Question MINIPC as a small office server

[johnkelly3]

I'm looking for a minipc I can use as a small office server in Raid1. We have an IT group that oversees about 6 desk minipcs, but the Server is running 2012 R2 and we need to upgrade the server computer & server software.

Since the IT company also does backups I wanted to have the ability for a quick fix if one of the drives goes down so thought to have 2 drives in RAID1. Want a small footprint for the server that will sit on a small shelf.

Current Setup in front of me I just purchased to do the trick, future proofed hopefully for the next years:
Asus Minipc PN64-E1
x2 WD 4TB nvme M.2
x2 Crucial 48GB = 96GB DDR5 SODIMM

I put it all together, bios recognizes x2 4000GB & 96GB Ram, but no way to see a RAID option in the bios unfortunately.

Can anyone give some guidance on if its possible to set this up on RAID1 from the bios? Is software RAID a nightmare?

Any help will be MUCH appreciated!!

 

[USAFRet]

Apart from this potential RAID 1, what is your actual backup plan for the server and workstations?

 

[johnkelly3]

There's another independent Intel NUC that the IT group has tasked with taking a snapshot of the devices and uploading it to a remote backup system.

I was originally thinking to skip the RAID1, but figured if I could get a minipc with 2 M.2 nvme slots I could incorporate RAID1 into the server in case one of the 4TB drives died.

 

[USAFRet]

There's another independent Intel NUC that the IT group has tasked with taking a snapshot of the devices and uploading it to a remote backup system.

I was originally thinking to skip the RAID1, but figured if I could get a minipc with 2 M.2 nvme slots I could incorporate RAID1 into the server in case one of the 4TB drives died.

What is the frequency of the backup snapshots?

RAID 1 is only for continued uptime.

And drive fails are so rare, that is mostly wasted space.

Can you suffer through an hour or two of recovery time, once every 5 years or so?

 

[johnkelly3]

Backup snapshots are at least daily.

Its a dentist office so the continued uptime is helpful because the staff is so small on site, but its not super critical.

It is possible to suffer through the recovery time, but it would be painful that's why we were thinking RAID1 to mirror the drives.

The upfront extra cost or wasted space was kind of less important than the uptime.

 

[USAFRet]

I mentioned the "5 years or so", because drive fails are pretty rare.

Of the couple of dozen solid state drives I've been using since 2012 or so, I've had exactly one fail.
And most of those drives are running 24/7.