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LSI 9361-8i ?

B

bwv656

n00b
Joined
Nov 19, 2014
Messages
4
Currently I am building a Windows machine for editing and grading and I am really confused which RAID card to get so I would love to get your opinion.

MB>
ASUS P9X79-E WS
SDD>
1x Samsung EVO 840 250GB (Already Connected to MB Intel 6G)
2x Samsung EVO 840 1TB
HDD
4x 1TB WD 7200 RPM
2x 2TB SAMSUNG 5200 RPM (Already Connected to MB Intel 3G)



1) First of all, is it possible to use LSI 9361-8i as non-RAID regular SATA connection?



2) Please take a look at this review

Sequential Read performance is one of the most commonly used metrics for hard drive and RAID performance, so that is where we will start. The Samsung 840 Pro 128GB drive has a sequential read of about 500MB/s on most motherboard controllers which is right in line with what we saw with the 9341-8i. Interestingly, the 9361-8i is double that base performance with only a single disk. This is the result of the 1GB of integrated memory and really goes to show the immediate impact of integrated memory on RAID cards
Click to expand...

This review seems to suggest that just by using this card, I can make my SSD drives faster. Even with only one disk. This "one disk" means non RAID regular SATA connection right?



3) So if I am using my Samsung EVO 1TB drives with 9361-8i I would see big speed improvement over using my MB's 3G intel SATA or 6G Marvell SATA ports right? Would this speed difference be big enough for $500+ investment?



I understand 9361-8i's RAID is super fast but I am not so sure if it handles nonRAID regular SATA SDD connections just as well.As you can tell I have zero knowledge in this area. So I would love to hear you guys' pro opinion. And also if LSI 9361-8i is a bad choice please let me know as well.Thank you so much!!!
-j
 
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The (sequential and random read) benchmark probably operates on a footprint of the RAID controllers memory. It makes no real sense to use this result for any comparisons. In a real read scenario that data would also be in the OS page cache so the controller would not even be accessed. My opinion is that this is a bad review and it draws the wrong conclusions.

The RAID controllers cache has one main benefit, and that is to significantly reduce random write latency, and thus increase random write IOPS. It can do that properly only with a BBU or flash backup module. And that cache only works in RAID mode on LSI controllers AFAIK, so you will have to build a single-disk RAID0 for that.

I would save that money and get a new mainboard with an M.2 slot and pair it with an NVMe SSD like the XP941, SM951 or maybe pair the board you have with one of the new Intel PCIe SSDs (this would probably not be able to boot from PCIe SSDs, though). Those would blow most setups out of the water that you can build with the RAID controller. The 840 EVO is not very well suited for a RAID setup anyway as it needs TRIM to keep its performance high. The RAID controller can't do that.

I currently have an unused predecessor of that controller, the 9271-4i. I'm not using it for this purpose because of the incredible hassle that would come with it.

As a question, what does your workload look like? Lots of writing? Lots of reading? Sequential or random?
 
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bwv656 said:
2) Please take a look at this review

This review seems to suggest that just by using this card, I can make my SSD drives faster. Even with only one disk. This "one disk" means non RAID regular SATA connection right?

3) So if I am using my Samsung EVO 1TB drives with 9361-8i I would see big speed improvement over using my MB's 3G intel SATA or 6G Marvell SATA ports right? Would this speed difference be big enough for $500+ investment?
Click to expand...

I think the old saying "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" applies here. The article is misleading and this is causing you to make incorrect assumptions. Just take a step back and forget all that for a second.
To answer your question, no, the RAID card doesn't make individual drives faster. This was not explained well by the article but the higher performance figure was probably down to the benchmark reading from the controller's cache rather than the drive itself.

Anyway, I would focus on working out what your storage requirements are and aiming for the most simple solution based on that.
Ask yourself, how much storage space do you need for different things? What is "editing and grading"? How many applications will you run, and how big are they? Do you need a small amount of fast "scratch" space for working with files and a large amount of long term storage? In that case, how much of each type? 50GB? 10TB? How much will this increase by in the foreseeable future? Will any other users be accessing the files simultaneously? Does it matter if one of the drives fails?
When you know exactly what your requirements are then you can find out whether something like a RAID card is actually needed. I suspect in your case that it would not be necessary.
 
Omniscence & Concentric,
Thank you so much for all your thoughtful answers!!

I am using Avid, Resolve and CS6. Mostly dealing with HD footage and MLV Raw files. I was looking into RAID cards because I wanted real-time playback from resolve. And I couldn't get RT playback with my old system so I started thinking RAID was the answer.

Most of my apps (Resolve, Premiere and even Photoshop) needs a fast scratch space. And also, I don't know if I am using this term correctly but, I think I need fast sequential read speed. That's how video Movie files are stored/read right?

I was planning to use SDD for Scratch and Export and project files. And use HDD raid as a Media storage. And this is why I was looking into RAID cards.

And I really appreciate all your suggestions. The main thing I got out of your suggestion is to Keep It Simple S :D Thank you so much!! So I'll start with MB's SATA connection first. Then I'll see if I really need RAID card at all.

Thanks again for your valuable answer. And once I have everything setup I'll come back and post the result.

Thank you so much!!!

-j
 
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So splitting your problem into two separate ones:
1. For the fast scratch space, depending on how much space you need, I would look into a RAM-disk. Basically nothing can beat that as long as you do not need it to be crash and powerloss-proof. You can also use Samsung RAPID mode with one of your EVOs if you want your scratch space to be backed by non-volatile storage, but if you can live with the lost scratch data on crashes and power losses, the RAM disk ist a much better solution, as it does not wear out your SSDs.

2. What exactly is the data rate needed for real-time playback? A single EVO can deliver ~500 MB/s, so if you make a RAID0 of two of them you get around 1 GB/s. I suppose that the Intel onboard fake-RAID will be good enough for that. The X79 has two native 6 Gbps ports, I would use these for the 1 TB EVOs. AFAIK the X79 should support TRIM with the right driver and BIOS for RAID0, so the EVOs should keep their write performance. If 1 GB/s is not enough I would definitely look into the PCIe-based SSDs.

To have both at the same time (i.e. for the same space) will cost you money.
 
omniscence Thank you so much once gain for your help!!!

I am looking into it right now and that Samsung RAPID looks awesome!! It really boosts sequential read write performance. I'll try the Magician software once I have everything set up. Thank you so much!!

I don't know the data rate required but I think 500 MB/s should be more then enough. And it seems like the RAIPD mode easily doubles this in sequential read speed so hopefully I shouldn't have any problem.

And also I am planning to RAID my HDDs but not my SDDs so I'll keep it simple as you suggested!
Thank you so much!!
 
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Just be aware of the fact that RAPID cannot be used on more than one SSD.
And AFAIK it can only be used in AHCI mode. I have a system with an SSD in SRT (cache) mode and I cannot enable it on the other SSD even though it is in non-RAID mode.
 
Oh no!... oh well...

but then again I should be just happy with the SSD speed in the first place. :D

Thanks for the info omniscence !!
 
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