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RAID 6 vs 50

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Danne84

n00b
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Messages
16
I'm planning on setting up a new array but i cannot decide what raid level i want to run. 6 or 50
The configuration will be 12 2TB drives.
And i'm going to use it as storage for "this and that". so there will not be mutch load exepct when i move files to the array.

What are your recommendations and experiences?
 
Greetings

Raid 50 would be a higher performance mirrored raid 5 array but only 10TB usable.

Raid 6 would be slower but would be 20TB usable.

Personally if safe and secure storage is your major concern I'd suggest running ZFS either Raid Z2 (two parity drives like Raid 6) or better still Raid Z3 (three parity drives for 18TB usable).

Advantages with ZFS are very low overhead snapshotting which would make you immune to Cryptolocker type virii amongst other benefits that ZFS has.

Disavantages with ZFS are (a) it doesn't run under windows, (b) can get fragmented as it is copy on write so it is a big issue with things like OLTP databases but not so much of an issue if your using it like a NAS for storing video's and other media.

Cheers
 
Problem is i cannot run ZFS. No support for it.
And when i calculated the storage space on several site i get the same amount with 6 and 50. So the Capacity is not a problem. The main issue i see with 50 is that it can only handle 1 failed drive in the same stripe.
 
Danne84 said:
Problem is i cannot run ZFS. No support for it.
And when i calculated the storage space on several site i get the same amount with 6 and 50. So the Capacity is not a problem. The main issue i see with 50 is that it can only handle 1 failed drive in the same stripe.
Click to expand...

Yeah i'd go raid6. Raid5 shouldn't be used nowadays
 
HobartTas said:
Raid 50 would be a higher performance mirrored raid 5 array but only 10TB usable.

Raid 6 would be slower but would be 20TB usable.

...
Click to expand...

No, the space would be the same either way - 20TB advertised (~18.6TB usable).

I would definitely go with RAID 6. I would never recommend RAID 50 anyway, but your usage being "this and that", performance doesn't sound like a concern.
 
HobartTas said:
Greetings

Raid 50 would be a higher performance mirrored raid 5 array but only 10TB usable.

Raid 6 would be slower but would be 20TB usable.

Personally if safe and secure storage is your major concern I'd suggest running ZFS either Raid Z2 (two parity drives like Raid 6) or better still Raid Z3 (three parity drives for 18TB usable).

Advantages with ZFS are very low overhead snapshotting which would make you immune to Cryptolocker type virii amongst other benefits that ZFS has.

Cheers
Click to expand...

You're thinking of RAID-51, not 50. Also, the word, as always, is "viruses."

Assuming you use 2 stripes of RAID-5 groups, RAID-50 will take 2 disks for parity info and RAID-5 would only take 1. (You could use more than 2 RAID-5 groups if you wanted.) RAID-6 will take 2 as well. There are 2 differences between RAID-50 and RAID-6. First is that, on a reasonably fast RAID stack, RAID-50 can offer a bit more performance in writes. The second is that in RAID-50, "1 to 2" drives can die without taking the array out. I say "1 to 2" because it depends on which 2 drives they are. If they happen to be in the same RAID-5 set, then you lose ALL your data. But if it's 1 drive from each RAID-5 set, you're fine. With RAID-6, ANY 2 drives can die without losing your data. As a side-note: I myself use RAID-10, and with that, you can lose anywhere from 1 to (n/2) drives without the array dying, again depending on which drives in specific.

For 12 drives, I would recommend RAID-6, but RAID-50 is really not a bad option either. RAID-50 is easily achieved in ZFS by adding 2 6-disk RAID-Z units. Do some research on the efficiency of different configurations because in a 6-disk RAID-Z you will have 5 data disks and that may waste some space. Generally it's best to keep your data drives a multiple of 2, or even better, a power of 2 (e.g. 4 or 8 disks). These same limitations are likely to apply on other forms of RAID as well.
 
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Answer is easy; RAID-6

Why?

If you loose 2 drives in same half of the 50, you're farked.

