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good RAID card for file server

E

eXe747

n00b
Joined
Nov 27, 2013
Messages
8
Hello,
Actually I don't know much about RAID and that is why I'm asking for some little help here.
I'm planning to use 16 x SATA2 WD Red 2 or 3 TB drives + RAID 10, so my Norco 3U case needs Four SFF-8087 Mini SAS connectors, I've seen some expensive RAID controllers but I do not actually know which one does my config needs and also I don't want to loose such a big amount of money.

Thanks.

P.S: Sorry for my bad English language.


IF I'M VIOLATING SOME RULES, PLEASE TELL ME INSTEAD OF BANNING ACCOUNT FOREVER! Thanks.
 
LSI 9280-24i4e...rock solid card.

All you need and you'll have a couple of miniSAS left over for other use or for external connections, should the need arise.
 
lutjens said:
LSI 9280-24i4e...rock solid card.

All you need and you'll have a couple of miniSAS left over for other use or for external connections, should the need arise.
Click to expand...

Will it survive hard work? and what will be ~ read speed ? if you know. thanks.
 
Areca ARC 1261 ML
I'd keep a fan on the sink.. ;)
oops..you'll need one with 4 plugs..
 
Actually I don't know much about RAID and that is why I'm asking for some little help here.
Click to expand...

My biggest advice is to make sure you backup your data regularly.
 
I have another question, as I know, there are such hardware as "SAS Expander", maybe if there is some cheaper solution instead of 1300-1500$ ?
I remember that I've build a server on a website and they said that instead of expensive RAID card, u'll use "SAS Expander"
 
To use a SAS expander you need a controller card anyway.

You can't use a SAS expander without a controller card.

SAS expander is just to add even more disks.
 
Is there an alternative to using a Windows OS? With Windows OS, your best bet is a hardware RAID card (Windows software parity RAID implementation is weak).

But if you could use linux or Solaris, then you could use software RAID, and get by with much cheaper HBA card(s) instead of a hardware RAID card.
 
If I hook up everything with RAID 10, can I add more HDD s without Failure & dataloss?
 
It depends on what you "hook up everything". A true RAID 10 device will allow you to add pairs (two) of disks and grow your array with no data lost or downtime. Not all RAID devices support RAID expansion for all the supported RAID number. RTM or check with the manufacturer on the supported features.
 
I've chosen this RAID card:
"Megaraid SAS 9260-16L Single, 16-PORT Int, 6GB/S Sata+sas, Pcie 2.0, 512MB; In T - 816$"

CPU: Xeon E3-1275
MB: X9SCM-IIF-O
RAM: DDR3 4x4GB 1333 non ECC
PSU: Corsair AX760

I think this is good.
 
That's a very hefty system. "Good" can be subjective. What does the manual says about RAID10? Why did you choose RAID10? IMO, RAID10 is huge waste of space.
 
For safety, RAID6 with 1 spare will be more then enough with 16 drives. With 3TB drive, that's 39TB of usable storage as oppose to 24TB with RAID10. RAID10 would be more suitable if you need better performance. Make sure the drives are monitored and send out notification if anything is a concern. And you will need to act on the alert immediately. Most RAID failures and due to problematic drive going unattended for too long.
 
ezno_matrix, but if 3 disks fail? I need read performance, server will be much more read-active than write
 
I'd do RAID60 with like 2 8 drives raid6 arrays if you need the space, but if you're storing VMs or databases RAID10 is the way to go. Technically RAID6/60 is a bit more reliable than RAID10 in the worst case tho.
 
That depends. Realistically, individual drives will fail and you will replace each and rebuild the array. Having three simultaneous drive failures out of 16 is very rare (there is a probability chart out there but I can't find it at the moment). You should also be getting notification up the wazoo as soon as a drive start acting up, which will give you ample time to replace that drive. That card should give you decent RAID6 performance. Probably even better than RAID10. RAID6 disadvantage is write performance due to parity calculation/distribution.

At the end of the day, the choice is yours.
 
eXe747 said:
ezno_matrix, but if 3 disks fail? I need read performance, server will be much more read-active than write
Click to expand...
You CANNOT count on RAID 10 to protect against 3-disk failures unless you use 4-way mirrors. You'll only have 1/4th of your total disk capacity as usable space, but ANY three drives could fail and you wouldn't lose anything.

