Appliance Builder
Build Your ShadowCradle Appliance
Tell us about your environment. We'll recommend the exact hardware you need - and explain why. Every recommendation can be overridden if you know better.
Mode:
1
What Are You Protecting?
Enter the total data size per category.
Windows / Linux Servers
OS + application data
2.00TB
Workstations / Desktops
1.00TB
Databases
SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, etc.
1.00TB
Cloud Apps
Microsoft 365, Google Workspace
0.00TB
NAS / File Sharing
Shared drives, DFS, file servers
0.00TB
Total source data4.0 TB
When in doubt, round up. These sizes assume standard hard drive capacities - actual usable capacity may be slightly higher due to formatting overhead and marketing vs. binary TB differences. Overestimating is expected; your situation may vary. Switch to Advanced if you'd prefer to enter your total storage amount directly.
2
How Long Do You Keep History?
Longer retention means more storage. The right answer depends on your compliance and business requirements.
Retention Period
★ Most common for SMB environments without specific compliance requirements
Daily Data Change Rate
Normal (5%) covers most office environments. High (10%+) applies to active databases, video editing, or heavy transactional systems.
Backup Window
Hours available per night for scheduled backups - drives backup throughput requirement.
3 Months at Normal (~5%) change rate means keeping 18.0 TB of incremental history on top of your 4.0 TB source. Total before admin hold: 22.0 TB.
3
Storage Configuration
We calculate the drive count you need based on your data and retention. You can override any value.
Hard Drive Size
Larger drives = fewer drives for the same capacity = less power and noise. Use NAS/nearline drives (WD Gold, Seagate Exos) - not desktop drives - for 24/7 operation.
Drive Count
Recommended: 5 drives × 8 TB
30.0 TB usableYou need 25.3 TB of usable capacity (data + retention history + 15% admin hold). With 8TB drives and single parity (75% efficiency), each drive contributes 6.0 TB net. We recommend 5 drives → 30.0 TB usable.
Redundancy Mode
With 5 drives, single parity is the right balance - you can lose any one drive and rebuild without data loss. Double parity would waste too much capacity at this scale.
Hot Spare Drives
Standby drives for automatic rebuild on failureNo hot spare configured. If a drive fails, you must source a replacement drive and insert it before rebuild can begin - typically 4–48+ hours. During that window the pool runs degraded. Given the high resilver risk on this configuration, at least 1 hot spare is strongly recommended.
4
Recovery & Performance Goals
Set your recovery time objective and workload intensity. This drives hardware tier selection and the performance analysis shown on the right.
Workload Profile
IOPS target: 5,000 - influences hardware tier recommendation
RTO Target
How fast must recovery complete after a disaster? Aggressive RTOs (≤30 min) require NVMe cache.
Largest Machine to Recover
1 TB
Est. recovery: ~19 min ✓ meets RTOThe biggest single system that must meet your RTO target (up to 20 TB).
5
Virtual Machine Recovery
How many VMs do you want to run simultaneously from backup? We'll recommend the right performance tier.
Concurrent VMs
2
simultaneous VMsPerformance Tier
Recommended: Standard (SSD journal)
For 2 VMs with your workload mix, an SSD write journal prevents storage contention during simultaneous boots. Most recovery scenarios complete 2–4× faster than HDD-only.
6
SSD Grade
Consumer SSDs cost less but wear out faster under sustained write loads. The right choice depends on your daily write volume.
Enterprise-grade recommended for your 205 GB/day write volume. Enterprise SSDs with 1–3 DWPD ratings are engineered for sustained write workloads in 24/7 server environments.
Your Recommended Spec
All values are recommended for your workload
Storage Requirements
Source data4.0 TB
Retention storage22.0 TB
Administrative hold (15%)+ 3.3 TB
Total capacity needed25.3 TB
Storage Pool - Hard Drives
5× 8 TB NAS/Nearline HDD
Single Parity (1-drive fault tolerance)
7200 RPM · SATA 6Gb/s · Usable: 30.0 TB
Recommended: WD Gold or Seagate Exos series
✓ Fits your retention plan
Write Journal - SSD
2× 32 GB SSD (mirrored pair)
Eliminates sync-write latency bottleneck
Protects in-flight writes on power loss
Mirror ensures journal survives single SSD failure
Read Cache - SSD
1× 1 TB SSD
~7.5% of pool as hot-data flash cache
Accelerates VM boot storms and repeated reads
Reduces HDD I/O during active VM sessions
Processor
24 cores / 48 threads minimum
3+ GHz base clock · Est. TDP ~125W
AES-NI (encryption offload) required
VT-x / AMD-V (virtualization) required
Handles 4 backup jobs + 2 live VMs
Memory (RAM)
64 GB DDR4/DDR5 ECC
RDIMM preferred for 64 GB and above
Storage cache: ~30 GB allocated
VM headroom: 2 × 4 GB = 8 GB
ECC required for data integrity
Networking
1× 10GbE NIC minimum recommended
Dual-port NIC for LAN + replication
1GbE or above per replication site
IPMI / iDRAC for remote management
Component Summary
5× 8TB HDD2× 32GB SSD (Journal)1× 1TB SSD (Cache)24-core CPU64 GB ECC RAM10GbE NIC
Power & Environment
Load draw
~254W
Annual energy
~2225 kWh
Power cost/yr
~$289
Noise level
35–44 dB
RAID resilver after one drive failure
~2.8 days
high risk
reads 4 drive(s) @ ~100 MB/s
reads 4 drive(s) @ ~100 MB/s
No hot spare - manual drive replacement required before rebuild
Manageable in a dedicated server closet. Noticeable in a quiet office. Power at $0.13/kWh. Breakdown: HDDs 40W + SSDs 9W + RAM 7W + CPU ~125W.
Expected Performance
Backup Throughput✓ Window met
720 MB/s pool write · 7 MB/s needed (8 hrs window)
Recovery Speed (RTO Check)✓ Meets RTO
~19 min to recover 1 TB · target: 1 hr · SSD cache ~500 MB/s
IOPS (Moderate)✓ Sufficient
80k IOPS available · 5k needed
Optimal Storage Layout
1× 5-drive RAIDZ1 vdev✓ Optimal
Data width: 4 drives/vdev (power-of-2 ✓)
Single vdev - add another vdev group to expand
Total usable: 30.0 TB
Cost Estimate - Gross Approximation
Hardware (one-time est.)~$3,093
Hardware amortized /yr~$492/yr
Annual power cost~$289/yr
Total annual operating~$781/yr
Prices are rough estimates based on typical enterprise hardware costs and vary significantly by vendor, region, and market. This is not a formal quote.
This is a minimum specification. Adding 20–30% headroom (more RAM, larger drives) extends lifespan and handles unexpected growth. ShadowCradle can help finalize your hardware selection.