Recommand Raid Controller

Why do you need a controller card?

That card is a PCI-X card and while it will run in a standard 33MHz/32bit PCI slot it will be bandwidth limited if you want to run multiple drives on it.
 
I require a raid controller for virtualization, the disk subsystem is important and normally the bottle neck for performance issues with VM's. I am looking at raid-5 or 10. Dont really want to spend more than £150.
 
OK, if you want decent RAID5 write performance then you'll need to spend at least £200 to get a card with hardware XOR support. RAID10 is easy to implement so only requires an add in card if you don't have onboard RAID support.

There are a few things which might be worth considering though

  • How many VMs are you looking at running? If you're running multiple machines then is it worth considering a drive per machine (or two) to reduce I/O contention?
  • What board are you using in the machine? This will determine what slots are available and hence what card is appropriate - there's no point in using a PCI slot if you need a high bandwidth solution for example
  • Do you need a redundant array? What's your backup plan?
 
rpstewart said:
OK, if you want decent RAID5 write performance then you'll need to spend at least £200 to get a card with hardware XOR support. RAID10 is easy to implement so only requires an add in card if you don't have onboard RAID support.

There are a few things which might be worth considering though

  • How many VMs are you looking at running? If you're running multiple machines then is it worth considering a drive per machine (or two) to reduce I/O contention?
  • What board are you using in the machine? This will determine what slots are available and hence what card is appropriate - there's no point in using a PCI slot if you need a high bandwidth solution for example
  • Do you need a redundant array? What's your backup plan?
Click to expand...


I am looking to build a new machine, open to suggestions on spec. The main requirement is to have decent storage performance, im not too bothered about backup plan as it will be mainly used for dev. Just wondering what types of costs for a raid-5 storage solution. Can you suggest any motherboard + raid controller? I am looking at Intel quad core, 8GB mem, and 1tb on RAID-5. Raid-1 for system drive.
 
Do you need redundant disks? ie does the risk of losing a disk justify the costs? You could do what you're looking for off an onboard RAID controller but the writes to the RAID5 array will be shockingly bad. A Highpoint RocketRAID card is a pretty decent compromise if you want passable RAID5 writes but don't want to shell out for an Areca 1220 or the like.

Your choice of board is going to be driven to a certain extent by your choice of storage solution as this will drive the need for particular expansion slots on the board - the Areca card for example needs a 16x PCIe slot.
 
rpstewart said:
the Areca card for example needs a 16x PCIe slot.
Click to expand...

Actually it (Areca 1220 - 8 port) will run on a slower PCI-E slot, Areca recommends 8x but it will run on a 1x slot, albeit slower transfer speeds, but it will run fine on a 4x slot....

x1- 250 MB/s
x2- 500 MB/s
x4- 1 GB/s
x8- 2 GB/s
x16 - 4 GB/s

I should also add Areca make really good RAID cards, although on the expensive side. :)
 
It'll run fine but most PCIe slots aren't open ended so in almost all boards it needs to physically sit in a 16x slot.
 
What virtualisation environment are you dealing with ?

None of the Areca cards on the ESX HCL, ESX is very fussy about supported hardware.

If its just running under windows then pretty much anything will work.
 
Reading reviews on Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 Serial ATA Controller it seems to be a decent product at a reasonable price. I am initially going to run VMWare workstation but in the future im looking to run Windows 2008 virtualization product.
 
That card doesn't seem to have a XOR processor. I think its a high-end software-raid card.
 
Imy said:
That card doesn't seem to have a XOR processor. I think its a high-end software-raid card.
Click to expand...
Correct, but as I mentioned earlier it's a good compromise. It has a degree of acceleration onboard but will still use the main CPU to a certain degree. On my old 4400X2 I could get about 60-80MB/s writes to an 8 disk array with about 20-25% CPU usage. Obviously that usage figure is going to be dependent on the number of drives and the CPU being used.

While it's not perfect in that there is a CPU overhead the write speed is sufficiently high to warrant considering it if you don't want to stretch to an Areca 1220.
 
I guess its the best he's gonna get on that budget. Another ~£160 or so for the ARC-1220.
 
If I did purchase the Highpoint RocketRAID 2320, what sort of gains will I see compared to using onboard sata raid? Yeah forking out over £300 is out of my budget.
 
For RAID0/1/10 none whatsoever. For RAID5 reads will be about the same but writes will be about 60-80MB/s from the card and around 20MB/s for onboard.
 
For what its worth, i'm considering one of these

http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/pro.../megaraid_sas/megaraid_sas_8308elp/index.html

8 ports, onboard processing, 128mb cache and its on the VMware ESX HCL.

Looks good for my home lab.

Just picked up one of these

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/boards/s5000VSA/index.htm

from an online auction. £102, a saving of around £200 off retail. Either i just picked up my best bargin, or my worst rip off !

I'm going to put 8Gb of RAM on it, and a quad Xeon. Perfect for my home server running ESX. Should be good for 4-5 VM's running concurrently with good performance.
 
That's a similar spec RAID controller to mine but with the older IOP333 processor. It likely costs way more than the ARC-1220 if bought new.
 
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