16 x 1TB SATA RAID 5 Suggestions

[cocoDuck]

I would like to build a storage server to accommodate 16 SATA-II drives. I was looking on newegg and saw some internal SATA-II RAID controllers. Is this the only option available if i wanted to set up 16 drives in RAID 5? Is this going to be the most cost effective/reliant way to achieve such a setup?

Can I start with 4 drives and add to the array as I go?

Any suggestions on a case that might house 16 drives?

I know I have lots of questions, but I am psyched to build this beast.

[silent-circuit]

The Coolermaster Stacker series are good for holding a lot of drives (via 4 in to 3 converters) and the larger Lian Li cases could handle 16 drives as well -- for example, the V2xxx cases can handle 12 drives in the bottom bay and an additional 4 in a 4 in to 3 converter -- but they're a good bit more expensive than the Stackers.

Far from your only options -- there are plenty of huge cases out there.

The kinds of controllers you'd be looking at would probably tip the scale at well over $1000 before drives. Try to keep that in mind.

What are you using this for, anyway?

[SockMan!]

The Norco 4020 has 20 hot swap SATA bays and costs about $300.

[Shockey]

The Norco 4020 has 20 hot swap SATA bays and costs about $300.

+1 cheaper than a coolmaster with hot-swaps

[litkaj]

Heh, you're going to kick yourself when two of your drives fail at the same time. Trust me, with 16 drives it WILL happen sooner or later (one will crap out and then a second will die during the rebuild, it happens all the time).

If I were you I'd do RAID 6 with a hot spare, at least that will give you a little more protection.

[Trepidati0n]

Heh, you're going to kick yourself when two of your drives fail at the same time. Trust me, with 16 drives it WILL happen sooner or later (one will crap out and then a second will die during the rebuild, it happens all the time).

If I were you I'd do RAID 6 with a hot spare, at least that will give you a little more protection.

I agree with what you say, but the OP needs to be aware he will still need a backup of the data. Building something like a 16 drive array in any form of RAID is just asking for the loss of all data.

[Danny Bui]

The Norco 4020 has 20 hot swap SATA bays and costs about $300.

+1 cheaper than a coolmaster with hot-swaps

+2 to these suggestions.

20 hot swap bays + case for $300 is an excellent deal considering that a 5in3 hot swap bay costs about $100.

[gjvrieze]

I agree with what you say, but the OP needs to be aware he will still need a backup of the data. Building something like a 16 drive array in any form of RAID is just asking for the loss of all data.

Yup, people forget, RAID is about data availability, not data security, you can NEVER have to much backup... I go with a simple offline single drives, backup... I would recommend Areca or Adaptec RAID controllers to the OP... I use an Areca 1280ML and it serves me very well....

[cocoDuck]

Heh, you're going to kick yourself when two of your drives fail at the same time. Trust me, with 16 drives it WILL happen sooner or later (one will crap out and then a second will die during the rebuild, it happens all the time).

If I were you I'd do RAID 6 with a hot spare, at least that will give you a little more protection.

Really? I will need to backup in addition? That like 3400 DVD-Rs

[gjvrieze]

+2 to these suggestions.

20 hot swap bays + case for $300 is an excellent deal considering that a 5in3 hot swap bay costs about $100.

+3, that is what my Worklog: Plutonium 4, used for a case, it has served me well and I am working on filling it with drives:-)

[gjvrieze]

Really? I will need to backup in addition? That like 3400 DVD-Rs

Or 1 year of the operators time to do the backup, take my lead and get big drives for backup, and just run them in normal JBOD with a simple NTFS formatting.. If you ever need to recover the data, it is a lot easier on a non RAID drive, with simple partitioning...

[litkaj]

Really? I will need to backup in addition? That like 3400 DVD-Rs

I seriously hope that's sarcasm. If not, yes, you still need to backup your data. Accidental deletions happen and RAID won't protect you from that, nor will it protect you from serious hardware failures that take out multiple drives.

I use USB 1TB drives for my long-term backups (turn them on, run rsync, turn them off) and Amazon's S3 for the files that change more often.

[cocoDuck]

Or 1 year of the operators time to do the backup, take my lead and get big drives for backup, and just run them in normal JBOD with a simple NTFS formatting.. If you ever need to recover the data, it is a lot easier on a non RAID drive, with simple partitioning...

