Hardware Raid controller, HBA, or just JBOD expansion?

E

esumsea

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Apr 22, 2007
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Hello,

I need some help in picking out an appropriate controller card for my needs. I have considered High Point, LSI and Adaptech and am thinking of going with a 71605E, but I don't know if I should invest in something more robust, or if I am spending to much and going overkill. I chose Adaptech because Highpoint's technical support does not have a good reputation, & their products are inferior and buggy, albeit at a nice pricepoint, and most of LSI's stuff cant do JBOD, and if it can, it can only do JBOD or Raid.

Right now I need to add at least 4, but preferably 8, sata/SAS ports to my tower. I need something that is as fast, or faster than what I have on my Maximus V Formula board. I would want the card to have Raid 0, 1, & 10, capability, because, even though I've read there are no real world gains, I am considering going raid 0 with 2 Intel 520 120 GB drives for my OS.

I realize that I will have to spend at least $170 to get a decent card (PCI 3.0. SATA III/SAS (6 Gb/s)) that will match the SATA III software raid on my motherboard, and that is a conservative estimate.

My computing consists of multitasking, video, photo, and music editing, AutoCAD, music encoding, extraction, constantly moving large files, heavy browsing, backing up and torrenting, sometimes a lot of them at the same time. No gaming. My computer also hosts all the media files for my house and is on 24/7.

So my questions are:
Is a 2 SSD RAID 0 going to provide any noticeable difference in performance for my style of computing to warrant the risk?

Is investing in a hardware raid card going to afford me any real world gains, especially since I will probably on construct 0, 1, or 10 (I back up weekly)?

]If a hardware raid is the way to go, then will cache or processing power offered by controller such as Adaptech's 7805, help me at all, considering I will be using raid 0,1, & 10 (I read that cache was mostly used for parity calculations)?

Is it even worth it to get the 71605E at $360, or should I go with a different, lower cost option, such as an HBA or JBOD controller with no raid (I will look into any suggestions)?

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i7-3770k
Asus Maximus V Formula
Corsair Neutron GTX
2 X 8 GB of Corsair Vengeance Ram (9x9x24, I believe)
TT Water 2.0 Extreme
Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra
OCZ 1000 W Z - Series
Running of the motherboard GPU for now
Many 3-4 TB drives and many more to back them up
 
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My opinions on your questions/situation:

1) RAID 0 2x 120 GB SSD's...
My opinion on this matter is that, yes there is a performance difference, but no, you probably won't notice it. Unless you ALREADY HAVE the 2x 120 GB SSD's, you should just pick up a larger 240/256GB drive.

If you already have both of the drives, then sure go ahead. In regards to using RAID for the boot drive, there's always more risks involved because of the added complexity. For the boot drive, I'd recommend using the onboard Intel SATA III ports, with the onboard motherboard software RAID.

2) For the storage array, I'd recommend staying AWAY from onboard RAID. I recommend this for a few reasons. For one, using onboard raid will decrease performance noticeably when using mechanical HDD's in an array. For two, if the motherboard dies, you'll likely need to replace with the same model board to rebuild the array.

3) Type of RAID Card. I'd suggest anything with an integrated processor "Raid on Chip". Stay away from HBA's (HBA's are awesome if you do Linux software RAID or ZFS, but not so for Windows). Brand wise, LSI are probably considered the best, at least in my experience. Adaptech are supposed to be pretty good, and can be a bit better value then the LSI controllers. Highpoint are often considered more of a "value" brand, and have a less good reputation associated with them.

With that in mind, lots of people have had great experiences and no issues with all of the brands, and vice versa, some people have had terrible experiences with the "high end" brands. Nothing is 100%, and you're not running a a large NAS or SAN, so any of those brands will likely be fine.

Make sure the RAID card has onboard cache and an onboard processor. Getting a BBU (Battery Backup Unit) is recommended, but for home use, not necessarily "required". The benefit of a BBU, is that if you experience a power outage/brown-out, while you were in the middle of a write action, the BBU will continue to power the onboard cache (on some models, for up to 72 hours or longer), so the pending file write will get preserved, and then written to disk when power is restored. This helps prevent file corruption within the array.

4) RAID Cache and processing power will help in ANY raid array. Less so with RAID 0 (Not too processor intensive). RAID 1 is a little more intensive, RAID 10 moreso, with RAID 5/6 being the most processor intensive.

If you are running any CPU intensive tasks (CAD, video games, audio/video editing and transcoding, etc), then you WILL benefit from a hardware RAID card. In those instances, any load you can take off the CPU and put directly on the RAID card, will help overall system speed.

5) If you want to go with JBOD or an HBA, then you certainly can, but you need to understand the compromise. Yeah, it'll be a LOT cheaper, but you'll suffer performance loss. Also, Windows doesn't have the most options for software RAID (or RAID substitutes).

