Help Picking a RAID Card (High End)

T

TheGeneral

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 3, 2003
Messages
393
Well I'm going to be setting up what will initally be a 9 disk RAID solution, using all 750GB drives. Inital capacity will be 5.25TB. Now my question is to what card to use. I am stuck between the Areca ARC-1160ML and the 3ware 9550SX-16ML. If I went with the Areca I would be using RAID6 since it supports it. If I went with the 3Ware I would be using RAID5 w/ a hotspare. I know the RAID6 solution would be more reliable, however I am a bit hesitant since I know absolutly nothing about Areca as a company and I KNOW 3Ware is extremely reliable. Anyone here have some input on these Areca cards?
 
From what I have heard over the past year or so, Areca is the top dog right now, with 3ware having an overpriced, underperforming solution.
 
drizzt81 said:
From what I have heard over the past year or so, Areca is the top dog right now, with 3ware having an overpriced, underperforming solution.
Click to expand...

that is what i've been hearing around here as well. i believe u_m has a lot more knowledge on this topic though.
 
I have always used the LSI MegaRAID cards and have had good luck with them. I currently have a SATA 150-6 in my old pc and an 8408E SAS raid card in my new PC. Both have been very solid performers and I have had no issues.
 
You might want to wait or call Areca to see when the ARC-1261ML and ARC-1280ML are being released to resellers. The sample delivery is gone on their page which makes me think they're shipping out now to retailers. I was trying to wait to get the ARC-1261ML, but couldn't wait any longer. I have the 1230 and it simply is an amazing card, setup was so easy you'd have to try and mess it up for it not to work. I love being able to be at work and being able to monitor my setup to see what the temps get up to during the day on the hard drives and if there's any problems. So far no complaints at all on the card, only problem is i filled up the 1.5tb's in the first week of having it, but am going to add a second array onto it with 8 750's later on and use the 1.5tb array for backing up important files and data.
 
oplin said:
You might want to wait or call Areca to see when the ARC-1261ML and ARC-1280ML are being released to resellers. The sample delivery is gone on their page which makes me think they're shipping out now to retailers. I was trying to wait to get the ARC-1261ML, but couldn't wait any longer. I have the 1230 and it simply is an amazing card, setup was so easy you'd have to try and mess it up for it not to work. I love being able to be at work and being able to monitor my setup to see what the temps get up to during the day on the hard drives and if there's any problems. So far no complaints at all on the card, only problem is i filled up the 1.5tb's in the first week of having it, but am going to add a second array onto it with 8 750's later on and use the 1.5tb array for backing up important files and data.
Click to expand...

I probably wont be ordering anything for another week or so until we finalize things with our software supplier. I will be sure to keep an eye out for the ARC-1261ML. I just need to tell my boss hes gonna be spending a little more money going with RAID6 now. :D

edit: crap, was just informed of 3Ware's latest release:
http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata2-9650.asp

I think I may still go with the Areca though
 
If this is for work and mission critical you might want to read this article anandtech has posted. SATA drives are alot higher prone to errors than scsi or nas drives. They have a figure that with about 13tb's of data transfered you have a 10% chance of a read/write error that is unrecoverale, or has been curroupted. http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2859

It's in there somewhere but a very good read on what you're probably going to be doing. At my work theyll just drop 3 grand on tape backup without thinking and now we need to upgrade it and my idea is saying scrap the tape bacup and setup some hotswappable sata drives and use them as tapes. get 5 for partial weekly backups (300-500gig drives) and use one or 2 750's for full backups. Be alot cheaper than buying tapes all the time.
 
oplin said:
If this is for work and mission critical you might want to read this article anandtech has posted. SATA drives are alot higher prone to errors than scsi or nas drives. They have a figure that with about 13tb's of data transfered you have a 10% chance of a read/write error that is unrecoverale, or has been curroupted. http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2859

It's in there somewhere but a very good read on what you're probably going to be doing. At my work theyll just drop 3 grand on tape backup without thinking and now we need to upgrade it and my idea is saying scrap the tape bacup and setup some hotswappable sata drives and use them as tapes. get 5 for partial weekly backups (300-500gig drives) and use one or 2 750's for full backups. Be alot cheaper than buying tapes all the time.
Click to expand...

Unfourtinately they would rather take that 10% chance over dropping the added cash that SCSI would require.
 
