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New Raid Card for WHS?

B

Bigzaj

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 18, 2010
Messages
96
I currently have an Areca 1231ML-2G with 12x1.5 TB drives in a Raid 6 array. I am to the point where I only have 2TB of storage remaining and I want to start planning my next raid array.

Can I run multiple raid arrays of 1 raid card with Areca 1680, 1880 or LSI 9280? I had thought about doing 3 x 12 drive Raid 6 arrays off one card using expanders but I think having multiple Raid 6 arrays on one card would choke my data throughput. Ideally I want to be able to stream 2-3 Blu-Ray movies at once from my server.

Should I look for a new card and run multiple arrays on it? Or should I buy another 1231ML and start a new raid array with 2TB drives?

What do you guys think is the largest array (# of drives) you would do with Raid 6? I want to keep future expansion open without having to run out and buy a new raid card every 12 drives.

I want to get to a point where I have 36 drives in two Norco cases off one machine, thanks.
 
so, if you have 12 drives already and you planning to get to 36, why not get one Areca ARC-1280ML and you'll be set :)
Btw: 3 BRs live streams at 40Mb bitrate each would easily chock even a gig network....
 
BoredSysAdm said:
so, if you have 12 drives already and you planning to get to 36, why not get one Areca ARC-1280ML and you'll be set :)
Btw: 3 BRs live streams at 40Mb bitrate each would easily chock even a gig network....
Click to expand...

New math?
 
But how would a 1680LP with SAS expander work with multiple arrays on one card? Would I be better off doing a 24 drive raid 6 array with one or two hot spares?

3x40mbps streams is only 120mbps, with could nics (intel) I think im more limited by my raid array than network.
 
Bigzaj said:
But how would a 1680LP with SAS expander work with multiple arrays on one card? Would I be better off doing a 24 drive raid 6 array with one or two hot spares?

3x40mbps streams is only 120mbps, with could nics (intel) I think im more limited by my raid array than network.
Click to expand...

It works really well. I actually have two HP SAS Expanders hooked up at the moment to a 1680LP. (See pics here).

BTW the reason you need a 1680 or 1880 card to run the expanders is that your 12xx series card is a SATA raid card not a SAS card.

Then again a second card is fairly easy too.
 
As suggested, get a 1680LP and 2 SAS expanders. I also run such a setup and it works rather well (though I have a 1680i, but it's essentially the same). There are no issues running multiple arrays with expanders. Using expanders is really no different than having the drives directly attached. 120mbit is only 1/8th of a 1gbit connection, so you have tons of room to spare. The cards are capable of 800mb/s (which is ~53 times faster than your requirements). You should also forget about using WHS if you are using Areca cards. I'm personally running 20 drives in RAID 6 per chassis and don't plan on going higher than that. I wouldn't recommend doing larger arrays than that or spanning arrays across different expanders.
 
So no issue with multiple arrays on one card? Someone on AVS told me it would bring the read speed to a crawl if i was trying to access 2 different arrays on the same card at the same time.

Yeah, I thought WHS would have features I would use but it really doesnt. No problems with the card in WHS though.
 
Having multiple arrays will affect speeds, however, your speed requirements are extremely low (only 15mb/s), so it won't be an issue. I don't know the specifics as I'm currently only using one large array, but I bet someone else can tell you specifics.
 
Well what is the optimal array size for a raid 6 before you are just tempting it to fail? I mean I could step upto 16 drive raid 6 array, that would knock me back to 2 arrays probably and save some overhead.

One question is 1.5TB drives for $79.99 or 2TB drives for $179.99, seagate 1.5TB drives still scare me.
 
will I get transfer speeds I am looking for with multiple arrays using 5900 rpm drives?
 
The speeds you are after are incredibly low. Even a decent USB flash drive could do the kinds of speeds you are after (as would a single hard drive). You however don't want to get 5900rpm hard drives not due to the fact that they are 5900rpm, but because that would make them Seagate drives. They aren't going to work admirably with the Areca SAS controllers. Stick with Hitachi 2TB drives if you don't want any headaches. I don't know where you're getting that kind of pricing, but 2TB Hitachi drives are only $110 on newegg. As for array size, I'm running a 20 drive RAID 6 array, but I wouldn't recommend anything larger than that.
 
Please do not use HDD with TLER or ERC disable...
These drive can get the raid array failed - due to unlimited time on error recovery process
 
DATOptic.Support said:
Please do not use HDD with TLER or ERC disable...
These drive can get the raid array failed - due to unlimited time on error recovery process
Click to expand...
... or due to clumsy implementations in hardware RAID, as Linux/BSD don't explode when a disk doesn't have TLER. But why would they fix this bug? If you can let your consumers pay for bugs that exist in your product, wouldn't that be great?

I think that is exactly what TLER is; they made an ugly bugfix into a cashcow, by letting consumes pay for the bugfix. But the bugfix is quite bad and on Linux/BSD you get the bugfix for free and works much better as well.
 
I would not know why such a feature exist...

Here is my conspiracy theory :)

Money - HDD manufacture just want end user paid for the RAID edition HDD

Is isn't that nice!
 
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