6 x 1 TB in RAID 5 on ICH9 with benchmarks

[ViviTheMage]

I don't know if anyone remembers, but I recently set up a 6x1 TB ICH9 software raid on my little server at home. I wrote up a little blerb on it, if anyone's interested on how it went.

Here are the benchmarks with write back-cache on :

Here are the benchmarks with write back-cache off :

I go a little more into detail here :

http://vivithemage.com/?p=77

Anyone want me to test something, let me know.

 

[Mark R]

Have you tried a different chunk size?

64 kB is likely to be far from optimal for 1 TB drives, especially, if this server is going to be used by more than one client.

Most home servers of this capacity are likely to be media servers, and you'll probably get better multi-streaming performance with a bigger chunk size. All small chunk sizes buy you is better bandwidth for small files (at the cost of worse multi-tasking). As this is a home server, which presumably doesn't have 10 Gig LAN, the bandwidth boost from the RAID is wasted.

I would have though a chunk size of 1024 - 2048 kB should be about right.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I did when I first set them up, and they were all really even. I didn't document those very well though, that was 5 months ago.

It's mostly for my main PC, and streaming to my PS3 on my gig network with a Netgear GS108 switch and my Dlink DIR 655 gig router.

 

[obamaliar]

thats pretty fast for spinners!
heres 5 30gb vertex ich10r

 

[ViviTheMage]

That's nice, but I have a LOT more space then you :-D

I cannot wait for SSD's to get into the 1TB arena, with a $200 or less price range.

 

[Gillbot]

That's nice, but I have a LOT more space then you :-D

I cannot wait for SSD's to get into the 1TB arena, with a $200 or less price range.

I agree but i'm not holding my breath. I'd be happy with an SSD @ ~$1/gb really.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I agree but i'm not holding my breath. I'd be happy with an SSD @ ~$1/gb really.

I got my 120GB for $200~, helluva deal, works like magic too.

 

[lsv]

That setup looks amazing. I think I may do something like that for my first array. I've burned through a 1TB drive in 4 months and only back up project files. Would be a pain to lose everything :|

 

[COPOHawk]

ViviTheMage...That looks like a decent setup.

There are a lot of people on this board who would automatically dismiss the Intel onboard RAID chipset as a viable RAID option. I have had pretty good luck with the ICHR9 and 10...using them for RAID 1 arrays. In fact, my own SBS server has a RAID 1 array using the ICH10R chipset...although I do have Backup Exec running daily backups in case of failure.

Do you have this array backed up at all, in case of failure? Or are you thinking that the array itself would be enough?

 

[ViviTheMage]

This is technically my back up/dirty array from my main pc/laptops/servers.

important/critical stuff gets manually backed up to an external drive once a month....and i'll also back it up to one of my remote servers...so realistically, i'll have 2-3 copies of the data floating around.

The non critical stuff is movies/music.

I was actually really surprised at the speed these mechanical drives can push, and how solid it's been so far. I usually prefer a RAID card, but for this raid, the ICHR9 has been great....and anyone with it, should really get those beta drivers/software, they have some decent reporting features/system tray alerts. They actually have an error checker now.

 

[Emulex]

throw a p400 with 512meg bbwc and you'll see those numbers skyrocket.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I can name a few sub $100 raid cards too, but the purpose is to use what I got, and surprisingly, the performance is more then acceptable.

 

[EricMartello]

You're running the ICH raid...but have you tried using Windows' built in software raid? It tends to yield better performance and it is independent of your MB so you don't need any special drivers...anyway without a dedicated controller those write rates are going to stay in the crapper. Not a big deal if this thing is serving files primarily.

 

[ViviTheMage]

You're running the ICH raid...but have you tried using Windows' built in software raid? It tends to yield better performance and it is independent of your MB so you don't need any special drivers...anyway without a dedicated controller those write rates are going to stay in the crapper. Not a big deal if this thing is serving files primarily.

I thought about that, but now I don't want to go through the process of moving data off, recreating the raid, etc. Any tests/benchmarks for proof though?