Can you expand on your setup. I want to make sure I have fault tolerances in my setup. If I am doing some sort of mirrored backup in addition to the RAID setup, what is the point of the original raid setup?

[Ockie]

Most cost effective is WHS and the most cost effective case is the 4020 norco.

[Menelmarar]

Can you expand on your setup. I want to make sure I have fault tolerances in my setup. If I am doing some sort of mirrored backup in addition to the RAID setup, what is the point of the original raid setup?You don't want instantaneously mirrored backups. You generally want daily/weekly scheduled incremental backups.

RAID is for redundancy, availability. A harddrive goes down, the system still functions, you still have access to data, end-users are uneffected. But it is a limping mode.

As mentioned, RAID does not protect you from viruses, from accidental deletions, from the location where the RAID sit's from going up in flames and toasting your data, or your server being stolen.

[gjvrieze]

Can you expand on your setup. I want to make sure I have fault tolerances in my setup. If I am doing some sort of mirrored backup in addition to the RAID setup, what is the point of the original raid setup?

I run the RAID for speed and the large drive partitioning sizes that I can use because of it... For backup, I use the biggest drives that I have and backup a group of say 1.36TB of data to a 1.5TB drive... I have (5) 1.5TBs right now, and am prolly going to order 3 more.. The larger the backup drives the better, less drive monkeying.... I would never backup a RAID array with another array, that is scary... I also keep the backup offline and unplugged from power when not performing backup...

[cocoDuck]

I seriously hope that's sarcasm. If not, yes, you still need to backup your data. Accidental deletions happen and RAID won't protect you from that, nor will it protect you from serious hardware failures that take out multiple drives.

I use USB 1TB drives for my long-term backups (turn them on, run rsync, turn them off) and Amazon's S3 for the files that change more often.

This is mainly for streaming my video collection to other machines. The data will not really be modified.

Would this be possible?:
Have the RAID server sitting somewhere. Whenever new data comes into the server, some program makes a note of it. Occasionally, I will attach an external drive to which the new data will be copied and then taken off that programs new data list. When these external drives fill up, I will go out and get a new one?

[silent-circuit]

Then it doesn't matter if part of the collection gets temporarily fragged. RAID is not for you. Just get 2x as many drives as you think you will need and set up a system whereby you can plug the others in once a week or something (as others have said) to mirror the current state of the data if anything changed.'

Norton (Symantec) Ghost will do this with incremental backups, no problem.

[gjvrieze]

This is mainly for streaming my video collection to other machines. The data will not really be modified.

Would this be possible?:
Have the RAID server sitting somewhere. Whenever new data comes into the server, some program makes a note of it. Occasionally, I will attach an external drive to which the new data will be copied and then taken off that programs new data list. When these external drives fill up, I will go out and get a new one?

I have not heard of a program that works like, but would like something like that, luckily, by best friends is a developer and working a project for my backup right now:)

[cocoDuck]

Then it doesn't matter if part of the collection gets temporarily fragged. RAID is not for you. Just get 2x as many drives as you think you will need and set up a system whereby you can plug the others in once a week or something (as others have said) to mirror the current state of the data if anything changed.'

Norton (Symantec) Ghost will do this with incremental backups, no problem.

So then the risk is if the drive on the machine dies and so does the backup driv?

[Whisperfang]

The program you want is HERE (http://allwaysync.com/backup.html). You can thank me later. :D

[MrGuvernment]

raid 5 looks nice when you open your OS and see one MASSIVE drive sure, but ya, you dont need it, personally, just plug in individual drives and leave them that way, that way one drive dies, you only loose what is on that one drive.

JBOD is another way, but then if the OS takes a crap, there goes youre data aswell.

[cocoDuck]

Is there a way to make 16 drives look like one on windows? I would like all my movies in one folder, not 16.

I am learning so much. Thanks all!

[silent-circuit]

If you use a front end that isn't trash it doesn't matter if your movies are in one folder or 900000. It'll look like they're all in one place to you.

