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I have an application that involves writing a bunch of records (10M+) to a Neo4j graph, and I'd like for this to happen in as little time as possible. I've moved from a spinning drive to an SSD and that has made a huge difference, but I'd like to take it a step further and put a pair of SSDs in RAID 0.
The data in the graph isn't critical and is replaced often, so the fragility of RAID 0 isn't important. Write speed is all that matters and, as far as I can tell, disk write speed is still my limiting factor.
I don't know much about server hardware or about hardware RAID, so I need some help figuring out what I should do.
My SSD drives are a pair of Samsung 850 Pro (SATA III)
My DB server is one side of an ASUS RS700D-E6/PS8 (acquired from someone [H]ere, thank you very much!). Memory and processors are all maxed out (gloriously).
https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/RS700DE6PS8/ - Manual here
The motherboard has the Intel ICH10R controller, which I understand is limited to <700 MB/s transfer, even with a stripe array of SSDs. The board gives me the option of using either the LSI or the Intel interface to the on-board RAID controller.
The backplane is connected to the motherboard with individual 7-pin SATA connectors. The ends of the cables connecting to the backplane appear to be SAS connectors, but I can't get a good look at them and don't know enough about SAS to say either way.
The motherboard has a single PCI 2.0 x16 slot available through a riser.
The SATA cables coming from the backplane will easily reach any card I plug into the riser.
OS is Ubuntu.
I only need the two SSDs to be fast. Keeping my other drives connected to the ICH10R is fine.
I'd really like to spend less than $300 on a card.
Would an SAS RAID card be able to connect with the SATA cables coming from the backplane with the right adapter?
Would I need different cabling to connect an SAS card to the backplane?
Or is it better to just use a card that has SATA sockets?
Is there any detriment to putting a PCI 3 card in a PCI 2 slot?
I could, conceivably, put the whole system on a 4-member striped array instead of data only on a 2-member array (after I get money for 2 more drives). Would there be an advantage to this?
Can you think of a RAID card that would be a good fit for me?
I look forward to receiving your wisdom.
The data in the graph isn't critical and is replaced often, so the fragility of RAID 0 isn't important. Write speed is all that matters and, as far as I can tell, disk write speed is still my limiting factor.
I don't know much about server hardware or about hardware RAID, so I need some help figuring out what I should do.
My SSD drives are a pair of Samsung 850 Pro (SATA III)
My DB server is one side of an ASUS RS700D-E6/PS8 (acquired from someone [H]ere, thank you very much!). Memory and processors are all maxed out (gloriously).
https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/RS700DE6PS8/ - Manual here
The motherboard has the Intel ICH10R controller, which I understand is limited to <700 MB/s transfer, even with a stripe array of SSDs. The board gives me the option of using either the LSI or the Intel interface to the on-board RAID controller.
The backplane is connected to the motherboard with individual 7-pin SATA connectors. The ends of the cables connecting to the backplane appear to be SAS connectors, but I can't get a good look at them and don't know enough about SAS to say either way.
The motherboard has a single PCI 2.0 x16 slot available through a riser.
The SATA cables coming from the backplane will easily reach any card I plug into the riser.
OS is Ubuntu.
I only need the two SSDs to be fast. Keeping my other drives connected to the ICH10R is fine.
I'd really like to spend less than $300 on a card.
Would an SAS RAID card be able to connect with the SATA cables coming from the backplane with the right adapter?
Would I need different cabling to connect an SAS card to the backplane?
Or is it better to just use a card that has SATA sockets?
Is there any detriment to putting a PCI 3 card in a PCI 2 slot?
I could, conceivably, put the whole system on a 4-member striped array instead of data only on a 2-member array (after I get money for 2 more drives). Would there be an advantage to this?
Can you think of a RAID card that would be a good fit for me?
I look forward to receiving your wisdom.
