HW RAID6 with 12 x 6TB HGST 7K6000 drives

Q

qhash

Weaksauce
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Oct 25, 2011
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110
Hey,
We are going to build a new video storage for a surveillance solution. Data must be kept for three months, so really large volume is required.

We would like to use Adaptec 6085 and a RAID6 configuration. I have used calculator to find out the risk of data loss of such an array. It looks pretty low, but this is not the infromation I get while searching through the web.

Can anyone advise?



DL_risk_calc.png
 
This is not mission critical, but then I wonder, if it is not better to just do 12 drives, each working seperately, recording 4-6 cameras, or maybe 10 seperately and 2 in RAID1 for most important cameras (e.g. ready goods storage, goods packing, shipping/receiving).
Thanks for your answer and for the link.

wow:
How is that RAID-Z3 is so good vs RAID 6?
 
RAID 6 has better reliability than RAID1; 2 drives failed vs only 1 (unless your talking about RAID 1+0 or 0+1).

My concern is ingest speed. Now, I have ran several hundred cameras onto an array using RAID 6 sets (several sets) so I know it works. But if your camera software has an archive option, you could also configure the cameras to ingest onto faster disk then archive off onto the RAID6 array for long term storage.
 
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@sysbreeder
Thanks, did not read about the subject as much as I should. Thought RAIDZ3 equals to RAID6.

@bigdohchris
You mean like having a buffer drive? Lets say an SSD drive that all streams record to it, or RAID10 constisting of 4 SSDs and then a single, big copy stream to HDD array?
 
Raid-Z2 equals to Raid-6 regarding number of disks that are allowed to fail.
But there are two other features why ZFS is more secure ant they rely not to the raid level but the filesystem

First is that ZFS is a newer CopyOnWrire filesystem without the write hole problem of traditional raid-1/5/6 where a power fialure during write can result in a corrupted filesystem and/or corrupted raid , "Write hole" phenomenon in RAID5, RAID6, RAID1, and other arrays.

The other are checksums on datablock level ex 128k where each datablock is verified on read and repaired when needed (Raid or disk internal checksumming is not capable to do this)

Regarding write buffer
ZFS comes with a rambased write buffer that transforms a few seconds of last small random writes to a single large sequential write to improve performance. Much faster than SSD based solutions especially as SSDs are often not too good with small random writes.

If you consider ZFS, you must use a raidless HBA best from LSI, not a hardware raid adapter.
 
Raid-Z2 is a good option, but keep in mind that you'll need to learn about the host operating system either in Freenas, OpenBSD or something similar. There's a non-trivial learning curve there.
 
Thanks for your answers.

I do actually have an HP Gen8 microserver and DELL H200 IT flashing capable card which are waiting for me to start learning Freenas or OpenBSD. I want to have a VMWare environment and a VM within running FreeNAS. This one will give back ZFS RAID Z1 pool to other VMs :).. but it is waiting for 3 months or so now :/.
Problem is that software that runs recording is Geovision GV-NVR ( we are planning to switch to GV-NVS but that does not change much). It is a Windows based solution, cannot be changed as they have Geovision cameras, it supports backups to NAS and server redundancy, but your main recording MUST be local. Therefore I am limited to Windows.
 
Fastest, most feature rich and easiest from ZFS integration is Oracle Solaris where ZFS comes from but Solaris is not free (1000$ per year beside free use for demo or development). A good option are the free Solaris forks around Illumos like OmniOS, OpenIndiana, NexentaStor or SmartOS. I prefer OmniOS.

Then there are Options around BSD like FreeNAS, Nas4Free or ZFSGuru. This is another Unix where ZFS is available for some years.

Newest ZFS option is OSX and Linux, last with advantages regarding hardware support but not the just works experience of Solaris.

In the end, you use it as a simple SMB storage server just like Windows with the main options Solaris SMB (integrated in ZFS) or SAMBA, available on any Unix/Linux, best as a simple to use web-appliance.
 
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Hmm, so maybe I could do Linux + ZFS + a VM for my Windows system? What do you guys think?

I could save as much as 300 USD on a RAID card, be vendor independant...
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I am only wondering what about:
1. performance
2. boot/disk setup issue. I will have 2 x 120GB Intel 3510 SSD connected to MB sata ports + 12 x SATA drives connected through. We usually do fake RAID1 through Intel chipset and boot Windows from it and then a HW RAID through controller and present it to the OS for video storage.
Having same setup, can I boot linux from mentioned fake RAID and have my windows VM running from the same fake RAID? And using ZFS pool for video storage presented directly to the VM.
 
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qhash said:
Thanks for your answers.

Problem is that software that runs recording is Geovision GV-NVR ( we are planning to switch to GV-NVS but that does not change much). It is a Windows based solution, cannot be changed as they have Geovision cameras, it supports backups to NAS and server redundancy, but your main recording MUST be local. Therefore I am limited to Windows.
Click to expand...

What we do in situations like this where we want very reliable storage is use FreeBSD/Solaris with an iSCSI export. If you want to simply do it, setup a FreeNAS system with an iSCSI export and then just connect the windows box to that. To any applications it presents itself as a local drive.
 
VRT said:
What we do in situations like this where we want very reliable storage is use FreeBSD/Solaris with an iSCSI export. If you want to simply do it, setup a FreeNAS system with an iSCSI export and then just connect the windows box to that. To any applications it presents itself as a local drive.
Click to expand...
Can't do it.. I am limited to single box only. This was designed as a Windows solution. My only option are: 1) linux + storage VM + windows VM (or storage on hypervisor and single windows VM) 2) HW raid and Windows OS.
Seems that by means of simplicity, we will go for HW RAID6 and a spare on-site.
 
qhash said:
Can't do it.. I am limited to single box only. This was designed as a Windows solution. My only option are: 1) linux + storage VM + windows VM (or storage on hypervisor and single windows VM) 2) HW raid and Windows OS.
Seems that by means of simplicity, we will go for HW RAID6 and a spare on-site.
Click to expand...

No as elegant but what you could do is a FreeNAS and run a VM in a jail and place the Windows Server in that VM ans till have ZFS underneath.
 
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