[XS Janus]

I would definitely go RAID6 +hotspare. HDDs are not dependable, at all.
AND I would definitely build the system with ALL the drives. Why? Because expanding the array will take FOREVER on such a high capacity array
I think the fastest cards like Adaptec 5xxx does recalculations at around 16MiB/s, my 3ware does this at around 4MiB/s, so you do the math

[cocoDuck]

If you use a front end that isn't trash it doesn't matter if your movies are in one folder or 900000. It'll look like they're all in one place to you.

I use YAMJ for my Popcorn hour. Is there any way to use this for media center. Or anything similar you might suggest?

[cocoDuck]

I would definitely go RAID6 +hotspare. HDDs are not dependable, at all.
AND I would definitely build the system with ALL the drives. Why? Because expanding the array will take FOREVER on such a high capacity array
I think the fastest cards like Adaptec 5xxx does recalculations at around 16MiB/s, my 3ware does this at around 4MiB/s, so you do the math

What is the hotspare?

EDIT: Just looked it up. It automatically takes over when the another drive fails.

I really dont want to spend all the money on drives now. How long would it take to add 4tb to a 4tb array? a few hours? I mean the price of drives will drop by the time I need more

[krelkor]

WHS does eveything you need. Get the trial with 3-4 drives and see if you like it

1 folder
raid like redundancy
backups of critical data
backups of client PCs

and I use it to stream to my pocorn hour with YAMJ/myihome

I went from Raid 5 to it, and will never go back to Raid 5 in a home environment.

[Lazn_Work]

What is the hotspare?

EDIT: Just looked it up. It automatically takes over when the another drive fails.

I really dont want to spend all the money on drives now. How long would it take to add 4tb to a 4tb array? a few hours? I mean the price of drives will drop by the time I need more

think weeks not hours to expand the array (days for sure at least)

[DanniBoy]

If you have a lot of $$$$ then get a tape library for backup. =D

[cocoDuck]

WHS does eveything you need. Get the trial with 3-4 drives and see if you like it

1 folder
raid like redundancy
backups of critical data
backups of client PCs

and I use it to stream to my pocorn hour with YAMJ/myihome

I went from Raid 5 to it, and will never go back to Raid 5 in a home environment.

Not sure that solution works for me. However i will study up a bit. Thanks

[epimetheus]

+1 WHS
+1 Norco 4020

I'm using WHS to feed my Popcorn Hour A-110 and backup my other comps. Plus, have you priced a good 16 port (edit:hardware) RAID controller...Ouch.

[houkouonchi]

If you want something more space efficient than WHS and something that will protect you from drive failures better than raid5 and want to go on the cheap then I would suggest:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219021&Tpk=norco%204020

and two of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009

and run linux + mdadm software raid6. With mdadm 2.6.1 and patches it will allow you to do OCE of raid6 but I don't know how much I would trust it, supposedly this feature will be included in 2.6.2!

[DanNeely]

That card's PCIX (not PCIe) though. While it's about $150 cheaper than a PCIe card, you have to weigh that price against having to pay >$200 for a mobo now and the fact that if the board dies in a few years you're probably going to neeed to buy new controller cards then. It'll save money in the short term, but looking towards the future I'm not sure if it's a good idea.

[JRS]

PCI-X will fit in a regular PCI slot, as long as there are not any obstructions immediately behind the PCI slot, such as capacitor - I've got one running like that right now.

However, it is still fighting over the single PCI bus, ~100MB/s max across the bus - so multiple drive access to drives on the PCI bus will be a performance hit.

Getting as many drives onto PCIe will mitigate that problem.

[irrision]

I'd go with the 20bay case mentioned above and Solaris 10 CE with RAIDZ and ZFS. Turn on snapshots for the volume for easy point in time restores if you delete anything (You literally drag a slider back to the snapshot you want and copy and paste out of it to restore a deleted/modified file).

