Cheapest way to achieve hardware based RAID 5?

E

eldiet

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 5, 2001
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So ive got it in my head I want to build a 1 Terabyte Fileserver. But of course I dont have a ton of cash I'd like to do this for as little money as possible. Affordability is the biggest issue.

What ever way i go i'm going to need at least a 5 channel raid controller.

So far i was looking at 8x 160 gig sata hdd's with the Highpoint RocketRAID 1820, it is a pci-x card but it says its backwards compatable with standard pci.

I'm open to any suggestions, I have very little practicle experience with raid, its all book learnin. So any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
I know yoiu said hardware, but I'm just curious as to why you are going that route. Linux software raid is very reliable and plenty fast enough for a fileserver.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love hardware raid of that magnitude, but if you're tight on budget, Linux is free, shitty old PC is free, ATA cards are cheap. All you have to pay for is the drives.

Just another angle to consider :)

I've been running a raid5 array with 80*5 for about 1 year now and had 0 problems. PLus it was a fun learning experience :D
 
I appreciate any suggestions. and i'll look into linux with software raid.... do they support maxtor ide controllers?



I also appreciate the RAIDCore 4852 controller, but as i mentioned the affordability is the primary concern.
 
I just purchased the Promise FastTrack FX4000 for just over 140 at Newegg. RAID 5 and also supports upto 256 MB user installed memory. I droped on stick of Crucial 256 SDRAM and three 40 gig Samsung SpinPoint Light and Slim drives onto the card and it's working great under Win2k server. I am going to add a fourth Samsung drive soon to increase the performance a bit. Right now I'm running RAID 5 with three drives. In all the cost was about 350 bucks that is including the 256 MB stick of RAM too.
 
Originally posted by Private Citizen
I just purchased the Promise FastTrack FX4000 for just over 140 at Newegg. RAID 5 and also supports upto 256 MB user installed memory. I droped on stick of Crucial 256 SDRAM and three 40 gig Samsung SpinPoint Light and Slim drives onto the card and it's working great under Win2k server. I am going to add a fourth Samsung drive soon to increase the performance a bit. Right now I'm running RAID 5 with three drives. In all the cost was about 350 bucks that is including the 256 MB stick of RAM too.
Click to expand...

I have the same card w/ four 200GB WD SE's in RAID 5 and it works great. I only have 128MB of memory currently installed because that is the largest available stick I had at the time...
 
Originally posted by ShockValue
I know yoiu said hardware, but I'm just curious as to why you are going that route. Linux software raid is very reliable and plenty fast enough for a fileserver.
Click to expand...
Reliable? yes. Fast enough? That's a matter of opinion.

The Linux/RAID 5 bonnie benchmarks I saw are on the order of 1.9x faster than a single drive. If you look at the benchmarks in the link above, a true hardware RAID 5 controller is much, much faster.
 
Originally posted by eldiet
So ive got it in my head I want to build a 1 Terabyte Fileserver. But of course I dont have a ton of cash I'd like to do this for as little money as possible. Affordability is the biggest issue.

What ever way i go i'm going to need at least a 5 channel raid controller.

So far i was looking at 8x 160 gig sata hdd's with the Highpoint RocketRAID 1820, it is a pci-x card but it says its backwards compatable with standard pci.

I'm open to any suggestions, I have very little practicle experience with raid, its all book learnin. So any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Click to expand...

If you are going to spend this kind of money on drives, get a decent board with PCI-X and ECC Memory at least to go with it. I mean AthlonMP boards are under $200 and I'm sure you have at least one fast Athlon around, or if not you can get one for under $100, if not a pair of AthlonMPs.
 
Originally posted by marka211
I dont know how good or bad the company is, but lacie has a 1 terabyte external hard drive. Here is the link:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10118
Click to expand...


- no data security cuz it's only JBOD (maybe lacie is insane and it's RAID0 :eek: )

- portable, you can drop it ... data gone

- Firewire and USB 2.0 - both Slow compared to a RAID5 controller

- Not available

- Costs bout twice as much as a RAID5 solution



... bad idea to buy one of these
 
Originally posted by PHUNBALL
I have the same card w/ four 200GB WD SE's in RAID 5 and it works great. I only have 128MB of memory currently installed because that is the largest available stick I had at the time...
Click to expand...

How are your load times with Windows with four drives? What OS are you running?

Like I said in the earlier post, I am using three Samsungs (most reliable drives I have ever seen[very underrated]) and the load times for Win2K Server blows with the three drive config. I mean I am talking about two to three minutes!! I am thinking the three drive config is holding me up here. I am going to purchase a fourth Samsung tomorrow and see how it goes. RAID five and better are the ONLY ways for me to go now since I lost 10 gigs of software, patches, txt files with serial numbers, emails, resumes, *vids, and etc.
 
