RAID 60 on SMC2108

[bigdogchris]

Putting together a storage appliance for backups with a SMC2108 512MB w/BBU with 36 drives (only 32 drives are able to be put into RAID groups).

With 4TB WD RE drives I want to use smaller RAID 6 groups to help reduce rebuild times, and would like to have only one volume.

The card supports RAID 60 and I would like to do 4 groups of 8 drives but I don't know if that's possible with the card. I may be only able to do 2 groups of 16 drives.

What do you guys think about doing 4 8disk RAID 6 groups with 1 hotspare in each group, then use Windows to stripe across the four raid sets?

I'm trying to maximize performance as the system will be connected to 10Gb link.

 

[omniscence]

What exactly are you tring to maximize? Sequential speed or random accesses?
I think that if you are after sequential speed, both options (striping on hardware or software) should work.
Also, why use one hotspare in each group instead of 4 global hotspares?

 

[bigdogchris]

What exactly are you tring to maximize? Sequential speed or random accesses?
I think that if you are after sequential speed, both options (striping on hardware or software) should work.
Also, why use one hotspare in each group instead of 4 global hotspares?

Maximizing sequential writes/reads. If using global hotspares is an option, obviously that would be superior.

 

[Pultzar]

Do you need 96TB? It you can get away with 64TB, then RAID 10 would be much safer and higher performance.

 

[bigdogchris]

It you can get away with 64TB, then RAID 10 would be much safer and higher performance.

Absolutely not an option.

 

[bigdogchris]

*edit*

NM, created new thread.