Choosing controller card for WHS

[HammerSandwich]

Have a 2yo WHS custom build. E4500 on a GA-P35-DS3R. System drive is a WD5000AAKS, and there are 5 data drives (mix of 750GBs & 1TBs). Also have a few spare HDs retired from other PCs, so it's time to expand the server.

Goals:

1. At least 4 more SATA ports
2. Hardware RAID1 for the system drive
3. Minimal management
4. Reliability

The system ran OS RAID1 from the beginning. This passed pre-deployment testing with flying colors but recently failed with a dying drive. Not sure exactly what got corrupted, but the system went down hard & did not allow a recovery install. Copying all of the data from the old drives caused a lot of downtime, and I'm hoping we can avoid that with a hardware RAID.

I'd prefer adding a single card now that can support a 2-drive RAID1 for the system and pass the remaining ports through for WHS to manage. Using 2 different cards would be okay, if they're easier to manage and combined price is like 1 fancy card's.

The box currently has a vidcard in the x16 slot, but we can replace that with a PCI card to use an x8 controller. I'm not really worried about controller performance, because this box will never have more than 1 GigE port.

So, what cards do you folks like?

 

[pjkenned]

Are you looking for more from the controller than Raid 1? If not, are you sure your motherboard doesn't support Raid 1? If so, use the motherboard for your raid 1 array and pass the JBOD disks through to WHS. That setup would allow you to use almost anything. Do you have any open PCIe slots or just PCI? For so few drives and ports, you have lots of options.

 

[sub.mesa]

You can have a look at Areca ARC-1200; it has 2 ports iirc, and is a hardware RAID solution (no Intel IOP though).

Personally i would prefer a hardware-less RAID setup; as now you would depend on a specific piece of hardware; the controller. If it fails you in any way; you're still screwed. With software RAID you do not depend on any specific piece of hardware.

However, given that you had problems using it, i can imagine you want something different.

 

[HammerSandwich]

This is the motherboard. Currently has 3x PCI & 3x PCIe x1 slots open, but I'm willing to switch vidcards to use the x16 for a controller.

No need for other RAID levels, as I'm happy with WHS's drive expansion for the data pool. Mobo supports RAID1 through both the ICH9R & Jmicron (IIRC...) chips, but I'd prefer hardware RAID to an unsupported configuration at this point.

The box currently has 6 HDs & 8 SATA ports. We'll jump to at least 10 drives ASAP, so a controller card is already needed. (This is not what I'd call "so few.") Spending a little more for HW RAID & extra ports just makes sense IMO.

 

[HammerSandwich]

If [the controller] fails you in any way; you're still screwed. With software RAID you do not depend on any specific piece of hardware.

However, given that you had problems using it, i can imagine you want something different.

That's about the gist of it. I tested the initial build several times by removing 1 system drive, both while the system was off & running, and everything worked fine. Rebuild took a while, but that's expected. Testing was on the initial WHS install, though, and we've seen 3 PPs since then. For obvious reasons, I have not done the same tests on a live server following updates. I'm hoping that a hardware solution is a more stable platform. And also that Vail improves the uptime & rebuild areas...

 

[pjkenned]

This is the motherboard. Currently has 3x PCI & 3x PCIe x1 slots open, but I'm willing to switch vidcards to use the x16 for a controller.

No need for other RAID levels, as I'm happy with WHS's drive expansion for the data pool. Mobo supports RAID1 through both the ICH9R & Jmicron (IIRC...) chips, but I'd prefer hardware RAID to an unsupported configuration at this point.

The box currently has 6 HDs & 8 SATA ports. We'll jump to at least 10 drives ASAP, so a controller card is already needed. (This is not what I'd call "so few.") Spending a little more for HW RAID & extra ports just makes sense IMO.

The ICH9R and ICH10R Raid 1 is pretty good, has good OS support (since it is everywhere and is Intel), and is really easy to migrate to another ICH raid-enabled motherboard. The JMicron... just stay away from. Moving to a cheap PCI video solution makes sense.

As for controllers, I would suggest either a Areca 1680LP or 1680i, or even an Adaptec 31605/ 3805. My sole reason is that upgrading controllers in the future lets you keep arrays if you want. I literally moved an 8x 1.5TB Raid 6 array from a 31605 to another machine with a 5805 in about two minutes, including physically removing and inserting the hot-swap bays. The "newer" Adaptec/ Areca products let you do this easily so you can be back online quickly if you ever need to replace a controller.

If you want to save money on the above you could just get something like the Adaptec 1220SA's which are 2 port raid 1 enabled cards that fit in PCIe x1 slots. They are super cheap (<$70 each) but are not the same calibur as an IOP based controller. You won't be doing XOR calcs so you won't require that horsepower anyway.

 

[Hunterzyph]

Edit. Oops, wrong thread.

 

[HammerSandwich]

Thanks for the suggestions.

The Areca cards look excellent, and I'm impressed with the 1200's manual. Moving up to 4 or 8 ports is a bit more money than I'd hoped, and I think any of the $500 cards are way more than this build needs. Having said that, the Adaptec 1220SA is a little lower end than I'd like, and Newegg's customer reviews ain't great. Seems like I might as well use the ICH9R at that point.

Anyone have experience with the Intel/LSI cards? The SASWT4I & SASUC8I claim hardware RAID0/1/10 & offer a lot of ports per dollar. I'm not sure the SATA breakout cables are included, so that could be another $50... Both cards are also specced to handle 14 drives with port multipliers.