inexpensive reliable pcie raid card for data raid1?

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Kirika

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What is an inexpensive pcie reliable raid card for data raid1? I had a Highpoint Rocket Raid in my previous PC it worked fine for years. Is Highpoint still decent? Don't like using motherboard raid 1 just in case I need to move the drives to another PC.
 
I am in the same boat, kind of. We purchased some used servers from DeepDiscountServers and while the SATA2 controller isn't a limitation for the 1TB disks in RAID1, I needed to throw in a single SSD for serving up our imaging solution and it's being bottle necked.

So need a recommendation for a card which most likely will just be used as a SATA3 port, but it would be nice to have some RAID capacity on hand if needed but not a necessity.

Server 2008R2 and low-profile compatibility needed.

Anyone with experience with cards like these?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816150031

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124065

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816129101

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124064
 
On-board is going to be better than those cheap cards. Not sure why you're worried about being able to move things between computers as so long as you're using Intel's integrated RAID, you can move it to any other system with the same thing (read: the majority of computers these days).
 
No, you misunderstand. The server's integrated controller as well as the HP PCI-e controller are both SATA2, a bottle neck for the SSD.

The imaging solution is not transferring disk from PC to PC, we use MDT and do sometimes 10 pc's at a time, all of which in varying states of the process - which can stress not only the GigE, but also the disk at it's current connection speed.

Next goal on top of this is replace the dumb GigE switch with one which allows for teaming so I can remove the NIC as another bottle neck (to a reasonable degree).
 
Hmm, no, going to disagree there. Even with a couple teamed NICs, while you may be NIC or disk limited, in your scenario, SATA itself will not be the limiting factor. If you're doing sequential IO to a single client, you're not going to exceed the connection speed of a single NIC (because TCP). If you're doing random IO to multiple clients, your SSD isn't going to do anywhere near the same speeds and therefore SATA still isn't the limiting factor either.
 
Thank you.

I actually ran into an issue where I had an onboard raid on a motherboard that died and could not move it to a new machine so rather not deal with that again.

I was looking at used IBM M1015 on ebay slightly more expensive then the ones CombatChrisNC listed but they actually are LSI controllers so would have better compatibility like if you were to upgrade to Server 2012 or beyond.

Big question is does IBM M1015 support 6 tb drives?

The ibm page does not say
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0740.html
 
Kirika said:
Thank you.

I actually ran into an issue where I had an onboard raid on a motherboard that died and could not move it to a new machine so rather not deal with that again.

I was looking at used IBM M1015 on ebay slightly more expensive then the ones CombatChrisNC listed but they actually are LSI controllers so would have better compatibility like if you were to upgrade to Server 2012 or beyond.

Big question is does IBM M1015 support 6 tb drives?

The ibm page does not say
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0740.html
Click to expand...

YES!!! I flashed with latest 9240 LSI firmware...
I am not sure IBM firmware support 6TB or not......

be patient..... M1015 should $60-$70 rangish.. or sometimes $50 (got sold quickly).
 
Thank you.

Are you sure about the 9240 firmware?
Ebay lists them as IBM ServeRAID M1015 (LSI SAS 9220-8i)
 
9220 and 9240 are the same thing with and without the parity-RAID option (which you should never use with these cards either way because they are way too slow for parity RAID) and I ran my M1015 with 9240 firmware just fine. Note that the M1015 is not going to have the option regardless of using 9240 firmware as the firmware is not the only difference.

To the other guy asking about cheap cards - the only consumer ones to consider are Marvell chipset based ones. Personally I'd still rather have an LSI card or something in your situation, though.
 
If you're using this with HDs, speed's not an issue. There's no reason an LSI 1068 or similar won't work, and it should be $25ish on Ebay.
 
HammerSandwich said:
If you're using this with HDs, speed's not an issue. There's no reason an LSI 1068 or similar won't work, and it should be $25ish on Ebay.
Click to expand...

Don't buy the 1068 or anything like that unless you never intend to use >2TB drives. If you want to use >2TB then you need SATA III for LSI.

Also, yes, speed does matter even with HDDs. Even with slow-ass HDDs, you shouldn't use parity RAID on "skinny" LSI cards, period. (Edit to note, as it doesn't need another full reply, that parity RAID means RAID-5 and RAID-6 and derivatives -- RAID-0 and RAID-1 and derivatives are OK)
 
Last edited:
Thanks for mentioning the 2TB limit.

I meant that a low-end card has enough speed for RAID1, aka OP's usage.
 
Thanks.

So would I just flash the 1015 with the latest 9240 firmware dated oct 21, 2014 from here to get it to work with 6 tb drives?
 
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