I need a RAID Controller

[nitrobass24]

I have a system that is a few years old that i have turned into a home nas box but my storage has been growing rapidly, and i just invested in 8 new 1tb samsung F1 drives.

Now i need a way to connect them all and I would like to use RAID5 preferably hardware based. On most my systems i just go spend a few hundred and get myself an areca card but since this is for home nas use i dont want to spend that kind of money.

I was thinking about getting a Dell Perc5i off of ebay for about 120 but ive heard they dont work well on intel chipsets.

My chipset is 945p.

What do yall think I should go with.

 

[Dan_D]

I have a system that is a few years old that i have turned into a home nas box but my storage has been growing rapidly, and i just invested in 8 new 1tb samsung F1 drives.

Now i need a way to connect them all and I would like to use RAID5 preferably hardware based. On most my systems i just go spend a few hundred and get myself an areca card but since this is for home nas use i dont want to spend that kind of money.

I was thinking about getting a Dell Perc5i off of ebay for about 120 but ive heard they dont work well on intel chipsets.

My chipset is 945p.

What do yall think I should go with.

If you are talking about the machine in your signature I'd say that your chipset is certainly NOT the 945P chipset. If that's the same machine we are talking about, what kind of video card are you using?

If you are using some kind of Quadro you should be ok but if you are using a Geforce 9800GX2 then you'll likely run into option-ROM issues. Otherwise the Perc5i is a hell of a deal and a decent performer for the price. I prefer LSI or Areca retail cards but the Perc5i is solid. I've supported a number of servers using them and I've been pleased with them as they haven't given me any issues.

 

[nitrobass24]

No, the system in my sig is not what im going to be using thats my workstation at home i use for video editing.

The NAS is a Dell Dimension 9100 chipset is 945p with a PentiumD@ 3.0Ghz 2gb ddr2667, no video card.

Yea i really like the Arecas thats what i put in stuff at work and suggest to my friends for there highend builds, but I just dont need that to serve mp3, blu-ray movies at my house.

 

[Dan_D]

No, the system in my sig is not what im going to be using thats my workstation at home i use for video editing.

The NAS is a Dell Dimension 9100 chipset is 945p with a PentiumD@ 3.0Ghz 2gb ddr2667, no video card.

Yea i really like the Arecas thats what i put in stuff at work and suggest to my friends for there highend builds, but I just dont need that to serve mp3, blu-ray movies at my house.

I'd say then that your budget and more information about the disks that will be used with it is vital to finding an economical solution that will meet your needs.

 

[nitrobass24]

What more information should i provide about the disk?

 

[Dan_D]

What more information should i provide about the disk?

Actually I see you already provided that information in the original post. I didn't catch that. Otherwise we do need to know what RAID levels you want to use if any with the drives.

 

[nitrobass24]

RAID 5 preferably a hardware based solution but im open for suggestions, card needs to support 8 SATA drives at a minimum.

 

[Dan_D]

RAID 5 preferably a hardware based solution but im open for suggestions, card needs to support 8 SATA drives at a minimum.

the Perc5i will probably be your best performing and cheapest solution. Otherwise you're going to end up spending quite a bit more money to get a hardware solution.

 

[ilikecake]

Oh man, all this talk of hardware RAID cards has me wanting to get one for my storage server. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that simple software RAID was almost fast enough (~125MB/Sec) to 'fill' a gigabit connection. If this is the case, the OP could just get a cheap SATA card (or use onboard, if there are enough) and put that extra ~$500 to better use. (like beer )

 

[Dan_D]

Oh man, all this talk of hardware RAID cards has me wanting to get one for my storage server. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that simple software RAID was almost fast enough (~125MB/Sec) to 'fill' a gigabit connection. If this is the case, the OP could just get a cheap SATA card (or use onboard, if there are enough) and put that extra ~$500 to better use. (like beer )

This is true but the software/hardware accelerated RAID controllers built into motherboards also have considerably higher CPU usage than hardware solutions with XOR processing engines. This is especially true of RAID5. RAID5 using onboard RAID controllers is pretty bad due to the parity calculations required in write operations. I can't stand it. The other reason to go with a real hardware controller is for the features. However the features are generally not necessary for home use.

 

[unhappy_mage]

This is true but the software/hardware accelerated RAID controllers built into motherboards also have considerably higher CPU usage than hardware solutions with XOR processing engines. This is especially true of RAID5. RAID5 using onboard RAID controllers is pretty bad due to the parity calculations required in write operations. I can't stand it. The other reason to go with a real hardware controller is for the features. However the features are generally not necessary for home use.

This is true in some implementations, but it need not be the case. A single Opteron core can XOR data at about 6 GB/s. This means a good implementation can write to a 7-disk raid 5 array at 1GB/s, which is plenty for any disks I've heard of. The advent of multicore computing means the death knell for specialized processors---when everyone has 64 cores sitting around idle, what's the point in buying another one to do your RAID?

Poor implementations of software raid 5 have cast it in a bad light. It's not as bad as it's marketed to be. Having said that, I use mirrors on my "important" data, an SVN repository kept up-to-date in several places for school work, and I let my bank deal with the financial-data problem. I can't touch the reliability that I pay them to do anyways, so what's the point in trying?

 

[Dan_D]

This is true in some implementations, but it need not be the case. A single Opteron core can XOR data at about 6 GB/s. This means a good implementation can write to a 7-disk raid 5 array at 1GB/s, which is plenty for any disks I've heard of. The advent of multicore computing means the death knell for specialized processors---when everyone has 64 cores sitting around idle, what's the point in buying another one to do your RAID?

Poor implementations of software raid 5 have cast it in a bad light. It's not as bad as it's marketed to be. Having said that, I use mirrors on my "important" data, an SVN repository kept up-to-date in several places for school work, and I let my bank deal with the financial-data problem. I can't touch the reliability that I pay them to do anyways, so what's the point in trying?

It need not be the case but it often is the case. At no time have I ever personally used a hybrid/software RAID implementation that could match the performance of a hardware solution. At least not with RAID 5. With RAID 0 or RAID 1 the integrated solutions built into motherboards are good enough and therefore a hardware solution while better to a small degree wouldn't be worth the cost.