[XS Janus]

There's just no way you can play cheap on this build. From a good and modern RAID card to your hdds, case and drive cages everything comes at a premium. :D

[darkmatter08]

If you just have multimedia on that server, then I would just run a WHS array and be done with it. You can have array expansion easily. The only thing is it is not completely protected like RAID against HW failure. If you turn on file duplication, then you have an expensive RAID 1. But it is multimedia, so I would go without folder duplication and without RAID. If a HDD dies, you only loose the data on that specific drive, and with multimedia it is not a big deal. I would then use a separate server for all non multimedia important files - just something cheap like a small NAS or a FreeNAS machine. Do you really care about the potential risk of re ripping to have to spend significantly extra for what is a "just in case" scenario? Just go with a motherboard with ~6 SATA ports, a PCI controller like the one previously linked, and a 2 or 4 port PCI-E dummy SATA card. That is 16 or more ports, and they can be bought as you need them. Minimal costs at first with just motherboard SATA, then the PCI-X card as you need the extra ports, and then finally the 2 or 4 PCI-E ports as you finish off the server. No painful array rebuilds, and it is significantly cheaper.

-darkmatter08

[Lazn_Work]

I would then use a separate server for all non multimedia important files - just something cheap like a small NAS or a FreeNAS machine.

Why? Just turn on folder duplication for one folder and put important files in that folder, it will be duplicated, but the media will not.

And then, for additional protection use SkyDrive and Gladinet to backup the important data online for free:
http://www.homeserverhacks.com/2008/12/mount-your-skydrive-as-virtual-folder.html

[Trepidati0n]

If you turn on file duplication, then you have an expensive RAID 1.

I don't get this. Could you please find me a "cheap" RAID controller that can do RAID1 across N*2 drives?

Duplication != RAID1

There are very fundamental differences between the two. But I guess if that is how you can wrap your mind around it...we will have to live with such a simple notion.

[darkmatter08]

I don't get this. Could you please find me a "cheap" RAID controller that can do RAID1 across N*2 drives?

Duplication != RAID1

There are very fundamental differences between the two. But I guess if that is how you can wrap your mind around it...we will have to live with such a simple notion.


Well for what he is doing, yes it would be RAID 1. He was originally looking to use a RAID array so he could protect against HDD failures. He would essentially be doing the same thing in a WHS server by enabling file duplication for the entire server contents. Now I never said that in all cases it is a RAID 1 array, I misspoke. It is a RAID 1 array for the kind of task he is thinking about.

Why? Just turn on folder duplication for one folder and put important files in that folder, it will be duplicated, but the media will not.

And then, for additional protection use SkyDrive and Gladinet to backup the important data online for free:



I suggested a separate server for the important data files so you could actually run a RAID 1 array, but I see your logic. You could do it with that method.

[spectrumbx]

I would like to build a storage server to accommodate 16 SATA-II drives. I was looking on newegg and saw some internal SATA-II RAID controllers. Is this the only option available if i wanted to set up 16 drives in RAID 5? Is this going to be the most cost effective/reliant way to achieve such a setup?

Can I start with 4 drives and add to the array as I go?

Any suggestions on a case that might house 16 drives?

I know I have lots of questions, but I am psyched to build this beast.

WHS + FlexRAID
or
Linux + MHDDFS + FlexRAID

http://www.openegg.org/forums/posts/list/88.page

:)

[cocoDuck]

After all the great comments, I have rethought my setup. I now want to make a JBOD file server to which I would add 1TB disks and Sata cards as needed. What is a good motherboard that would allow me to add a few of these cheap non-raid sata cards?

[irrision]

Are you planning on running WHS on a 16drive array? Keep in mind without some form of parity raid and disk scrubbing you are asking for slow corruption of your data as those drives fail (chances of failure over time with 16 sata drives is inevitable). I'd still strongly recommend you try Solaris 10 CE which is free and setup a RAIDZ array with it, you'd get disk scrubbing, parity raid, and much better performance than WHS not to mention iSCSI and Snapshot capability. WHS really wasn't designed to manage the size of array you are looking at (though I'm sure it would work) and I'd question the long term reliability of going that route.

[XS Janus]

If I was going with that amount of HDDs in JBOD and taking my luck into account... I would expect at least 1 HDD failure per year. Meaning 1TB of data lost randomly. o_0
Better catalogue files you have so you can replace them later...

[cocoDuck]

If I was going with that amount of HDDs in JBOD and taking my luck into account... I would expect at least 1 HDD failure per year. Meaning 1TB of data lost randomly. o_0
Better catalogue files you have so you can replace them later...

I would backup each drive to another drive when it got full.

[XS Janus]

Thats a good plan, and a lot similar to RAID 1
:)