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Hey guys, I know a lot of you are in the IT field and I have a question...
On friday the e-mail at my firm went down. Our IT guy came out to fix it and got it running again. A few hours later it went down again along with our access to our shared drives. He comes back at around 4 and tells me it's going to be back up by 6. Okay, it would have been fine if it had gone like that... but a weekend of work later it still isn't up and he just got our ability to receive e-mails back in time for the end of the day today. Problem is, we have completely lost everything in our e-mail and on our shared drives from the past 2 months. We are going to get a 8,000 bill from this guy, and the quote on the data recovery from a data recovery firm is between 10,000 and 18,000 if it can be done at all.
Both our Raid5 Array failed and our backup tapes apparently had not been backing up correctly for the past 2 months. To me, it seems like haveing both of these things fail and not being on top of the back-up issue is a result of unbelievably bad luck or (what I suspect) negligence. These guys are third party contractors, but they do between 1,000 and 3,000 of work at our firm a month, by far our biggest non-fixed expense, so they are around enough that I think they should know what is going on with our relatively small operation.
Dell Poweredge 2600
Microsoft exchange
Windows 2000
Raid5
3 73gb drives
20 people use this server. Most people use their local drives for the bulk of their work, not the shared drives. Exclusively outlook, quickbooks and microsoft
office use.
So basically, I'm asking if this is something that happens, or should I really be as mad as I am right now. Buying this server was the cheapest thing we ever did. If we do go ahead with the data recovery we will have poured about $35,000 into this thing that cost 6,700 after only 11 months. That seems absurd to me.
~ Purehand ... Rawr.
Um... Aside from an absolute deluge of spacebits, I can't think of anything that would cause a RAID5 array to fail that completely.
We use Poweredge 2600s running Windows 2000 and Raid5 with three 73gb drives at my work, too. Thousands of users use it, with lots of network storage transactions. We've never had a single problem with the drive array.
I think you should be mad.
Marksman Ahmir Nam'al
"Is glas iad na cnoic i bhfad uainn."
-Distant hills look green.
We use Poweredge 2600s running Windows 2000 and Raid5 with three 73gb drives at my work, too. Thousands of users use it, with lots of network storage transactions. We've never had a single problem with the drive array.
I think you should be mad.
Marksman Ahmir Nam'al
"Is glas iad na cnoic i bhfad uainn."
-Distant hills look green.
Your situation sounds a lot like negligence and unprofessionalism on behalf of your contracted work. However, there are some questions... Does your contract with them require that they maintain good backups in addition to supporting you or is that your firm's job?
Both of your RAID-5 arrays failing at one time is bordering on impossible. If they failed at the same time, you either had a power surge or really bad luck. In order for a RAID-5 to fail, two of the Hard drives have to fail. With two array's failing, that's at least 4 hard drives crashing at once... Very close to statistically impossible. If you didn't get struck by lightning or some other catastrophe, I'd almost bet (not knowing for sure unless I was there) that at least one had failed previously to that. That would be neglegence on their part to report the failure (assuming they are on site often/permanantly)
As for your backups... Any good IT pro would ensure good backups on his own even if it wasn't in his contract if nothing else than to cover ye arse. If they were not being performed properly that is also negligence. If they were performed correctly and not verified, it would be negligence on the part of whoever's responsibility it is to verify them. Backups should always be tested, even if the scale is small before they are labled "good"
With a failure on the scale you are talking, a weekend plus downtime for a server is not unreasonable, but the IT guys should have been up front about that.
To answer your final question... If your IT guys are doing their job, what happened to you should not be possible short of natural disaster. Even then, data recovery should be as easy as obtaining an off-site backup of your data. I'd have to hear more about your situation to accurately point fingers, but it sounds from what you said that your IT failed you in a big way.
Give me a shout if you have anymore questions Purehand.
Souv
AIM: smichang2
Network Administrator/IT guru of 8 years hands on experience
You sense (N, S) from your current position:
A relatively healthy presence nearby.
Roundtime: 6 seconds
Both of your RAID-5 arrays failing at one time is bordering on impossible. If they failed at the same time, you either had a power surge or really bad luck. In order for a RAID-5 to fail, two of the Hard drives have to fail. With two array's failing, that's at least 4 hard drives crashing at once... Very close to statistically impossible. If you didn't get struck by lightning or some other catastrophe, I'd almost bet (not knowing for sure unless I was there) that at least one had failed previously to that. That would be neglegence on their part to report the failure (assuming they are on site often/permanantly)
As for your backups... Any good IT pro would ensure good backups on his own even if it wasn't in his contract if nothing else than to cover ye arse. If they were not being performed properly that is also negligence. If they were performed correctly and not verified, it would be negligence on the part of whoever's responsibility it is to verify them. Backups should always be tested, even if the scale is small before they are labled "good"
With a failure on the scale you are talking, a weekend plus downtime for a server is not unreasonable, but the IT guys should have been up front about that.
To answer your final question... If your IT guys are doing their job, what happened to you should not be possible short of natural disaster. Even then, data recovery should be as easy as obtaining an off-site backup of your data. I'd have to hear more about your situation to accurately point fingers, but it sounds from what you said that your IT failed you in a big way.
Give me a shout if you have anymore questions Purehand.
Souv
AIM: smichang2
Network Administrator/IT guru of 8 years hands on experience
You sense (N, S) from your current position:
A relatively healthy presence nearby.
Roundtime: 6 seconds
