Finally went to a Hardware Raid5 controller...

B

Blazestorm

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jan 17, 2007
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Got one of the $100 Perc5's off ebay, amazingly enough it worked out of the box on my 945 Gigabyte board... I flashed with LSI firmware and built a 4 x 750 array in 3 hours :D

Planning to order a BBU for it at some point, I'm just happy it's working :D

$100 controller, $30 in cables, $1000 in HDD's :eek:

Quick HD-Tach run...

4raid5.jpg


I was running Software Raid5 in Linux with 4 x 750 drives, that array was full (~30 gigs left), so I built a new array with the Perc5 with 4 x 750 drives, just finished transferring the data, now I gotta swap out parts and add 4 more drives and we'll see what we get.

8 x 750 ... 7200.10 Seagates...

This is the "test-bench" I've had setup because I don't have a case to put it in (the linux server is in the case currently)

 
Looks sweet blazestorm! I'm glad the LSI firmware is working out for you... I just bought another PERC 5/i for my NAS box (going to try to get eight 1TB drives on it). Have you thought about upgrading the 256MB to 512MB?
 
Speed was never a huge concern of mine, I just wanted reliability, you can grab a BBU for these for $30...

I just wanted to get off of linux and software raid...
 
Yeah, once you go hardware RAID, you won't go back. My file server + domain controller has hardware RAID-5 and it just flies, even when under a heavy load.

By the way, RAID-5 is no excuse not to back up!! Since you're on Linux, check out Bacula. My school, being the morons they are, weren't backing up the Blackboard server, and were relying on the RAID-5 for their redundancy. They didn't account for two drives going out at the same time. You can figure out the rest. ;)
 
InorganicMatter said:
Yeah, once you go hardware RAID, you won't go back. My file server + domain controller has hardware RAID-5 and it just flies, even when under a heavy load.

By the way, RAID-5 is no excuse not to back up!! Since you're on Linux, check out Bacula. My school, being the morons they are, weren't backing up the Blackboard server, and were relying on the RAID-5 for their redundancy. They didn't account for two drives going out at the same time. You can figure out the rest. ;)
Click to expand...

I'm actually back to Server 03, only went to linux cause the software raid was 1000x better than Server03's software raid.

And I have a Raid1 for my super-important stuff, which is backed up onto the Raid5 (only about 150GB of super-important stuff) and then on an external HDD...

Then I'll be doing Raid0 for my OS drive w/ 2 7200.11 single platter 320's with no backup, mainly cause I never put anything important there, just programs and OS

Going to add the other 4 drives right now, just moved everything over...
 
reconstruct.jpg


That sound about right? 12 hours to reconstruct from a 4 x 750 to 8 x 750? Even though it's only showing 19% ?
 
Honestly though the PERC 5/i would be a bit faster than that...not that 250mb/s average read speed isn't bad, but I though the processor on those things was pretty quick. Well, you can't argue with $100 though.
 
It might have been cause it's checking consistency in the background.

I'll wait till it's done doing anything and run another test. 50MB/s jump from 4 drives to 8 drives is a little low, but we'll see...

I'm only on gigabit, so it's not really going to matter anyway.
 
Just comparing it to my Areca card...mine only has the 500mhz processor on it and with 8 drives, my average read speed was 362mb/s. Then again, if you are only using gigabit ethernet, then you are fine. I'm moving to 10gbit between my desktop and server myself, but that's another story. :p
You should try some SAS drives out on the thing if you ever get a chance.
 
Not booting off it... just a file-server... got a mediocre 40GB WD drive for the OS

I'm just a kid without a job (anymore), who needed a way to store lots of files...

$50 Rocketfish case
$100 Dell Perc5 off ebay
$30 in cables
$1000 8 x 750GB Seagate 7200.10's
$25 refurb MATX motherboard
$35 P4 + 2 x 512MB ram + Heatsink
Free 630Watt PSU
Free 40GB HDD...

Wooo :)

5tb.jpg
 


Woo all done... (Ghetto-added 3rd HDD cage... will probably drop a 120mm fan in front of that at some point)
 
I added zipties to hold it down (Not in the picture)

In the picture there's only 1 screw holding the top cage to the bottom cage...
 
very nice, your new file server is very [H]ard, thanks for the pics

how do you connect the SATA drives to the Dell Perc5 ?
 
8raid53.jpg


I had a scare with ECC errors on boot-up, I think it was related to trying to underclock my P4 (while the Raid was being accessed) and the array dropped, got a little scared and couldn't get the controller to get past it's BIOS screen, tore it down, reseated the DIMM on the card and reseated the card (I was using zip-ties and it wasn't seated 100% although I doubt that mattered)

After it was all good I ran a quick test to make sure it was still performing well, and it was actually better than before. Going to run some more checks in a bit, and I contacted the ebay seller I got the card off of, and see if I can swap DIMM modules just to be safe...