Your options would include (but not limited to):
-onboard motherboard RAID
-Windows RAID (Limited to RAID 0 or RAID 1 - Mirrored or Spanned volumes - Unsure if you can do RAID 10)
-Software RAID or RAID-like solution (FlexRAID, SnapRAID, etc)
-Spanned volume/JBOD/Pooled Drives (DriveBit, Drive Extender, FlexRAID, etc)

There are tons of questions you need to consider. For your Media storage/large storage RAID, will all disks be the same size? (Necessary for any true RAID system, as all disks will default to the smallest disk size). Is cost a factor? Is performance more important than cost? Do you have a budget? What parts do you already own? etc.

Some others can chime in here.
 
Thanks so much for your thoughts dalekphalm. I really do appreciate it. I posted on Tom's 8 days ago and bumped it a couple of times and no responses, so I am glad I came here (Would have posted here first but there was a problem with my account that had to be sorted for me to log in). Anyhow, your input helped me a great deal.

I had suspected the HBAs were not the way to go. It seems that having a dedicated chip and some cache would help even if I was not running raid. The Adaptech 71605E has 256 MBs of Cache, which I hope is sufficient for non parity raids. If not the 1 GB cards are much more expensive, but I guess I could go with the 8 channel version (7805). However, I will never use the full bandwidth of the card (Sata III = @ 650 MBs bandwidth X 8 = @ 5 GBs < 8 GBs of PCIe 3.0 x 8 slot).

That said, I have read that the processing load of a software or onboard raid on a cpu is negligible, so is CPU load really an issue? And if I use intel's SSD caching (still have to get more familiar with implementing this), will the gains I have added with on board cache on the controller be nullified? If I can still garner some real world benefit by going with a RoC with cache, I will do it, for I have found that one ends up paying for being cheap when it comes to these types of purchases; however, I do not want to waste money on features that do not provide value.

I have also seen reports that software raids may even outperform hardware raids
http://community.spiceworks.com/top...andard-in-server-storage?page=5#entry-1684917
I have also read that some free software raids ran circles around hardware raids (I can't find that link). However, I may still want to use a RoC with Cache card when running a software raid if they perform discernibly better than the Intel SATA III ports on my board.

You also make a good point about the problems with failures, but do I really need to get the same board if it fries to reconstruct a raid? I thought I could just use anything with an intel sata port with raid. Still, if the same thing happened with the card, I would have to buy the same card again, no? The card is actually more expensive than my mobo. Actually, I do back up so frequently, so if things fail, I will just lose a week or so, which for an OS is not a big deal.

Also, as far as brand, I decided to go with Adaptech because they have great customer service, can have a single card run JBOD AND raid (LSI cards cannot do this), and have significant leaps and bounds with its 7 series, which is the first to implement technology from its merger with PMC. I have a feeling the will start to outperform LSI in coming benchmarks (I have read some reviews that state this series of cards are the fastest to date). http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/52...nterprise-raid-controller-review/index10.html

As to your other questions:

There are tons of questions you need to consider. For your Media storage/large storage RAID, will all disks be the same size? Yes, I will construct raids of with volumes of the same size. But mostly will consist of 2 TB and 3 TB drives
Is cost a factor? It is, but not the ruling factor.
Is performance more important than cost? Yes, but not to the point of ever diminishing gains on the investment.
Do you have a budget? Yes, I would like to stay under $400, but can spend up to 3 times more, if it is worth it.
What parts do you already own? The mobo, a spare intel 520 (120 GB) and 2-Vertex 2 60 GB. I have all other drives and the computer is already set up.
 
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Operating system makes a big difference here. Windows software RAID implementations have a long, sad track record in terms of performance. Windows driver based RAID (eg 99% of onboard/cheap add-in RAID) has a better performance track record but an abysmal recoverability track record (can't find a replacement of that exact model motherboard running the firmware you were? Hope you had a good backup). *nix software RAID has a much better record on both counts, but in either case, a solid hardware RAID controller will outperform either. It seems to me though that you might be better served by a different storage solution altogether than dropping drives into your main workstation, given the quantities you're talking about.

Taking a step back, I'd suggest taking a look at the following alternatives as well:

JBOD SATA/SAS enclosure connected to an add-in hardware RAID card. Dalekphalm's advice with respect to these was spot-on, though I would add that Adaptec also makes very good RAID cards. However, Adaptec is a brand which will require a bit more research beforehand though, since they make a wider range of cards than LSI, so finding the one which meets your particular needs best may be a bit more of a challenge. That said, you'd definitely want something with as sizable a cache as you can afford plus a battery backup.

NAS box. Unless you need access to your data at speeds which exceed 1GbE, just dropping the drives into an OpenFiler, FreeNAS, or equivalent system might be a more cost effective solution. Plus it has the added benefit of being able to be put far away from your main workstation because a dozen drives working in RAID can be loud and annoying when you're trying to get work done.