Originally posted by Private Citizen
I just purchased the Promise FastTrack FX4000 for just over 140 at Newegg. RAID 5 and also supports upto 256 MB user installed memory. I droped on stick of Crucial 256 SDRAM and three 40 gig Samsung SpinPoint Light and Slim drives onto the card and it's working great under Win2k server. I am going to add a fourth Samsung drive soon to increase the performance a bit. Right now I'm running RAID 5 with three drives. In all the cost was about 350 bucks that is including the 256 MB stick of RAM too.
Click to expand...

I've heard that 3ware is king of PATA RAID 5. How does the Promise FastTrack FX4000 rival it?

And why a terrabyte? Are you seriously up to around 800gb of used space? Just wondering if you're going for the number or will use all that space...(and I don't doubt you will).

-fool
 
I use IBM serveraid cards. I have a serveraid 2 and 3h. Both can be had for under 35 bucks on ebay. The serveraid 2 has one external port and 2 internal. The 3h has one internal and 2 external lvd. This is a 64 bit card, but it also works in 32bit pci slots. I like them alot. I have 2 external scsi enclosures and one 6 bay internal that im working on now. The 3h supports 45 devices. Very nice card, you can also get the 3hb, that gives you a battery backup with more memory in case of power failure.
 
this is running 2 scsi cards (non raid) setup with linux software raid5 - speed isn't an issue for me, though (everything done over network) - it's been fairly cheap for me so far, actual parts bought, about 500$

serverall.jpg
 
Originally posted by fool_10
I've heard that 3ware is king of PATA RAID 5. How does the Promise FastTrack FX4000 rival it?

And why a terrabyte? Are you seriously up to around 800gb of used space? Just wondering if you're going for the number or will use all that space...(and I don't doubt you will).

-fool
Click to expand...

Its true 1 terabyte is just a nice even number i picked. But the idea is for it to co-exist with my HTPC.. So its gonna store a full compliment of music, movies, and recorded tv.. I dont believe 1 terabyte is overkill.. It will get used, and i will probably be running out of disk space again soon enough..

Thanks for the recommendations, if I were to get a 64 bit pci card, where could i find an affordable mobo that will facilitate it?
 
Originally posted by Private Citizen
How are your load times with Windows with four drives? What OS are you running?

Like I said in the earlier post, I am using three Samsungs (most reliable drives I have ever seen[very underrated]) and the load times for Win2K Server blows with the three drive config. I mean I am talking about two to three minutes!! I am thinking the three drive config is holding me up here. I am going to purchase a fourth Samsung tomorrow and see how it goes. RAID five and better are the ONLY ways for me to go now since I lost 10 gigs of software, patches, txt files with serial numbers, emails, resumes, *vids, and etc.
Click to expand...

My load times are fine, but I only use the array for data. The OS runs off a seperate Ultra2 SCSI controller with two 9GB 10k SCSI drives in software RAID1. OS is W2k3...
 
Originally posted by eldiet
Its true 1 terabyte is just a nice even number i picked. But the idea is for it to co-exist with my HTPC.. So its gonna store a full compliment of music, movies, and recorded tv.. I dont believe 1 terabyte is overkill.. It will get used, and i will probably be running out of disk space again soon enough..

Thanks for the recommendations, if I were to get a 64 bit pci card, where could i find an affordable mobo that will facilitate it?
Click to expand...

Ok, just checking. Sounds like a plan. One TB is a good number too. :D

-fool
 
If this is for an HTPC then you should check out some of the topics on avsforum regarding some HTPC specific issues that you need to consider.

1. Since most of your stuff is going to be transferred over a network you don't really care that much about speed, so a linux software raid solution is viable.

2. You are going to have to "refresh" the drives every once in and while in order to maintain data integrity. There is a problem with storing a chunk of data on a set of drives for a long period time without ever making a modification to the data (i.e. MP3s, DVDs, etc.). Basically, the magnetic charges storing the data lose their field strength after a while unless the data is re-written. So even though you have a RAID setup, it is very easy to have a multiple drive data failure due to this problem. There are people working on drive refresh utilities for linux, those utilities are free. If you run Windows you gotta pay out the ass.

3. Given the above two issues, I would suggest that you bite the bullet and learn how to setup and manage software RAID under linux. It's a pain in the ass the first time around, but ultimately I think it's a better solution.
 
hmm. ok, well if we're going software raid, do you think 160 gig 5400 rpm drives would be fine for what i'm doing? That'd save me a good amount (edit: nm 54k drives seem to be only about $5 less than 72k). (and i've got enough ide controllers laying around).


also how easy is it to rebuild a software raid if a drive fails? I guess it'll give me a good excuse to learn linux.
 
