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Inexpensive card for RAID 5

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kumquat

Supreme [H]ardness
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Dec 7, 2005
Messages
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I want to put a 4x2TB RAID 5 array into a server, but the server's onboard controller only supports 1/0/10. I want to put in a controller to take care of this. I don't mind a cheaper card offloading a lot onto the CPU, as this is exclusively a file server.

Any recommendations? There seem to be a handful of Highpoint RocketRaid cards in the $100 range.
 
Not overly. Streaming movies, storing photos, that sorta stuff. WHS 2011 on an Athlon II X2 250.
 
kumquat said:
I want to put a 4x2TB RAID 5 array into a server, but the server's onboard controller only supports 1/0/10. I want to put in a controller to take care of this. I don't mind a cheaper card offloading a lot onto the CPU, as this is exclusively a file server.

Any recommendations? There seem to be a handful of Highpoint RocketRaid cards in the $100 range.
Click to expand...

If you are up against a strict budget you can go with a cheap RAID5 card, but if this is a file server (and of course you have a full backup strategy in place, as RAID is not a backup) then I would suggest going with a RAID6 system for the addition uptime protection. Also, since you are going with at least 4 drives now, I would suggest going with a card that supports more than 4 and more likely 8 for future expansion. Again, price sensitivity aside you may want to look for a more powerful and reliable card, such as an Areca. Do you have the drives already or are you going to purchase them as well? Some cards "like" certain drives better (and won't work with certain drives as well) so that may color your purchase as well.
 
For $100 you can get a Dell PERC 5/i with 512MB cache along with a BBU. Check crapBay for them. I have used them for about 8 years with great success. I think I have had about a dozen disks fail over the eight years and have 100% successfully rebuilt the array with no data loss or corruption.
 
I want to ask;

Why are you using RAID?

I want to make sure what you're getting is what you're expecting.
 
I have a backup strategy. Need a large storage pool and some fault tolerance. The Perc 5i is interesting but looks like it won't support >2tb. Not sure the RocketRaid would either actually. Looks like I won't find a 6 or 8 port card for less than... a lot of money.

I already have two 2tb drives - a Hitachi and a WD EARs. I'd be buying 2 more.
 
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I should point out I have a lot of experience with enterprise SANs. I know what I want here. Just looking for a card recommendation. Or a "none of them, get a mobo with RAID 5 instead."
 
raid 5 and 2T drives i heard are bad news, especially if one dies... longggg rebuild times even on semi decent contollers..

but if you got backups already then no worries.

could get an intel board with ICHR
 
If you are purely looking for hardware, Dell PERC 5/i are pretty much going to be your best bet since they are highly available, you can even find them new from ripped new internals. If the card fails, you can just buy another duplicate quite easily.

Still, if you are just looking for storage pooling, there are quite a few software options that can match the speed, functionality, and beyond. You can even keep WHS 2011 and run parity based with RAID, etc...
 
OK, so my options are a HighPoint card, a new AM3 mobo that supports RAID 5, a Perc 5/i, or some sort of software option that offers similar functionality.

I am starting to like the idea of the Perc 5i. I can add a couple of drives down the line to give myself a lot more storage space, and if I ever upgrade them all to 4+ TB I can get a new controller then.

What are these software options you speak of? I see FlexRAID for instance.

Will any of these options allow me to add another 2TB drive in the future without destroying the data and rebuilding the array?
 
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Linux software raid or zfs are good software raid options and in a lot of cases perform at least as fast as mid end hardware raid. One such instance is I generally do not complain about long rebuild times with linux software raid. For example at work I have a 9 drive x 2TB raid6 array reads at over 800 MB/s and writes at over 500+ MB/s and rebuilds in about 8.5 hours total that on a core2quad from 2008 with 4GB of ram.

There is also FlexRAID which is available on windows and other operating systems.
 
zfs is possible if you are willing to go down the virtualized route, and if you have general experience in general *nix, it won't be that hard. Gea_ has a pretty impressive thread regarding an all-in-one ZFS with a tutorial, and is pretty active on these forums (http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1573272). It can require a substancial hardware upgrade, but the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it.

If you don't want it's own file system, and just run it on top of WHS 2011, FlexRAID has storage pooling with parity. You can add (and remove) practically unlimited hard drives anytime, create mulitpule parity drives, use different sized hard drives, etc... It's also free.
 
FlexRAID looked interesting, but I'm wary of it. Instead I got the Perc 5i. We'll see how it goes.
 
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