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RAID1: Is cache on the controller necessary?

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VanFanel89

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Joined
Apr 21, 2004
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Folks,

I have the option between an LSI 9240-4i and 9260-4i to use in a two hard-drive RAID1 setup. The 9240 has on cache while the 9260 has half a gig worth of.

My question is - is there a necessity for cache for RAID1? Is there a benefit of having cache for RAID1? What can I see in terms of performance differential in the real world?

Thanks!
 
Yes a cache will be good if you are demanding higher performance than the throughput of the 2 drives.
This is of course for non sustained transfers, it will speed up things like windows operation.

Aesma said:
Hard drives or SSDs ?
Click to expand...
Read the op :p
 
My bad. Shouldn't it help mainly for writes, and would it really be worth the expense ?
 
Depends on what you define as "worth". If you only have a couple users, then you'll probably be fine. It's important to note that when cache is implemented, then typically a battery is a good safety net that you'll want to invent in as well.

if you don't have the battery, invest in a quality UPS. If your server suddenly goes down and there's data in cache that hasn't been written out to the drives, then corruption can occur.
 
Nenu said:
Yes a cache will be good if you are demanding higher performance than the throughput of the 2 drives.
This is of course for non sustained transfers, it will speed up things like windows operation.


Read the op :p
Click to expand...

But does the increase in performance apply for RAID1 setups? I was under the impression that since both drives are mirroring, the read/write performance would be equal to when there is no controller...
 
Cache increases speeds by not requiring data be written to the drives immediately. If will increase the access times to your array regardless of what type of array it is. If you have a few users that aren't demanding, then you probably won't notice the difference.

Much of this has to do with what the server will be used for.
 
Yes, it can make a big difference, particularly in writes, depending on the speed of the drives. The slower the drive, the more you'll notice the write cache.
 
VanFanel89 said:
But does the increase in performance apply for RAID1 setups? I was under the impression that since both drives are mirroring, the read/write performance would be equal to when there is no controller...
Click to expand...

When you dont have almost instant access to your data, cache helps.
Take a single hard drive and question whether cache improves it.
 
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