often use multicast and image multiple workstations is nearly the same time as it would take to image one. Multicast can bring the network to a near crawl if you have other users utilizing the network though.

 

[stash]

Yeah the unicast option in Ghost enterprise 7.5 helps out a lot in that regard. I've unicasted 10 machines at once, with no noticable hit on the rest of the network. You could probably do more, but I didnt have the room on my bench