• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Choose Two Raid Cards

B

bekax5

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 4, 2012
Messages
132
Hello all.

I am building a Server system and i want it to have some raid features, so i come here looking for assistance from you with more knowledge than me.


The server is a "mid-low" power consumption,
It's an Opteron 175 Socket 939
Placed on a Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
And Has 2GB DDR 250MHz
My network is all based on Gigabit
This server will run a few low specs Virtual Machines as it is doing at this moment.
It will be a File Server as its main feature.


Well first of all i was using WHS for 3 years and i've had some problems with disks dying.
And one thing i dont like is the necessity to always keep an eye on this, so i want parity for my server so that i dont need to worry to change disks when one drive dies, i want the server to do this for me.


Well, i want Two Raid Cards, one for System Drives and another for Data drives.
The System will probably hold this scenario:
2x 120GB Raid-5/6 + 1x 120GB Parity + 1x 120GB Hot-Spare
The Data will hold this scenario:
2x 2TB Raid-5 + 1x 2TB Parity + 1x Hot-Spare (Will be Adding more 2TB disks later)




My idea for System Raid Card it a capable of Raid-5 PCIe 1x which i can find easily in case it dies for change.

I liked this one but i can't find it anywhere and i want an easy findable for a replacement case:
Areca ARC-1201

So i probably will go with this:
RocketRAID 2640X1




The Data Raid Card

This is where i want help from you,

I searched for Areca and Adaptec but all those are expensive and i can't find used versions of these.

What card can you guys tell me which has this specs?
I want a 4/8x PCIe with 8-Port (2x miniSAS) Raid-5
Can be a used card!
Also should be RoC (Raid on Chip) because i don't want the Opteron to be handling Parity calculations.
This card should also be capable of carving, or create several volumes from the same Array as i will be using MBR Partitions and not GPT.




A Question apart from this:
I read somewhere that RocketRaid 2640x1 was not RoC (Raid on Chip).
Is this true ? Will the Raid-5 be calculated by my main processor or will it be calculated from the Marvell 88SE6445 processor the card has?


Thanks in advance.
Regards.
 
If you are going to purchase a high quality card such as an Areca that supports Raid6, instead of doing R5+HS you would save yourself some headaches by going R6. R6 will be able to survive any 2 drives failing, R5 if can only handle 1, and if something goes wrong with the rebuild (like a second failure) you are screwed. As to needing 2 cards, if you get something like an 1880i or an 1882, you can do 8 drives off the basic controller so you can have your system raid and your data raid on the same card. As to why you don't see many used, people in general seem to hang onto their areca cards for the long term. You may find an older card like a 12x0/1 series, but you might as well get the 188x unless the older price is really right. What OS are you planning on running on the server? As to not wanting to worry about changing drives when one dies, you really need to do this as soon as you can so the rebuild starts and you gain the safety margin back that the R6 offers you. You have to keep in mind that RAID is not some panacea or replacement for backup, it is simply a technology maximizing uptime and availability. One other thing, if you are running Windows as your OS (and especially a server version) I would upgrade the RAM past 2GB.
 
Last edited:
Before all thanks your fast answer.


I will be using WHS (Windows Server 2003 based)

The question about 2GB is that it's 32-bit based, so i am unsure how it will handle under 4GB.
At the moment it is running 3 VM's ,one of them windows xp for development purpuses, 1 ubuntu, and 1 for Deployment OS. file server, ssh, ftp, dns, dhcp and a tv service
I don't plan to add much new features requesting much more hardware so i am basicly near the hardware limit but also making all i need of it.

I know it is not backup,
it is more of a redundancy i am lookin for in my system and also a "not need to worry" with disks.
If any drive fails i want to buy a new one, put it is server and it handles everything for me. :D



I would like to be adding more disks to the Data Array later, so i would need at least 8-port for Data.
What do you think about RocketRaid 2640 + Areca 1222
About the cards you mentioned i think they are "overspec" for my needs.
As you said, Raid6 may be a nice option but Raid Card Sata3 increases the price more than i think it's necessary for my needs.

Do you think Raid5 + HS for system will get me many troubles?


Thanks and Regards.
 
Why would you need 2 raid cards? Are you physically out of ports? I would perfer to get a single good card then 2 older/lower ones. Probably not much of a price difference when you consider that anyways.

An areca 16/18xx would be better off then the 12xx or RocketRaid. I would avoid the rocketraid anyways. It's software raid afaik unless something has changed. I avoid software-type raid where possible. It's just not worth the hassle. Either let the OS handle it (jbod + md/zfs) or do a true hardware. I'm sure there's a windows equivalent but I've never personally used windows server for storage. This is especially true since you were looking at an areca for 'easy replacement'. And on that note... areca's are interchangeable. All the mainstream cards I have used, as long as you are using updated drivers you can just drop another card in and everything should be fine.

I've dropped in and swapped 12xx, 16xx and 18xx cards on multiple boxes and operating systems (including ESXi and OI) without a single issue raised. So unlike other software-type, finding an exact replacement isn't really necessary.

Like it was said, people tend to keep areca cards for a long time. They are very solid and generally reliable. So that's probably the main reason you don't see a lot of used cards floating around.