TheGeneral said:
Unfourtinately they would rather take that 10% chance over dropping the added cash that SCSI would require.
Click to expand...

not to mention the higher possibility of a failed disk than a bad tape.
 
It's not ten percent, it's a basically an average of one unrecoverable error every 12-13TB worth of r/w operations. If the data is highly critical, this could be important. It's pretty easy to hit that number often on a large array. Just rebuilding a 4 TB array takes 8TB worth of tranfers. The scsi rate is something like 1 unrecoverable error every 1200-1300 TB i think
 
Ok I think I'm just about at the point where I have everything settled, my only problem is still deciding what RAID6 card to use. I found the Promise SuperTrak EX16350 which offers 16 Port SATAII RAID6 and uses the Intel IOP333 processor. It is completely identical to the Areca ARC-1260 but it is $250 cheaper. Is there any reason to spend the extra $250 on the Areca over the Promise since theyre both using the same chip?
 
I'm not sure but I believe the areca is a true hardware solution that handles all calculations on board and the promise is no. I may be wrong on this.
 
Not sure if this would be an option for you, but SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is getting some traction finally. I only mention it because I am researching some storage solutions (would work the same for you tho, if you want it internal) for my lab. SAS is nice because you can use either SCSI SAS drives (production style - good MTF numbers) or SATA drives (inexpensive, not as reliable). Also, it is nice from an expansion point of view.

Here is a good slide show (from HP) that will give you an overview of it, if you're interested.
 
defakto said:
I'm not sure but I believe the areca is a true hardware solution that handles all calculations on board and the promise is no. I may be wrong on this.
Click to expand...

they both use the Intel IOP333 processor that does all the RAID6 calculations.
 
Combover said:
Not sure if this would be an option for you, but SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is getting some traction finally. I only mention it because I am researching some storage solutions (would work the same for you tho, if you want it internal) for my lab. SAS is nice because you can use either SCSI SAS drives (production style - good MTF numbers) or SATA drives (inexpensive, not as reliable). Also, it is nice from an expansion point of view.

Here is a good slide show (from HP) that will give you an overview of it, if you're interested.
Click to expand...

I will actually be using a 36GB 15k RPM SAS drive for the OS. Their cost and lower capacity is keeping me from using them as the storage drives.
 
TheGeneral said:
Ok I think I'm just about at the point where I have everything settled, my only problem is still deciding what RAID6 card to use. I found the Promise SuperTrak EX16350 which offers 16 Port SATAII RAID6 and uses the Intel IOP333 processor. It is completely identical to the Areca ARC-1260 but it is $250 cheaper. Is there any reason to spend the extra $250 on the Areca over the Promise since theyre both using the same chip?
Click to expand...
Drivers, and stability. About half the posts I've seen at SR are bitching about the Promise simply Not Working on their systems, or being horribly slow. I don't know about your business, but for any business I can conceive $250 is a drop in the bucket compared to the thing not working, corrupting data, or causing downtime. I haven't heard similar stories to nearly the same degree, and mostly with consumer-level hardware (or Tyan :p). Areca all the way. They also have Linux support, in the kernel, done by an Areca employee. Can't do much better than that IMO.

 
Good link. It's a little out of date, though - the 2220/2320 isn't there (let alone the 3220 or whatever they're calling that), the Promise isn't there, the LSI MegaRaid 300-8X isn't there, and they're two generations behind on 3ware. I hope they do an update soon, though - Taken is the man :D

 
TheGeneral said:
I will actually be using a 36GB 15k RPM SAS drive for the OS. Their cost and lower capacity is keeping me from using them as the storage drives.
Click to expand...

You do realize that you can not use a SAS drive on a SATA controller right? And if you are going to have a SAS controller, why are you looking at SATA controllers?
 
Lazn_Work said:
You do realize that you can not use a SAS drive on a SATA controller right? And if you are going to have a SAS controller, why are you looking at SATA controllers?
Click to expand...

Because there is a SAS controller on the motherboard I'm using and the onboard SATA controller doesnt support 16 drives in RAID6.
 
TheGeneral said:
Because there is a SAS controller on the motherboard I'm using and the onboard SATA controller doesnt support 16 drives in RAID6.
Click to expand...

Ah, good. Just making sure you are not trying to connect a SAS drive to a SATA controller.. That would be frustrating to find out too late.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top