JBOD or Raid

[kenny1921]

hi guys, im abit confused and would like some help in clearing this up.

i have a dell server with 12gb or ram and 2 quad core xeon processors. i want to expand this storage by adding a further 16 or 24 disks not sure yet.

i have seen these jbod expanders but these dont have any redundancy so if i loose a drive then i loose all the data so i want to use raid.

now the confusion, how do i setup such a thing.

if i get a case with say 24 hotswap drives in the front, these connect up using SFF-8087 connectors. can i connect these to a SAS expander for example http://www.xcase.co.uk/component-pa...36-port-expander-card-6gb-269-00-chenbro.html

run an SFF-8088 cable from the back of the expander to an external 8088 port on a raid card that would be plugged into the server.

would this allow me to raid all the 24 drives

many thanks for any advice you can provide

 

[drescherjm]

dont have any redundancy so if i loose a drive then i loose all the data so i want to use raid.

Remember that raid (any level) does not prevent you from total loss.

If this is a HTPC I recommend you investigate Snapraid and keep the drives separate.

 

[kenny1921]

thank you for your quick response.

its for my home server, so it would have movies and stuff but also computer backups, website and domain controller etc. currently running windows server 2012.

if i went for the JBOD solution which would be cheaper im assuming i would be able to do a software raid or use windows storage spaces to create a software version of raid 50 or something similar. it would give me a bit more security if i was to loose a disk.

what would the other benefits of using a hardware raid over a software raid be other than the speed it takes to build/rebuild

 

[drescherjm]

a software version of raid 50 or something similar.

I would look raid60 for this many disks.

what would the other benefits of using a hardware raid over a software raid be other than the speed it takes to build/rebuild

The biggest would be random write performance. Windows software raid is certainly not known for its performance. Although for an HTPC its not like you need much performance.

 

[westrock2000]

thank you for your quick response.

its for my home server, so it would have movies and stuff but also computer backups, website and domain controller etc. currently running windows server 2012.

if i went for the JBOD solution which would be cheaper im assuming i would be able to do a software raid or use windows storage spaces to create a software version of raid 50 or something similar. it would give me a bit more security if i was to loose a disk.

what would the other benefits of using a hardware raid over a software raid be other than the speed it takes to build/rebuild

I think for Windows, if the add-in controller is a simple JBOD/SATA controller then the only software RAID options you have is the Windows RAID 0 & 1 options. There is no RAID 5 available. Which for that many drives is a must in my opinion.

The ideal software RAID 5 is something like ZFS, which does not really have a performance hit, and it has some very nice features above and beyond what hardware provides (even just from a reliability point of view). However you have to use a UNIX or Linux based operating system, which means pretty much anything but Windows....even OSX can use it.

I do not know if Windows ReFS file system supports parity (RAID 5) support. It might not br practical to implement for you either.