If you use standard RAID 10 (which uses 2-way mirroring), you can only count on it to keep running through a single disk failure. A 2-disk failure can knock out the entire array.

RAID 6 is a much more sensible choice. It can protect against ANY two disks failing.
 
If you are that concerned with read performance, and have the funding for 24 x 3TB Red's then also look at doing some caching through an SSD. The Card you've chosen will do support that with the hardware key (LSI00292). Combine that with better capacity utilization and fault tolerance of Raid60 (assuming 3 x 8 Drive Raid 6) and you'll have 54TB-ish of storage.
 
ezno_matrix said:
It depends on what you "hook up everything". A true RAID 10 device will allow you to add pairs (two) of disks and grow your array with no data lost or downtime. Not all RAID devices support RAID expansion for all the supported RAID number. RTM or check with the manufacturer on the supported features.
Click to expand...

not trying to thread jack, but i am thinking of 3 wd red 3tb in raid 5, and the idea of raid expansion sounds awesome, can someone recommend a card for me? I would like the ability to add an extra disc or 2 down the line without having to rebuild the entire array

I like synology since it allows you to add extra discs without having to rebuild the array - i know that it doesnt utilize the standard RAID features, but i dont want to shell out 600-700 on an enclosure.
 
chronic9 said:
what should i use if i the entire array will be 1080p movies?
Click to expand...

If they are just for viewing (i.e. you aren't doing video editing) then RAID-5/RAID-6 is actually pretty good for that purpose. If you're a video editor (especially nonlinear and/or multiple clips at a time), RAID-10.
 
chronic9 said:
what should i use if i the entire array will be 1080p movies?
Click to expand...

For that I (at home with my htpc) use no raid at all. I use individual internal 2TB and 4TB disks and now do I backups to external 4TB disks.

Now at work for the 50TB+ of medical imaging storage (for research purposes), that is all on raid6 arrays backed up more than 1 time to a LTO tape archive.
 
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dandragonrage said:
And RAID-5 and RAID-6 are a huge waste of performance.
Click to expand...
Assuming the same number of disks are employe, the read speeds on RAID 5 and 6 should be comparable to RAID 10 (reads are striped across all disks in RAID 5, 6, and 10).
Assuming the controller is decent, the write speeds should actually be better with RAID 5 or 6... RAID 10 writes to both drives in each mirror simultaneously, so you effectively only get the combined write speed of HALF of the drives when using RAID 10. With RAID 5 and 6, writes are striped across all disks, so you get some additional performance there (as long as the controller can keep up).

Of course, there's also RAID 50 or 60, which offers even more performance without having to lose half (or more) of your capacity.

drescherjm said:
For that I (at home with my htpc) use no raid at all. I use individual internal 2TB and 4TB disks and now do I backups to external 4TB disks.
Click to expand...
Yeah, JBOD seems to be the way to go for movie storage purposes. I tried out FlexRAID (both snapshot and real-time), and the performance hit was catastrophic. It also started corrupting data at random, so I got rid of it fairly quickly...

If you're dead-set on losing half your capacity, drive pooling (using DriveBender or StableBit DrivePool) is a good option. Toss in all your drives, make a pool, and tell it to make all data redundant. There will always be 2 copies of every file in the pool, with zero software-RAID overhead.
 
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Unknown-One said:
With RAID 5 and 6, writes are striped across all disks, so you get some additional performance there (as long as the controller can keep up).
Click to expand...
It depends on the size of the write. If the writes are to a large sequential area AND the controller is smart enough to realise the writes are large then the raid 5/6 controller can just write the data and fill in the partiy.

For small writes (smaller than a stripe) however things are much worse. The raid 5/6 controller must read the old data and the old parity, caclulate what the new parity should be and then write the new data and the new parity. So on raid 5 one write operation to the raid controller turns into four operations on the disks. For raid 6 things are going to be even worse as there are two sets of parity to update.

In summary if a substantial part of your load is random write and you aren't too bothered about capacity then it likely makes to avoid raid 5/6.
 
plugwash said:
In summary if a substantial part of your load is random write and you aren't too bothered about capacity then it likely makes to avoid raid 5/6.
Click to expand...

If a substantial part of your load is random-write and you aren't too bothered about capacity... then SSD's sound like a better fit, honestly :p

SSD's would also suffer substantially less from the small-writes issue that RAID 5 and 6 sometimes encounter.
 
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