You need to loose 3 in the RAID-6 before being roggered.
 
Good idea for some bad movies.
Bad idea for data that is valuable.

Expect annual failure rates of new disks between 2 and 15%, more on older disks.
Good luck if you are not Dagobert Duck.
 
tycoonbob said:
Have you considered RAID 60? Or even RAID 10 (R10 would be my choice, always).
Click to expand...

With 10 i loose to mutch so thats not an option.
Not sure if the controllers support 60 but i allso loose more space on that compare to 6 and 50..
 
Based on what you posted raid6.. Keep this in mind.. Every write has a double write penalty for doubling the parity. So writes/random writes will suck. But if you are just dumping media type files, you'll be doing long sequential reads which is fine.

Raid50 is better at getting around the double write issue, so you have better performance, but you run the risk of a double fault failure.

ZFS has its uses, but its way to complicated for the average user. Most people want to go into their motherboard bios, set it up, and walk way.
 
raid 6 is what i am doing with my 2 2tb 16 and 20 drive arrays.

raid 5 is a no no if your card supports raid 6.
 
Since you've got such loose and vague requirements, any answer is correct. But: Why twelve 2TB drives instead of six 4TB drives?
 
Raid 10, better performance than raid 6, safer than raid 50.

raid 5 / 50 should not be used ever unless you got some small SSDs or something.

With large terrabyute drives your chance for a 2nd drive, then likely a 3rd failure during rebuild is almost %100 these days on raid 5 / raid 6 rebuilds due to the added stress put on the drives and the chance of their being more than 1 bad drive in a batch if you buy them all together.

Raid 10 there is no parity to re-write, thus swap out bad drive and your done.


http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/558748-raid-6-10-50-sas-vs-sata

RAID 10 is the safest and the fastest. The reason to look at RAID 10 here is likely only for performance. RAID 6 will have a bit of write overhead to worry about.

RAID 6 isn't as safe as RAID 10 but is plenty safe. No need to worry. The only downside to RAID 6 is write performance. Read performance will be fine.

Consider nothing other than RAID 6 and RAID 10. At eight drive bays they are the only rational options.
Click to expand...

This is a decent base guide

http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/choosing-a-raid-level-by-drive-count/
 
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RAID-10 isn't that safe. Losing 2 drives can trash the entire array. It's safe enough for me, but it's more about performance.
 
True enough. On the other hand, the more drives in the array, the lower that probability is.
 
danswartz said:
True enough. On the other hand, the more drives in the array, the lower that probability is.
Click to expand...

It's also why I recommend never putting disks from the same batch in a mirror. Always use different types or at least different batches of hard drives to lessen the chances of both drives failing very closely to each other. Never just go buy 4 of the same drive at the same time.
 
All my Equalogics and other standalone drive trays run RAID 6. The write penalty is so worth the integrity. Disaster recovery sucks and it never goes as planned.
 
mikeblas said:
Since you've got such loose and vague requirements, any answer is correct. But: Why twelve 2TB drives instead of six 4TB drives?
Click to expand...

I would not say vague. I'm going to use it to dump larger files thats not going to be used that mutch.

And regarding the drives, Because the storage array does not support 4TB and i alredy have the drives.
 
Go with raid 6. Having two disks go bad at once is rare, but it happens. The cost of the additional drive ore redundancy is 2TB/~$100. The cost of losing an array is years*many peoples salary.
Unless you can clearly define a reason why you need the extra space (not want, NEED) then side with caution.

Personally I used raid6 in most places at work raid 5 is on test setups or systems that have some other form of redundancy. One thing that should be clear is that raid5/6 increases the load on disks and if you're using a hardware raid (software on a PCI/PCIE device) that most walk the array every 12 hours or so to check it causing more ware on the drives.
 
drescherjm said:
If this is the situation you absolutely need a backup of the entire array possibly off site.
Click to expand...

I thought that was an odd statement too. Losing a RAID array shouldn't take years to recover from, RAID is designed to protect your uptime not your data. Protecting data is what backups are for.
 
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