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Tips on low cost storage solution?

M

mattm

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 2, 2006
Messages
173
Looking at a lot of the different rigs you guys post up here, I see a lot of you paying out for the added SATA high-end raid card. I know about performance benefits and such, but If I'm looking at building a low end lower cost storage unit, what are my options?

I'm thinking of a single ATX case housing one of these:
Icy dock

How reliable are onboard SATA Raid 5 controlers on single chip motherboards? If it's not viable, what about these $30-40 SATA cards that newegg sells? Essentially this unit wouldn't be for more than 1TB of data.

As a side note, if anyone could comment on my other post about this mini redundant power supply that would be great, I'm looking for some feedback if anyone has experience with it. I notice many of the posts in the storage solution board lack the use of a redundant P/S.
Mini Redundant P/S post

Thanks!
 
An icy dock isn't exactly low cost. Your best bet for low cost is to build a linux box and mount the drives internally and use linux software raid. You can do a lot of stuff with it. Just keep in mind that it is VERY difficult to setup. Personally, I would tell you to buy an old P3 machine, put a PCI SATA RAID controller in it and off you go. That way you avoid messing with an operating system that will essentially expect you to have a PhD in administering linux to set it up.
 
True the icy dock isn't the cheapest form, and the box itself is already going to be a *nix box. I guess I should have been clearer on saying I wanted the "least expensive hot-swappable" storage solution.

Though I had thought about just using the software raid. Thanks for your suggestion.
 
I don't think that the linux software solution is hot swappable, but I'm not sure. You might want to check that before you pursue it. In reality, biting the bullet and getting a good 8 port sata raid card is probably your best option.
 
The max I was thinking for this unit is 3 500GB's in RAID 5 array. to give a total of 1TB of data (minus formatting and the OS itself).

Are these high end 8 port cards really needed in a setup like this? Or could I get away with raid 5 built onto the mobo?
 
mattm said:
The max I was thinking for this unit is 3 500GB's in RAID 5 array. to give a total of 1TB of data (minus formatting and the OS itself).

Are these high end 8 port cards really needed in a setup like this? Or could I get away with raid 5 built onto the mobo?
Click to expand...

well, as unhappy mage said before, he doesnt like the raid 5 on mobos. maybe well he logs on, he'll be able to shed some more light on it. *prepares for the [H]uge knowledge of u_m*
 
Yea, I wouldn't imagine any of the mobo RAID configs to be good at anything but light-weight mirroring. I guess there's no way around NOT spending $400+ for a RAID 5 card.
 
mattm said:
Yea, I wouldn't imagine any of the mobo RAID configs to be good at anything but light-weight mirroring. I guess there's no way around NOT spending $400+ for a RAID 5 card.
Click to expand...

sata or ide? how many drives? pci, pci-e, pci-x?
 
I think it all depends on what performance you want. The Mobo RAID-5 is likely fine for 100Mbps Network file serving. I have a suggestions: Since you are building it now, why not try the mobo (which you'd have regardless of what solution you are going for) and see if it fits your needs. See what happens when you unplug 1 drive. See if it is smart enough to recover from unplugging 2 drives, which no failures (i.e. unplug and replug).. In the end, if you think that you want to go cheap and your time is not valuable, a little bit of testing can uncover whether the mobo-only solution will fit your needs.
 
My plan was to do either 3 500GB in Raid 5 or 4 320GB in Raid 5 (I know not a full TB, but close enough fo rme)

all SATA drives and to your question of:
pci, pci-e, pci-x?
Click to expand...

I'm not really sure...I'm just looking for the lowest TCO to config a 1TB storage solution in a hot swappable RAID 5 array.
 
usually pci-x is found on server motherboards, so you uprobably wont need these.

pci is still used quite often. if you want to have dedicated bandwidth, use something that has pci-e. usually cards are pci-e x4 or x8. so an x8 will have to fit into a mobo that is sli because i have not been able to find a mobo with an x8 slot. this is just a quick search on newegg for raid 5 cards. highpoints are usually recommended if you decide to use raid 5 for a somewhat cheap setup.
 
mattm said:
Actually drizzt81, I haven't purchased the components yet.
Click to expand...
I see. Then let me ask you the hypothetical question: if you were going to get a controller card, how would that change your component selection, in particular motherboard?
 
Yea this Highpoint seems to be fairly low cost for what I want - can't beleive i didn't see that the first time around on newegg.

I see. Then let me ask you the hypothetical question: if you were going to get a controller card, how would that change your component selection, in particular motherboard?
Click to expand...

I guess that was my original question. :p

I should have rephrased it and asked:
What components can I use for the lowest TCO in a 1TB hotswappable Raid 5 Storage solution?
  • On mobo RAID Controller?
  • *nix software RAID?
  • Inexpensive RAID cards?

So if I got a raid controller, your right it wouldn't matter what mobo I got.
 
mattm said:
I should have rephrased it and asked:
What components can I use for the lowest TCO in a 1TB hotswappable Raid 5 Storage solution?
Click to expand...

That questions is almost unanswerable if we do not know how expensive downtime is for you (assuming that you have a backup). ;)

Anyway, for the cheapest up-front cost TB array:

nForce5 mobo with 6 sata ports, 4 or 5 300-320GB SATA HDD's and a boot disk. AM2 Sempron with some RAM.

mattm said:
So if I got a raid controller, your right it wouldn't matter what mobo I got.
Click to expand...

actually, it still would, since you will need a PCIe capable mobo if you are getting a 23x0 controller.

