our SME plans deploying * thu a consultant who offers his “home made” server & linux distribution.
He proposes a “DOC” (disk-on-chip) motherbord solution.
What exactly is this? A NAND-based chip? If so, is this solution proposed because of faster reading speeds compared to a hard-drive? Can * still WRITE to this DOC chip?
I had thought of a HD solution for backup issues (putting backup RAID server or so), which the consultant declined… what would an alternative backupsolution be?
There are loads of flash based disk solutions, not as fast and limited to something like 400,000,000 read/writes before they wear out. Yet they are preferred by many in industrial fields.
logicsupply.com/index.php/cPath/44
This contractor seems somewhat fishy if they don’t let you choose what you want/need, but then they might have their reasons for this. In any case backing up a system with one of these can be performed just like any other drive. To the best of my knowledge they act as a normal hard disk and therefore are compatible in any raid array.
do you think that a non-initiated person could build his own server or must we better relay on professional outsourcing?
You haven’t really specified what the server would do other than run Linux. I will assume this is for an asterisk server since this is the forum for that.
A small to medium sized enterprise would be smart to put the uptime of this particular server as the most important factor. When outsourcing to a company that does this all the time you almost guarantee they know how to keep uptime very high on their priorities. On the other hand in house technicians such as yourself can work out even better because the help is right there.
I would call myself a very hands on person and if given the opportunity I would hit up newegg.com and start a project analysis with comprehensive price and time saving benefits to them choosing me over this contractor. If you don’t have work experience with Asterisk already then it might help to try it out through a virtual machine first so you have real work experience before jumping into this kind of project.