Not sure how easy it is to rebuild. Thanking my lucky stars I've never had to do it. 1.5 years on linux software raid, and so far not a glitch.
(5x80Gig, but it's almost time to upgrade.)

54000x160 drives would be fine. I personally have a mix of drives, a couple 5400's, a couple 7200's and even a WD "Special Edition". I just bought whatever drives that I could get for cheap off of people on this very message board :)
 
you have another proponent for the software raid solution here. I run a fileserver with 12x 9.1Gb scsi drives, and use VINUM to do raid on it, and I really cant complain. the money i saved from buying a bigass raid controller allowed me to get more drives and some other stuff. and it works fine for me. I have 3 10/100 network cards bonded together on the box, and I Can stream movies to my HTPC, and to other computers in the house without a hitch.
 
personally i think you have more control over the software linux raid... my advice to you is to get linux running properly then setup the raid stuff (it's uber easy depending on what method you use). Before you finalize everything, play with the raid system... simulate a drive failure (boot up with a HD missing) - reformat, clear out the old HD and replace it back in and see if you can rebuild your stuff... once you know what to do in an emergency, you'll be set... i built and rebuilt my array probably 25 times before i figured out everything and set it up the way i want.... also if using raid5, there are a few tricks to get alot faster data access... like options to use when formatting the raid drive to optimize read/writes with your chosen block size

There's also neat things you can do, like if more than one drive fails, you can use the same HDs and config file to setup a new raid array and 9 times out of 10 it attempts to rebuild all the data it can find... obviously there will be holes in the data all over the place, but sometimes it works well enough to recover partial data...

If you get stuck and need help with linux/raid gimme a holler and i'll try to help :)
tuff<at>53buick<dot>com
 
oh btw, the server i use is running a 500mhz p3 with 384 ram and just one net connection.... 16 47gig scsi drives. I average about 4-8MB/s constant (~70% usage on a 100Mbit line)
The raid system generally uses 1-5% of the proc. while just sending the stuff over the network takes more like 20%
 
Originally posted by snatch
If this is for an HTPC then you should check out some of the topics on avsforum regarding some HTPC specific issues that you need to consider.

1. Since most of your stuff is going to be transferred over a network you don't really care that much about speed, so a linux software raid solution is viable.

2. You are going to have to "refresh" the drives every once in and while in order to maintain data integrity. There is a problem with storing a chunk of data on a set of drives for a long period time without ever making a modification to the data (i.e. MP3s, DVDs, etc.). Basically, the magnetic charges storing the data lose their field strength after a while unless the data is re-written. So even though you have a RAID setup, it is very easy to have a multiple drive data failure due to this problem. There are people working on drive refresh utilities for linux, those utilities are free. If you run Windows you gotta pay out the ass.

3. Given the above two issues, I would suggest that you bite the bullet and learn how to setup and manage software RAID under linux. It's a pain in the ass the first time around, but ultimately I think it's a better solution.
Click to expand...


defraging/playing the files/ getting new files does not refresh the drive??
 
there is no defragging in linux... different data storage system there...
and for a TB of data, there's some stuff that wont get touched all that often
 
Originally posted by Anarchy
Get the RAIDCore 4852

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20031114/index.html

Has 8 Channels and a damn lot of features that the Highpoint doesn't have ... and this time the THG review is some kinda ueseful ( OMG :eek: )

Price - 365$

Someone in the 2cpu.com forums is benchmarking one and it's damn fast :)
Click to expand...
I second this
Originally posted by 86reddawg
this is running 2 scsi cards (non raid) setup with linux software raid5 - speed isn't an issue for me, though (everything done over network) - it's been fairly cheap for me so far, actual parts bought, about 500$
Click to expand...
Those aren't what I think they are...are they?
full height 5.25" seagates?
 
Originally posted by 86reddawg
oh btw, the server i use is running a 500mhz p3 with 384 ram and just one net connection.... 16 47gig scsi drives. I average about 4-8MB/s constant (~70% usage on a 100Mbit line)
The raid system generally uses 1-5% of the proc. while just sending the stuff over the network takes more like 20%
Click to expand...
wow..the 47gb elite drives?
I thought I was crazy having 5 of them...
I never had good speed with those..
what kind of controller are you using them on?
 
nothing fancy, 2 adaptec ultra wide scsi2's on them... max of 40MB/s on either chain, but this is just a media server that i use to stream movies/mp3s/tvshows so maxing out a 100mbit line isn't hard... using ftp, i've reached speeds of 9MB/s peak and 7.5MB/s sustained over a gig transfer

i've got a semi-project log of the buildup here if you wanna see:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=678020
 
