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4 Drive Raid Recommendations

V

vbman213

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Jun 12, 2014
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I have a Dell "Cloud Server" CS24-SC. This is a dual proc. L5420 with 4 3.5" SAS/SATA bays. I've got it loaded with 8GB RAM atm.

I want to turn this into a respectable SAN.

First, this server does not have a hardware raid controller.

I'm looking into the IBM ServeRAID cards (M5015, M1115, M1015, etc.)

Second, I need storage drives.

I have been bashing my head against the wall trying to find the right solution for my needs.

I don't need a lot of storage, only 2TB of usable storage. So my options are RAID 10 with 4x1TB drives or RAIDZ2. I'm open to all options. Although, I imagine that I would get better performance with RAID 10.

I'm looking at 1TB WD 7.2k RE4 SATAs.

What are the recommended drives these days?
 
I recommend HGST deskstars. I have 50 or so at work in linux fileservers all with 3+ years of 24/7 usage and the only failure was a DOA drive. For a similar # of drives in similar linux file servers WDC blacks have had a handful of failures and Seagate 7200.X drives have had dozens of failures over the same time. With that said my sample size is small. I also recommend you look at the blackblaze reports:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/
 
Okay, thanks for the input!

I'm still trying to pick out a RAID card. I've done a lot of research and I'm still not sure what I "need" for this project. I don't need to buy a card that has more bells and whistles than I can physically use in this box.

My gut is telling me I should deploy 4x1TB in RAID10 for both performance and integrity purposes. What would be a great card card for this? I'd also like the card to double as an HBA if I ever decide to play with RAIDZ2
 
With 4 disks, just use Sata (AHCI) and ZFS software raid 10 or raid-Z1.
 
I have a IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode that I'm using for a zfs config. It's an all in one ESXi box the the M1015 is passed through to the vm. it works great.

Integrity is another thing. The RAIDZ2 can loose any 2 drives while the RAID10 is in pairs so if both drives in one pair go down it's all gone. The iops for raid10 should be better though.
some good info on some comparisons here: http://zfsguru.com/forum/buildingyourownzfsserver/570
 
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