Recommend hardware RAID controller for SATA 3...

[VanFanel89]

Folks,

I currently have an ASUS KGPE-D16 motherboard populated with two 16 core processors, 48 gigs of RAM, 6x2TB drives... and an LSI 8408e SAS controller from 2007.

Currently the SAS controller is being a bottleneck; I get maybe.... 350 mb/s read and about 180 mb/s write speeds... it's kinda pathetic considering this box is a virtualization server and runs a couple of SQL servers (albeit it's a home lab so... yeah).

Anyway, my top contender for a new controller is an ASUS PIKE 2108 which is LSI based, supports SATA III, 512 MB of onboard cache and allows me to use onboard SATA ports. The only limitation is that I believe (unconfirmed) the PIKE controller is PCIe x4 only...

With that said - I can get it for about $350ish online.

Are there any other options that would give me equal performance?

Thanks

 

[Team Merica]

I use the Areca 1882i in my setup. It's about $650.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151105

I have two RAID10 arrays - one with 4x WD NAS drives, and one with 4x Samsung 840 SSDs. The performance is unreal. I have tested it with ATTO using a 2GB section and on the SSD array it reads over 2000MB/s.

I chose this card because it was known to have good compatibility with my motherboard (EVGA SR2). I would recommend you research it and if you like it, I would recommend buying it.

 

[VanFanel89]

Man that's a hefty card but indeed unreal performance. What's the NIC on the card for?

 

[gmutale]

what raid level do you want to run?

 

[Team Merica]

Man that's a hefty card but indeed unreal performance. What's the NIC on the card for?

The NIC allows you to control some of the hardware and software functions, and get status, from another device on your network. It has a web interface.

If you don't use the NIC, and you want to access the status without rebooting, you actually just open a web browser and point to http://127.0.0.1 with the port number the device is listening on.

 

[VanFanel89]

The NIC allows you to control some of the hardware and software functions, and get status, from another device on your network. It has a web interface.

If you don't use the NIC, and you want to access the status without rebooting, you actually just open a web browser and point to http://127.0.0.1 with the port number the device is listening on.

Neat!

what raid level do you want to run?

RAID 5.

 

[gmutale]

RAID 5.

Very well then.. let's go back to your first post & clarify a few things - keep in mind though, I'm going by the assumption that it is RAID5 for the 6x 2TB HDDs.

Folks,

I currently have an ASUS KGPE-D16 motherboard populated with two 16 core processors, 48 gigs of RAM, 6x2TB drives... and an LSI 8408e SAS controller from 2007.

Currently the SAS controller is being a bottleneck; I get maybe.... 350 mb/s read and about 180 mb/s write speeds... it's kinda pathetic considering this box is a virtualization server and runs a couple of SQL servers (albeit it's a home lab so... yeah).

Anyway, my top contender for a new controller is an ASUS PIKE 2108 which is LSI based, supports SATA III, 512 MB of onboard cache and allows me to use onboard SATA ports. The only limitation is that I believe (unconfirmed) the PIKE controller is PCIe x4 only...

With that said - I can get it for about $350ish online.

Are there any other options that would give me equal performance?

Thanks

I'm not sure why you see this as a limitation in light of the RAID level + HDDs used: those drives will probably 'only' get... 600(?) MB/s max in RAID5. PCIEx4 1.0 is good for ~1GB/s. If it's PCIE 2.0, then double that. Either way, plenty more than the 6x 2TB @ R5

Another controller to have a look at: IBM M5014 - its a LSI rebadged 9260-8i. Only difference is, it does not do RAID6 (unless you purchase a lil jumper key thingy). It has 512MB cache, optional BBU & is PCIEx8 2.0 iirc. I purchased one on ebay for ~$250

 

[VanFanel89]

Very well then.. let's go back to your first post & clarify a few things - keep in mind though, I'm going by the assumption that it is RAID5 for the 6x 2TB HDDs.



I'm not sure why you see this as a limitation in light of the RAID level + HDDs used: those drives will probably 'only' get... 600(?) MB/s max in RAID5. PCIEx4 1.0 is good for ~1GB/s. If it's PCIE 2.0, then double that. Either way, plenty more than the 6x 2TB @ R5

Another controller to have a look at: IBM M5014 - its a LSI rebadged 9260-8i. Only difference is, it does not do RAID6 (unless you purchase a lil jumper key thingy). It has 512MB cache, optional BBU & is PCIEx8 2.0 iirc. I purchased one on ebay for ~$250

Thanks for the suggestion and yes, not planning on doing RAID6; I am content with the RAID5 setup (6th drive actually is a hotspare - so really, it's 5 drives in the array).

I was actually a bit generous with the speeds - I am getting about 300 mb/s read and about 150 mb/s write :\

Anything above that would be an improvement... I'll look at the M5014... I assume it's not hardcoded for IBM boards only, correct?

 

[gmutale]

No no, not at all.. have mine running in a SuperMicro s771 mobo

 

[VanFanel89]

Good to hear - thanks!

 

[mwroobel]

Thanks for the suggestion and yes, not planning on doing RAID6; I am content with the RAID5 setup (6th drive actually is a hotspare - so really, it's 5 drives in the array).

If you have a RAID6 capable card and are currently using RAID5+HS you should go to RAID6. This way you could survive up with 2 failed drives, where with R5 a second failure prior to the rebuild will take your array down. Depending on the card/config R6 may give you slightly slower writes but will give you the same available space vs R5+HS.

 

[VanFanel89]

If you have a RAID6 capable card and are currently using RAID5+HS you should go to RAID6. This way you could survive up with 2 failed drives, where with R5 a second failure prior to the rebuild will take your array down. Depending on the card/config R6 may give you slightly slower writes but will give you the same available space vs R5+HS.

That's actually not a bad idea... The current setup originally was done with just 5 drives; I got the 6th one sometime later and decided not to muck with changing the array due to not having any spare storage... Future array will be RAID6 tho - awesome!