New to FreeNAS, new build

[faalin]

Hi everyone, had a question and wondered if FreeNAS could help solve a problem.

We have a HP DL380 Gen9 server, inside of it we run 7-8 VM's that is basically our company. We also have 2 Gen7 servers, one that runs Veeam backups and the other is a secondary Domain Controller. Now this all resides in a server rack in a closet so god forbid if anything happens to that rack we loose everything. As of now we house about 8TB worth of data on the main server with 2 weeks worth of backups on the Gen7.

We also own 2 other building on the same road linked together by a Cisco Meraki bridge so we have been throwing around the idea of adding some sort of storage device to another building and pushing a second backup so we would have something off site of the main building. I was recently introduced to FreeNAS about a month ago and have played with it for about 2 weeks with a small test box at home with my local network with storage.

Is there any way that a freeNAS box could fit into this solution? We run server 2016 Data center on the Gen9 and server 2016 standard on the two Gen7 but am not sure how i could link a NAS box into the backup system. Would it be as easy as running ALLways Sync and just sync the Gen7 drive to the NAS box drive so its essentially a mirror of the backup server?


Thanks
Ryan

 

[Chris Moore]

I suppose it depends on how much of a budget you have for the project, but if you are planning to buy a new server to run the FreeNAS installation on, you might want to talk to the sales team at iXsystems. They make FreeNAS and TrueNAS and sell servers too.

https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-certified-servers/

 

[Chris Moore]

If your have the budget for it, I would put a IT / IS closet in each building with a set of servers. Primary Domain controller in one building, Backup Domain controller in another and the backup server in the third. That way your main building could burn down and you would still have the backup domain controller and a full backup of all the data.

 

[faalin]

Im going to go with little to non existent for a budget. I was looking a monkeyserver for a refurbished Gen8 before i found FreeNAS, but ill give iXsystems a call and see what they have to offer.