I would not purchase a 4-port controller card. I have made that mistake once in the past and would not repeat it. In my oppinion, the extra $100 invested on the 8-port version is well worth it, if you expect to expand your storage at some point in the next year.
 
So something like this: Asus M2N-E?

drizzt81, your points are valid. About the cost of my downtime - if on board RAID5 is really that bad in a 1TB situation and you ask me the question:

Is ~$300 worth almost 0 downtime/headaches versus onboard where you will continue to struggle? Then by all means throw in the $300 to my TCO because in the long run I wont be administrating it and fixing it as much.

Which brings me to the original question, are these add on cards REALLY worth the extra dough? So if your saying, onboard RAID is terrible; stay far far away from it - then I'll opt for the add on card.

Great feedback from all of you! ;)
 
mattm said:
True the icy dock isn't the cheapest form, and the box itself is already going to be a *nix box. I guess I should have been clearer on saying I wanted the "least expensive hot-swappable" storage solution.
Click to expand...
These are the best hotswap enclosures I've found. 5 drives in 3 bays, well-cooled, pretty, hotswap. Linux deals okay with removing a drive from an array while the whole thing's on, but I haven't found a way with my controller to plug a disk in while it's on and have it recognized. Much to my dismay.

The Highpoint cards (2310, 2320, et al) are nice if you have to run under Windows, not so necessary otherwise. A pair of sil3114-based cards or one AOC-SAT2-MV8 and Linux Software Raid will do most of what they do.

 
unhappy_mage said:
These are the best hotswap enclosures I've found. 5 drives in 3 bays, well-cooled, pretty, hotswap. Linux deals okay with removing a drive from an array while the whole thing's on, but I haven't found a way with my controller to plug a disk in while it's on and have it recognized. Much to my dismay.

The Highpoint cards (2310, 2320, et al) are nice if you have to run under Windows, not so necessary otherwise. A pair of sil3114-based cards or one AOC-SAT2-MV8 and Linux Software Raid will do most of what they do.

Click to expand...

Those SuperMicro's are pretty nice only taking up 3 physical bays w/ 5 drives. They aren't as pretty as the Icy's but oh well. Thanks for the tip. ;)
 
Here is my first attempt at building a 1TB system based on the AOC-SAT2-MV8 u_m recommended:

(based 64-bit PCI-X 133mhz bus needed for the 8-port SATA RAID card)
Total: $1,132

This is still without a power supply as I'm still researching power requirements with all these components. Roughly, going the route with the card, and then needed PCI-X components to work with the card - I'm at a little over $1 per gig total setup (without a PS)

How/why I chose 250gb Drives - Raid 5 array (and please let me know if this is the most sensible way)

HD Size | Total Drives | Total Storage | Total Cost
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
250GB 5 1TB $374
320GB 5 1.2TB $474
400GB 4 1.2TB $676
500GB 3 1TB $867

I'm also figuring for harddrive failure cost 250GB drives are more accessible and cheaper. My next step is to build a box out of on board RAID 5 of the Asus M2N-E.
 
The drive enclosure won't fit in that case stock, due to the little fins that hold up CDROM drives et al. The sides of the enclosure are solid, and so they don't fit past the fins. You can fold them down with a pair of pliers and a little finangling, usually, but it's up to the user to do that.

The AOC-SAT2-MV8 will work in a regular PCI slot, BTW, albeit at a potentially slower speed. I think you can live with only 120 MB/s, though ;) And if you use that card (or the pair of 3114s), you'll probably want to use Linux, as you need a server OS or a hack to use raid 5 under Windows. That means a good deal of knowledge or help from me will be necessary.

 
Got a case in mind that will fit those SuperMicro trays stock? And for the PCI x-fer speed versus PCI-X, what's the difference? 120 versus 360?

No worries on the *nix stuff here! ;)
 
Well I re-configured the system taking out the PCI-X bus and went with:
  • Asus P5-RD2-VM
  • Pentium D 805 2.66
  • 512MB DDR2 Memory

And I'm at $831.09 without a power supply. I did score a barely used 250W mini redundant power supply on eBay for $25, but I think 250W it's a bit low for 5 drivers.

I figured I may be able to save $80-$100 in chip and mobo, but figured the value I get in a D 805 with the dual core could be helpful to overall performance of a terrabyte of data.
 
It's easy to calculate the theoretical speed of any given PCI or PCI express bus. Simply multiply data width by clock rate, or clock rate by number of lanes. So, for example, a standard PCI slot is 32 bits wide, at 33 mHz. 32*33*1e6 = 1056 megabits per second. Divide by 8 to get megabytes per second, and you get 132 MB/s as theoretical bandwidth for that slot. 64/66 slots are 64*66/8 = 528 MB/s theoretical, and the fastest PCI bus is 64/133 for 1056 MB/s.

PCI Express is even simpler - multiply 250 MB/s by the number of lanes, and remember it's full duplex: you can send and recieve at the same time at that speed. So an x1 slot is 250 MB/s, x4 is 1000, and x16 is 4000 MB/s. When they get to increasing the clock rate to 5 gigabits (I think that's the plan...) they'll double the end speed.

 
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