The specs you posted are pretty overkill. I'm also pretty inefficient. 2 drives + raid + hotswap? There is no point in having a raid5+hotswap when you are talking only about a single array. It would actually be worse since if anything fails you'll be reslivering that hotswap if something fails. You also don't get any of the performance benefits from having another active drive. I guess you could say may take a write hit with R6 compared to R5.

If I were you, I would be looking 2x120gb and RAID 1 them for the system drives. Or even 3x120gb with RAID 1. With the remaining 6 drives, raid6. 4 effective drives with 2 parity. No hotswap. If you are dead set on having multiple cards and hotswap, then raid 1 as many system drives as you like on a controller. No hotswap on that. And RAID6 your data with a hotswap. IMO, hotswaps are only useful if you got the same drives in multiple arrays. For what you listed, it's not doing anything but wasting a port for you.
 
About the HP, i looked at its specs and speed and i think it is too low for this needs.


I was looking for that rocketraid because i thought it was Hardware Raid and not Software.

In that aspect i changed my mind.
I think i will go with that Raid6 System and not Raid1 not only because of speeds but also storage capability.

The reason i was looking for Dual Cards is because i only have x1 PCIe and x8 PCIe free.
So that way i could hold the system Raid in the x1 and let the 8-port in the x8 for all the Data disks and future expansion.

Anyway I am starting to like areca more than the others :)
I also like the idea of interchange between cards.
That way i guess i will have a more secure Data in case of a Card Failure.

How much would a 12-Port Areca card cost new and used ?

As you seem to have used alot of Areca cards, can you tell me if you can create as much Volumes as you want inside a Raid-6 Array ?

Thanks and regards.
 
You can usually get the 12 port versions for a couple of hundred dollars more. With the 1882 the 8 is ~650 and the 12 is about ~9. Since this is a SAS card (whether or not you are using SATA drives) you can get the 8 port now, and when you need to expand then just purchase a SAS expander (24 port-36 port usually run 220-360) which will expand the number of drives you can attach to the controller. Or you can buy the 8 port AND an expander now if you wish for not all that much more than a 12 port alone. As to the 2GB/4GB upgrade, 32 bit Windows OS's (without PAE) can usually directly address 3-3.5GB (depending on chipset) of RAM in the 32bit version so 4GB is the sweet spot for that. In any case, for WHS microsoft is specifying 4GB as Max http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...px#physical_memory_limits_windows_home_server
 
Last edited:
Ok guys, i think i have made my mind.

In fact, RocketRaid is worse than i was initialy thinking.

So this way i'm going for one Areca controlling all System + Data.
Perhaps later i will be adding SAS expander, but for now i will hold at least 1 year with the space i'm going to have.
I'm pointing to 6TB usable space...

By the way, is the difference between ARC-1222 / ARC1223 / ARC-16/18xx
that significant ?
I would use the extra money i spend on the 16/18xx heheh

The Intel IOP348 is also Raid On Chip correct ?
So why they difference the 1223 CPU as Raid-on-Chip 800MHz ??

Last question, Areca Cards can make more than 2 volumes in 1 Array ?


Thank you for all,
Regards.
 
The 1212/1222 are 4/8 drive models of the same card with DDR2-533 256M Cache, and no external port availability (for external arrays should you expand). The 1213/1223 is a newer card available in both 4/8 drive models, with DDR2-800 512M cache and available in internal and external port versions. The 1680s are older cards (still available though) available in up to 24 intermal/external versions. (The first 1212/1222/1680 are IOP348 800/800/1200 the 1223 does not specify the ROC but I believe it is a PMC Sierra or LSI) The 1882 is the fastest of these using a next gen Dual-Core 800MHz ROC and available in multiple cache sizes. I personally have never created more than 6 volumes on any particular raidset, but especially on a 6TB array I cannot see you running out of space. Theoretically I believe you can have up to 255 primary/extended/nondos. Unless you have a particular reason (different filesystems, etc) you might as well just make 1 NTFS volume to make your life easier and then you can assign quotas/security rights via the OS. If you have the $$$ I would buy the 1882 (or even 1880) 8 drive model now. Start with the fastest and it will last you the longest, it is not something you will just toss with your next build.
 
Last edited:
I am very pointed to the ARC-1223-8i which is the card that in my case seems to offer the best price/quality ratio i am in search off.


I thank you all for the explanations.

My best regards to all.
 
bekax5 said:
I am very pointed to the ARC-1223-8i which is the card that in my case seems to offer the best price/quality ratio i am in search off.


I thank you all for the explanations.

My best regards to all.
Click to expand...

I don't know how soon you plan the purchase, but if you sign up for the newegg newsletters they every month or so send out coupon codes for 15% off RAID cards. Also, wherever you choose to order from, see if they have a link on the HardOCP Commissioned buying links and if so order it through that link, it helps keep this site free. http://hardforum.com/announcement.php?f=116&a=92
 
mwroobel said:
I don't know how soon you plan the purchase, but if you sign up for the newegg newsletters they every month or so send out coupon codes for 15% off RAID cards. Also, wherever you choose to order from, see if they have a link on the HardOCP Commissioned buying links and if so order it through that link, it helps keep this site free. http://hardforum.com/announcement.php?f=116&a=92
Click to expand...

This is an interesting situation.

The thing is, i am from Portugal :p
Unfortunately they don't ship internationaly =(

Anyway, thank you for trying to help.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top