Gluster. Need 50TB or more at over 1GbE speeds? Gluster enables the creation of a high-speed storage "cloud" (an overused term, I know) using inexpensive commodity hardware. It is happy crack, but tends not to make sense until you're dealing with particularly big quantities of unstructured (ie: not databased) data.

Obligatory: RAID is not backup. Please have a backup.
 
Thank you for your input, XmagusX.

Yes, I have thought about those external options and may go to one of them in the future. When I do, I will go the SAS route, with a future external controller to be added. I could go this route now, but then I would have to invest in a good enclosure with the capabilities I need and that would be expensive. What I may do in the future is relegate the tower I have now as a Server/Sotrage array, which would be connected with a high speed card from my future workstage to it. I could use the card I buy now to work the array with another external card in the server to facilitate the connection between computers. I have done extensive research on all the options from the aforementioned companies, and the card I am considering, and, in fact, am about to pull the trigger on, the adaptech 71605e, has raid 0,1, 10 capability, with 256 MB RAM, which should be sufficient to manage the array with snappy performance. For the time being I may run everything JBOD, and the LSI hardware raid cards DO NOT support JBOD, so they are out of the picture. Besides, Adaptech's merger with PMC has brought about major performance upgrades to their line (see links above).
 
Actually, I just inquired and I will be able to turn any of the SFF-8643 internal connectors to SFF-8644 by using a bulk head that will provide proper grounding. This will allow me to turn this into an external controller as well, so the 71605e sounds like the way to go, unless someone thinks that the additional ram (756 MB) is necessary when running a raid 0, 1 or 10 raid.
 
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As long as you're running Intel on-board RAID0 & 1 are just fine.

I've run RAID0 for @ 3 yrs with a variety of SSDs and haven't had a problem related to the controller.

I'm not familiar with the newer Intel Express chipsets but I'm sure it will be RAID compatible with other Express chipsets regardless of who manfg'd the MB.

Is it worth it?.......You won't know 'till you try it. :)

You're asking a lotta questions and I'm not sure why you're going about it like this (JBOD?). Sounds like you're making it more complicated than it needs to be.

I always go by the KISS principle....Keep It Simple Stupid. LOL!

Good Luck!
 
I'm not sure what you mean with LSI not supporting JBOD, LSI does support using each drive separately. If you mean JBOD as in adding up all the drives, doing this is reckless anyway and I see no good reason to do it. If you just need more good SATA ports, go LSI with an IBM M1015 off eBay, good hardware for a low price.

Then, regarding performance, for a two drives RAID0, what you have on your motherboard is the fastest you can get. The only way to get better speeds is RAIDing more than two SSDs, on a very expensive LSI card with fastpath, not worth it in my opinion. And if you have money to spend I would start by buying the fastest SSDs, usually in the 240-500GB size and not 120.
 
Aesma said:
I'm not sure what you mean with LSI not supporting JBOD, LSI does support using each drive separately. If you mean JBOD as in adding up all the drives, doing this is reckless anyway and I see no good reason to do it. If you just need more good SATA ports, go LSI with an IBM M1015 off eBay, good hardware for a low price.

Then, regarding performance, for a two drives RAID0, what you have on your motherboard is the fastest you can get. The only way to get better speeds is RAIDing more than two SSDs, on a very expensive LSI card with fastpath, not worth it in my opinion. And if you have money to spend I would start by buying the fastest SSDs, usually in the 240-500GB size and not 120.
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Well said and I second this emotion. :)

esumsea (OP) I think you're just a kittle confused abut the use of RAID and where or when it should or shouldn't be used.

My computing consists of multitasking, video, photo, and music editing, AutoCAD, music encoding, extraction, constantly moving large files, heavy browsing, backing up and torrenting, sometimes a lot of them at the same time.
Click to expand...
All at the same time? Really?

This would be very processor heavy but have little to do with RAID or SSDs

You need to keep it within your budget and as simple as you can.

Let's try to use what we can without purchasing something else unless it's necessary.

Wadda think?
 
Uh guys, you're pretty behind the times when it comes to onboard RAID. Intel RST arrays can be used on any new Intel motherboard with RST. It's been a long time since Intel's broken RAID compatibility. You can take an Intel array from a 965P (probably even earlier) board and use it in a modern board. I've upgraded my Intel Rapid Storage Option ROM on motherboards going from 8.x up to 12.x and nothing breaks (btw, those of you who think that Option ROM versions are tied to just 1 or 2 motherboard revisions, LOL, 12.x OROM works back to ICH8 or maybe even still ICH7; 11.x could do ICH7 too.. some of you refuse to believe that 12.x works on P67, lol, so wrong.) However, it still sucks, as it's limited to Windows and won't work on a real OS that's not garbage for storage servers.

And anyone using AMD RAID... well, all I have to say is LOL.
 
Older bios may not have the space to hold the newer option roms but if it fits chances are all will be well and will not require re-doing the array.
I am a firm believer in Intel RST. I think most issues of old were due to outdated buggy oroms.
 
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