I'm wondering if there's something limiting the performance though because it never goes above 300MB/s (I did remove all the jumpers off the drives... so they should be running SATA2 / 3.0Gbps

My adventures with hardware raid5 continue... still haven't read a manual... :eek:
 
I have two Perc 5's, ECC errors aren't usually related to overclocking/underclocking of the mobo. I've had that happen and I tested the DIMM on a server mobo at work that can use it and it was indeed bad.

If it happens again I'd pick up a new 512MB module since you have flashed to the LSI firmware, it will help that RAID5 with reads and more importantly writes. Also if you don't have the BBU already it would be a good idea to get it, especially if you are using write back cache. (you don't want data corruption)

I believe for the 512MB you need to get one that is a 1Rx8 configuration of the chips where the stock 256MB module is 1Rx16. Someone can correct me if I am wrong though, I still just have 256MB on my cards.
 
Well the ebay seller already shipped out a replacement... (2 hours after I sent an email...) but I'm pretty sure the underclocking/resetting the FSB dropped the array and caused that error... because I didn't do it through BIOS (Gigabyte BIOS won't let me lower multiplier or FSB =/ )

Already have a BBU cable and was planning to grab a BBU soon...

Do you know where exactly to get a 512mb stick?

Danny Bui - Averaging 265-275 I think... I've been using HD-Tach lately..
 
Just for reference here is my 4x320GB 7200.10 RAID5 array:

barracudas_r5_wbc_cio_ara.JPG
.

And my pride and joy 4x80GB Raptor RAID0 array:

raptors_r0_wbc_cio_ara.JPG


My settings are write back cache, adaptive read ahead, & cached io policy.

EDIT: Here are some HDTach results too.

RAID5 array:

barracudas_r5_wbc_cio_ara2.JPG
.

RAID0 array:

raptors_r0_wbc_cio_ara2.JPG


These almost seem too fast but I did notice that on my RAID0 the average read is exactly 256MB, coincidence my cache is 256MB? Hmm... Lets see what happens when my 512MB cache module comes from NewEgg.
 
@ Blazestorm and thebeephaha

Thank you! Now I'm definitely buying one for myself..........just as soon as I find a sweet deal on 500GB or 750GB drives.:)
 
Just make sure you're motherboard is compatible...

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?t=84882

I got really lucky, never checked the list and I was still good... Gigabyte 945 board... dropped right in, installed Dell MegaRAID software, flashed firmware, setup the initial 4 drive array in the controller's BIOS... then added the 4 drives (took ~26 hours I believe, to add 4 x 750 drives to a live array) in the LSI MegaRAID software (which is pretty sweet)
 
Hi,

Nice specs!!

This is what I get with 2 x Raptor 74Gb 16Mb buffer: 140Mb/s (247Mb/s burst) on my RAID 0 system....

Can this be made faster by adding more drives to the array?

Thanks for your time :)

\\\Jens
 
^ I don't see a pic?

But yes I think you could get more speed with more drives. Or maybe try my settings above I used to get some more speed out of your current array.
 
Thanks for the info blaze, i hope the perc 5/i works in my asus p5ld-vm (rev 1.02) :( glad i found this thread instead of spending sooo much more on my dvd server.

I would recommend against dealextreme as the shipping can take a very long time. I ordered some random crap from there (bluetooth dongles) and they took nearly a month to get here.
 
Yea... I haven't used them... I do know provantage has them, they were labelled "Adaptec" when I got them, came with an LED Backplane header (that's whats wrapped around the cables, as I don't use it)

The cables themselves are labelled Foxconn though

http://www.provantage.com/adaptec-2247600-r~7ADPC19P.htm

http://www.provantage.com/adaptec-2247500-r~7ADPC19N.htm

I bought 1 meter cables (They were actually cheaper), realizing they were longer than I thought they would be now. But I'd rather have too long than not long enough, they're not locking style but they're very secure on my seagate drives.
 
I actually found out that my freebie p5ld2-vm is dead, so i tried with my working p5k-vm instead. On that board, I get nothing (blank screen, tried using an old pci graphics card as well and i don't hear the HDs grind like they normally do when loading windows) without the fix. With the fix, it boots into windows fine, but the card does not show up in device manager at all. Also, the card gets crazy hot....which is odd since it wasn't doing a single thing so I might have a dud. I'm going to test it on an actual server on Monday to verify if I got a dud or not.

If it works, I'll probably be grabbing a P5L-VM.
 
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