Originally posted by 86reddawg
nothing fancy, 2 adaptec ultra wide scsi2's on them... max of 40MB/s on either chain, but this is just a media server that i use to stream movies/mp3s/tvshows so maxing out a 100mbit line isn't hard... using ftp, i've reached speeds of 9MB/s peak and 7.5MB/s sustained over a gig transfer

i've got a semi-project log of the buildup here if you wanna see:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=678020
Click to expand...
wonder how well a dual channel ibm serveraid 2 would run with those.
Run one array across seperate channels
 
that's how mine is running right now, and i can tell you i didn't notice that much performance increase, but i am running 8 devices per chain - i looked for info online while building this server, and i didn't find any... you're gonna be on your own for data speeds for your specific combination
 
Originally posted by 86reddawg
that's how mine is running right now, and i can tell you i didn't notice that much performance increase, but i am running 8 devices per chain - i looked for info online while building this server, and i didn't find any... you're gonna be on your own for data speeds for your specific combination
Click to expand...
oh I actually sold my drives last year, and replaced them with 12x73gb fibre channel drives with a mylex extremeraid 3000, with dual loops..
I was just wondering if a true raid controller would make any difference in performance on those drives, with that many of them.
 
ya know, i dunno, i saw reports that with more than 100 people accessing it at once, the raid card would start to outshine the software raid, but specific testing, i dunno, was too cheap to get an actual raid card... however if someone is offering one for free....;)
 
Originally posted by 86reddawg
ya know, i dunno, i saw reports that with more than 100 people accessing it at once, the raid card would start to outshine the software raid, but specific testing, i dunno, was too cheap to get an actual raid card... however if someone is offering one for free....;)
Click to expand...
I don't have one for free, but it's less than $20;)
 
i think if i were to upgrade the system (actually spend money for it) i'd also step up to at least 2 channels running something faster than 40MB/s, but as it is, i don't have a need for something that fast, as *all* data (incoming and outgoing) goes through the network off of that server, so really i could get away with a final output of 12.5 MB/s and still saturate a 100Mbit connection
 
yea, linux software raid 5 though currently 13 of the hds... turns out 3 were bad, plus the spare was bad - by the time i got everything situated, it was too late to return them (besides the fact that it would cost me 35$ to send them back) so here i am needing at least 3 more to complete the array, and last night i dipped into the double digits... only 92 gig left on the array!

at some point i'm gonna get 3-4 more of those HDs, and i've already got 2 WD 120gigs that i'm gonna throw in and setup one partition as a blank disk, ready to repair at anytime with 3 more partitions used for even more stoage on the array, but it takes along time to resize the array, so i wanted to do everything at once... unfortunately unless an uber deal comes around, i'm too broke to spend 100$ on 4 more HDs.

i already used and tested raidreconf for expanding the raid sizes once from 7 to 13 drives, and it worked perfectly (despite the warnings on the website). I even documented my results:
http://24.92.76.105/~josh/server/raidresize
 
Originally posted by 86reddawg
yea, linux software raid 5 though currently 13 of the hds... turns out 3 were bad, plus the spare was bad - by the time i got everything situated, it was too late to return them (besides the fact that it would cost me 35$ to send them back) so here i am needing at least 3 more to complete the array, and last night i dipped into the double digits... only 92 gig left on the array!

at some point i'm gonna get 3-4 more of those HDs, and i've already got 2 WD 120gigs that i'm gonna throw in and setup one partition as a blank disk, ready to repair at anytime with 3 more partitions used for even more stoage on the array, but it takes along time to resize the array, so i wanted to do everything at once... unfortunately unless an uber deal comes around, i'm too broke to spend 100$ on 4 more HDs.

i already used and tested raidreconf for expanding the raid sizes once from 7 to 13 drives, and it worked perfectly (despite the warnings on the website). I even documented my results:
http://24.92.76.105/~josh/server/raidresize
Click to expand...
i've seen them going for under $50 for a pack of 4 recently.
Maybe with true raid card, you'd be pushing $100..
 
cheapest i saw them was for ~45$, set of 4 plus 30 in shipping, but that was from surplus computers.com - i'll never deal with them again, especially now that the site gives no warranty on them - if i could just stop by and pick them up, that wouldn't be so bad - it's the shipping that's the killer
 
Where would you get a motherboard with PCI X and/ or a 64 bit PCI slot? The only thing I know is that G4s have 64 bit PCIs but I don't know where to get a board for a PC or if a RAIDCore 4852 would be compat with a mac. I would like to get an AMD board since I wouldn't need the extra power of a P4.
 
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