my current setup - OS X server 10.3 running on a dual G4 desktop with a couple of nice chunky drives (2 x 40 gigs) attached, being backed up via retrospect/SDLT - works fine for what it was originally intended, i.e. as a common shared drive, to transfer files from one machine to another, as cold storage for archiving project files before burning to CD/DVD, and repository for shared project files. all for our smallish design group.
now that the group has expanded considerably, and our storage and backup needs are threatening to outstrip capacity, i'm thinking of what to do next. specifically, of what to put in 2005's budget.
my boss has decided (and i tend to agree) that we're losing too much productivity with project files (layouts, scans, fonts, etc) sitting on one person's computer, that frequently need to be accessed by others in the group. sorting duplicates and version control of documents has become an issue. my boss thinks that all this can be solved by everyone storing their files on the server. however, the server as it's set up now doesn't have the capacity for everyone to have their files on the server - thus, everyone has their own current files on their own hard drives, each getting backed up over the network at night. not exactly ideal, but, like the ungainly giraffe, a product of evolution.
so to my point - and i do have one. i like the distributed nature of our current storage "solution" for one reason - there is no single point of failure. if a user's drive goes up in smoke, it's a relatively simple matter to replace it and restore from the latest retrospect snapshot of that drive. with individual drives having anywhere from 5 to 30 gigs of active projects, and some with as much as 100 gigs of older stuff still on them, it's a bit of a chore, but it's something i've done before in a day. meanwhile, everyone else in the group can still happily chug away. if the server goes offline, it's not a big deal, as its biggest duty is in backing up and archiving, so again, everyone can work as usual.
what i'm looking for is an informed recommendation from other people on this forum as to how best to proceed.
do i pull the existing small drives from the server and fill it with 250s in a mirrored software RAID (using the built-in OS X RAID via disk utility) - i see this as cheap and relatively secure: just the drives and maybe a SATA card to buy. but how good is OS X's RAID for recovering a borked drive? i've never done it, myself...
option 2 would be to buy an XRAID or similar external hardware with the necessary controller and software to manage it. considerably more expensive, but more extensible for future growth. also more flexible in the way the RAID is set up (0, 1, 3, 5, 0+1, 30, 50...). but is the G4 up to the task of keeping the XRAID happy and the data churning?
option 3 would be to scrap the G4 entirely, and replace it with an XSERVE (ideally at some point after Tiger comes out, as it would come with another OSXS license) filled with 250 or 300G drives.
are there other options out there? my concern with something that's not at least a mirrored RAID (such as the lacie Terabyte drive) would be that i'd have to find some way of backing it all up. our 120gig tapes are already filling up at an alarming rate, and there's nothing out there short of a second terabyte drive to back things up...