Question Low-end local server to build, considering RAID hardware options for RAID1

[mikeymikec]

It's very likely going to be running Windows Server Essentials (it needs to be a Windows domain controller and file server over a LAN). The current server has Intel desktop-class hardware in, and while I regard Intel desktop RAID to be pretty decent for what it is (ie. set it and never be bothered by it again), Intel in my experience very commonly has a strategy of making one's life unnecessarily difficult with regard to general Intel hardware driver support on a Windows Server OS (ie. they want you to be running Intel server-class hardware which obviously comes with a somewhat larger price tag).

This line of reasoning would naturally make me gravitate towards AMD, except in my experience AMD desktop RAID is absolutely pants; I've had a few experiences with AM3-gen hardware and AMD RAID constantly needing hand-holding, or it falls over regularly, or other stability issues that are very suggestive of storage being the root of the problem. Does anyone have a reasonable amount of experience with AM4/AM5 desktop RAID to assert with confidence that AMD RAID has improved considerably? I'd ideally be convinced with a few accounts of "I've been using AMD RAID on Ryzen for years to do RAID1, and the RAID system has never skipped a beat".

The third option is a RAID card. I'm thinking about 2x 4TB SSDs to do RAID1, but very little about the spec is set in stone at this point. It would be cool if it was possible to remove the RAID card and disks and connect them into another system with the RAID array still functional, but I'm not sure about spending hundreds of pounds for that one feature.

 

[Tech Junky]

The problem isn't the CPU it's the OS. I ran raid with Linux for years w/o any issues. No fancy cards or configuration just the drives connected to the sata ports and configuring the volume with MDADM and setup a couple of health checks for weekly scans.

 

[mikeymikec]

The problem isn't the CPU it's the OS. I ran raid with Linux for years w/o any issues. No fancy cards or configuration just the drives connected to the sata ports and configuring the volume with MDADM and setup a couple of health checks for weekly scans.

So software RAID you mean?

I think Windows Server did away with it (2000 without question had it)?

 

[Tech Junky]

Microsoft just renamed it to storage spaces or something along those lines. It's still there as an option. I don't bother with MSFT though when it comes to anything other than a simple partition for daily use. There's too many issues with the FS to deal with. I can't even count the times I've had to rebuild a drive or lost files due to corruption over time. I suppose writing this out loud though makes more for a HW raid option being more appealing. The other option would be using Linux as your host and virtualizing the Windows.

 

[manly]

So software RAID you mean?

I think Windows Server did away with it (2000 without question had it)?

Windows still has Storage Spaces, which I've never tried. I would not use a platform's onboard RAID. It is not true hardware RAID (at best, it's hardware-assisted), but more importantly if the motherboard fails, what do you do? Now you need to buy a similar board to recover the array.

Mirroring (RAID-1) is simple so I'd use software RAID for a low-end server. Automate your backup.
Hardware RAID is actually dying these days, but you can pick up a used controller for cheap. Years ago I used LSI MegaRAID (since bought by Avago Broadcom), and they are very well supported. IIRC you can buy a Dell PERC, which is rebadged MegaRAID so the software tooling stays the same.

It probably applies to everybody's RAID-1 (dedicated HBA or onboard), but even if the controller fails, either of the drives should work independently in degraded mode. Even as a boot drive. (So the above scenario when your motherboard dies is less severe, but I still don't recommend onboard RAID.) With RAID-1, there's just additional metadata stored on the drive, but generally the partitions are standard and uncomplicated.

 

[mikeymikec]

I'd like to know if Storage Spaces can actually mirror a system/boot drive. I've played with it briefly before and my impression was that it can't.

- edit - I just created a Win10 Pro VM and Storage Spaces worked in the way that I vaguely remember - it allows one to create an extra volume with say mirroring across two storage devices etc, but not the system drive, ie. you're always going to end up with an extra drive letter which is the 'storage spaces' volume in whatever configuration you've created.

- edit 2 - Out of curiosity I thought I'd try the old route of software RAID through Disk Management on Windows and it worked on Win10 Pro. I've done this on Win10 1803 64-bit, I'll upgrade it to 22h2 whenever it's ready. One notable point though is that the defrag utility now says 'optimisation not available' for C drive (the mirrored volume), so one question is whether TRIM is still functional on each drive. - edit 3 - TRIM: apparently not!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I’ll add another vote for Linux as a storage and file server OS. You can run Windows inside a VM on the same hardware to work as your domain/login server. (Complicates setup a bit, but recovery is easy if you can snapshot the VM before patches and stuff, in case one goes bad.)

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Given this is a Windows system, and you want resiliency, my vote is to just buy a Microsemi Adaptec SmartRAID 3101-4i for a couple hundred bucks and keep it simple. Has a driver for everything, installs easy, supports SSDs, and otherwise will just work. While there's a lot of ways to navigate this including Chipset RAID, nested VMs, and using Dynamic Disks, none of this seems as simple and straightforward to manage and work with as just putting a proper, supported RAID card in the system.

That said, single Active Directory Server + File Server duties sounds like a speedrun for ransomware, so I'd have a solid non-domain attached backup system in place as part of this effort.