suggestions for an 8-port hardware raid array

bazaarboy · 17 Nov 2009 at 20:48

hi I have 8x samsung F2 1.5TB drives (eco-greens), and I want to build a hardware raid array (operating on Raid5 or Raid6) - for my new media server (running win xp pro) which already has a 2x WD boot disk (raid0) on a ASUS P5W DH deluxe motherboard

what raid card would you go for?

Zarf · 17 Nov 2009 at 22:24

I went for a second hand Perc 5/i, they go for around a quater the price of a new equivalent card (Got mine for £70 including SATA fanout cables). The Perc 6/i should be out now as well if you want a bit better performance and RAID6.

bazaarboy · 17 Nov 2009 at 22:47

are those SAS only? or can you use SATA drives with adapter cables?

miniyazz · 17 Nov 2009 at 23:24

SATA adaptor cables work just fine. No RAID6 on the 5/i though, you'd need the 6/i for that - 5/i does do RAID 5 though.

Zarf · 18 Nov 2009 at 01:32

Just one more point, If it's only a media server, I'd suggest going RAID1 rather than RAID0 for the boot drive - Unless you can justify the need for speed it's a headache waiting to happen.

bazaarboy · 18 Nov 2009 at 15:35

i will definitely check out the perc cards - sounds interesting
having looked at a well-known auction site - it seems that the adaptec ASR-4800SAS is quite affordable too - any views on that one?? (seems quite specialist tho and importantly not sure if a 64-bit PCI-X slot is necessary)

as for the boot drive - yep its just for speed, plus the OS is already installed and ready - the array is already about 10TB so not worried about more space...

marscay · 19 Nov 2009 at 13:38

Zarf said:
I went for a second hand Perc 5/i, they go for around a quater the price of a new equivalent card (Got mine for £70 including SATA fanout cables). The Perc 6/i should be out now as well if you want a bit better performance and RAID6.

Really tempted to swap my 5/i out to a 6/i and go some R6 just for that little bit of extra piece of mind.

Anyone here using a 6/i?

bazaarboy · 19 Nov 2009 at 14:10

the 6/i seems to be faster - take a look at these benchmarks:

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7815

egraphixstudios · 19 Nov 2009 at 22:14

i picked up a nice Areca arc-1222 pci-e 8 port sas card off a known auction site.

very good price and very nice powerful card.

miniyazz · 19 Nov 2009 at 23:06

bazaarboy said:
the 6/i seems to be faster - take a look at these benchmarks:

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7815

I do hate to point out the obvious, but - the comparison with the PERC 5/i is silly because he uses fewer drives. The read speeds at least are bound to be lower with fewer drives.

marscay · 20 Nov 2009 at 08:38

egraphixstudios said:
i picked up a nice Areca arc-1222 pci-e 8 port sas card off a known auction site.

very good price and very nice powerful card.

Very fast cards them, they do seem a little temperamental with certain drives though.

miniyazz said:
I do hate to point out the obvious, but - the comparison with the PERC 5/i is silly because he uses fewer drives. The read speeds at least are bound to be lower with fewer drives.

Yes i noticed that str8 away too

, but even taking that into consideration they're still a little faster ....take a look at the smaller block sizes where the 6/i is a lot faster with writes.

miniyazz · 20 Nov 2009 at 08:58

marscay said:
Yes i noticed that str8 away too , but even taking that into consideration they're still a little faster ....take a look at the smaller block sizes where the 6/i is a lot faster with writes.

The three smallest block sizes are faster with the 5/i. It's only at 4k and above that the 6/i becomes faster. I remain unconvinced

marscay · 20 Nov 2009 at 09:09

miniyazz said:
The three smallest block sizes are faster with the 5/i. It's only at 4k and above that the 6/i becomes faster. I remain unconvinced

The important part you needed to read was writes

....but yes the small reads look low.

miniyazz · 20 Nov 2009 at 09:26

marscay said:
The important part you needed to read was writes ....but yes the small reads look low.

I was looking at the writes :confused:

The reads are higher for all on the 6/i, no doubt because there are more drives. The writes for 0.5k, 1k, 2k are faster on the 5/i.

marscay · 20 Nov 2009 at 09:36

The writes are in Purple .....perhaps you should take another look

Anyway the smaller writes are +80% faster on the 6/i ....2 extra drives isn't responsible for that.

The 5/i has faster reads until 8k and beyond where the 6/i takes over.

Just to make it easier

Perc 6/i

Perc 5/i

miniyazz · 20 Nov 2009 at 09:49

my eyes were on some kind of spaz with muddling up read and write, I checked like three times lol!

marscay · 20 Nov 2009 at 09:53

miniyazz said:
my eyes were on some kind of spaz with muddling up read and write, I checked like three times lol!

G'dam man i thought i was going crazeeeee.

I don't think the 6/i is much of an improvement really, just the Raid 6 feature i wouldn't mind having.

Once you get over 6 drives i get uneasy feelings with R5, like yesterday when i flashed firmware on my drives and then the array didn't see 2 of the drives at first.

miniyazz · 20 Nov 2009 at 09:59

marscay said:
G'dam man i thought i was going crazeeeee.

I don't think the 6/i is much of an improvement really, just the Raid 6 feature i wouldn't mind having.

Once you get over 6 drives i get uneasy feelings with R5, like yesterday when i flashed firmware on my drives and then the array didn't see 2 of the drives at first.

Yer I know, I'm currently on a 5-drive RAID 5 but will be upping it to 6 in the next few months methinks

the chance increases of an unrecoverable read error on rebuild as well. So I now have a backup for my RAID5

What's more annoying, though, is there doesn't seem to be a way to expand the array without starting from fresh and losing all the data - means it takes forever to do, and you do have to have an epic amount of storage to pull it off!

marscay · 20 Nov 2009 at 10:06

miniyazz said:
Yer I know, I'm currently on a 5-drive RAID 5 but will be upping it to 6 in the next few months methinks the chance increases of an unrecoverable read error on rebuild as well. So I now have a backup for my RAID5
What's more annoying, though, is there doesn't seem to be a way to expand the array without starting from fresh and losing all the data - means it takes forever to do, and you do have to have an epic amount of storage to pull it off!

No you don't have to initialize the array when adding disks, how are you trying to do it?

miniyazz · 20 Nov 2009 at 10:12

marscay said:
No you don't have to initialize the array when adding disks, how are you trying to do it?

Hmmf may have to look into that next time I do it

From what I recall, I stick the new disk in, it shows up in PERC BIOS alongside the existing virtual drive, but with no obvious means of expanding the virtual drive to include it, so in the past I've deleted and recreated the entire virtual drive. Now I feel like a muppet