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RAID controller recomendations please

K

kherman

Golden Member
I am looking for an ATA RAID controller. Right now, i am looking at the Adaptec 1200A and 2400A (leaning towards 2400A for Linux support). The 2400A is $300+ though, so I need advice.

I want(care about):
- hardware raid
- RAID 1 (mirroring)
- Linux and microsoft support.
- bootable from RAID device.
- cpu utilization
- price
- reliability

Nice to have, but not required(will weigh into my decision):
- expandable memmory slots.
- ATA100 and/or ATA133 support (as opposed to ATA66)


Don't care about:
- speed/performance (just want the redundancy)

Basically, I want a card that satisfies ALL of the above! I will most likely take the least expensive card, unless a more expensive card has some signifigant advantage.

THANKS!
Karl
 
UPDATE
Did some homework.

OK, I did some research. What about a controller from 3ware?

Will the 64-bit PCI card work in a 32-bit PCI slot?

Also, 3ware has Serial ATA RAID and parallel ATA RAID. I'm assumeing parallel is better all around, mainly faster. What ar the pros/scons of serial vs parralel ATA RAID?

Thanks again!
karl
 
I recommend the highpoint cards. http://www.highpoint-tech.com/

I have the RocketRAID 404 and it?s great. They also have serial ATA RAID cards out if that is what you want. From what I have read, there is not really a big performance increase at this point. In the not to distant future, that will probably change.

There is a pretty good review on IDE RAID cards here somewhere (look under storage on the home page).

I feel that Adapted IDE RAID cards are not the best. I?m not sure if Highpoint has all the features you want though.

Good luck!
 
Thanks for the recomendations, and please keep them coming.

I'll be going to websites this afternooon, to follow up on the recomendations. Sounds like I might boot Adaptec from the list of options.
Also, thanks for hte quick heads up on Serial vs. Parralel.

Karl
 
If not for the Linux support, any $20 IDE RAID card or even onboard implementation would work fine. I don't know what cards support Linux, but for RAID 1, you don't need any specialized hardware. There are no calculations for RAID 1, all that happens is both drives write the same data, so there are no benefits for a "hardware" implementation of RAID 1. The motherboard you use determines whether a RAID card is bootable. Reliability is based more on the drives you use than the RAID card.

3Ware cards are backwards compatible, but you don't need anything like that for what you want.
 
Not in total agreement with the comment on no benefit of hardware raid. benchmarks in anan'd IDE RAID article show that for one of hte hardware RAID cards, there was about 33% less CPU utiolization. Everything else is about even for hte benchmarks, but seeing my concerrn is minimal CPU utilization, I will insist upon hardware IDE RAID.

Of course, one of the hardware solutions is average CPU utilizaiton.

Got to go.

karl
 
No benifit for hardware RAID 1???? WHAT??? How did you come to that conclustion? Just because the processors are fast enough to handle it does not mean that there is not a benifit.

Servers are also able to run a quick game of The Sims without too much loss in performance... But would you do it? No...
 
"benchmarks in anan'd IDE RAID article show that for one of hte hardware RAID cards, there was about 33% less CPU utiolization."

33% of what?

I assume you are talking about this article:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491&p=29

Browsing through the results, the highest CPU utilization I see for any card under any condition is 2.97%, which is an irrelevant amount of CPU time. Taking a closer look, compare the Promise FastTrak(software) to the Promise SuperTrak(hardware) and you will see that the Super Trak "wins" only 5 out of 9 tests, with the largest margin of victory by either side being 0.2%. If you want more results with more cards look at Storage Review where you will see the same thing, software cards beating hardware cards in a number of tests. I wouldn't consider 0.2% utilization to be worth $100 or more.
 
Originally posted by: Pariah
There are no calculations for RAID 1, all that happens is both drives write the same data, so there are no benefits for a "hardware" implementation of RAID 1.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was thinking. There's no point in doing hardware RAID if you're going the RAID 1 route. Find a good software RAID program and go from there. If I were you, if you're willing to look at other options, look at that Promise SX6000. You can buy it here and look at its features here. It's $268 shipped. It does have support for Linux. You do have to buy PC133 RAM for it, but I would suggest just finding some cheap 128MB ECC PC133 SDRAM as it's only $20. This way, you get performance AND redundancy. Hey, if you're willing to spend the money on mirroring drives, this is a better way to go about it. That is, IF you're going to be using 4 hard drives. RAID 5 needs at least 3 drives.

It's this simple, let's say you wanted to mirror 2 80GB drives. In RAID 1 you would need 4 hard drives, get no performance increase, and only have 160GB of storage. In RAID 5, you only lose the capacity of one drive, you get a very nice performance boost, and, if your controller has room, you can use more drives without losing an more capacity (only 1 drive's capacity is lost ever!). You can claim not to care, but hey, who doesn't want their computer to run faster? It's just a suggestion.

By the way, here's a nice site for instructions on how to install ATA RAID in Linux.

If you don't like RAID 5 at all, then I will try to help elsewhere. You could still go with the Adaptec 2400A as it supports Linux (the 1200A does not). The Highpoint RocketRAID 1540 supports RAID 1 and Linux. The Acard AEC-6880 is a RAID 1 card that supports Linux and ATA133 (though it's pointless over ATA100), but I'm not sure if it can boot from the RAID array in Linux. Going back to Promise, if you don't like the SX6000, try the SX4000, as it supports Linux, ATA133, 256MB of ECC PC133 SDRAM, and RAID 1 and 5. The only place I could find to buy this was here. $194 + shipping ain't bad. For 3Ware cards, I would only go with the 7500-4 or -8 (the last number indicates the number of channels), as their older cards don't support ATA100 or ATA133. The best prices for ANY model of 3Ware Escalade card can be found here. Please don't look around for a better price for any of their cards because you'll just be wasting your time.

That is every ATA RAID card that I could possibly find that would fit your bill. I will not again, however, that nearly every one of those drives supports RAID 5. I don't want to tick you off, but I'm telling you other than the price of the controller, it's cheaper to go with Level 5 because you don't lose the capacity of one drive for every two you have. Just an opinion.
 
I use an older 3ware card in one of my servers and love.
great tech support!!!, a nice web-browser based monitoring tool that can install in windows or linux.

i use it for 2 raid 1 arrays
 
I just recently bought a 3Ware 7500-4 from Hypermicro.com ($245). I use it in Raid 1 with two 80GB Seagate Barracuda IV's. Subjectively this setup performs exactly as I would like (using it as a file server for MP3s). I have not figured out how to use IOmeter appropriately yet, so I cannot comment on the performance objectively.

My reasoning on getting the 3Ware card:
-3Ware has an excellent reputation in IDE Raid.
-TwinStore technology means that the card should have near raid 0 performance for reads.
-Great reviews for previous generation 3Ware cards.
-the 7500-4 is optimized for raid 5, so if I change my mind later on, I can move up to raid 5.


-Mike
 
OK, the ATA RAID review that anadtech did shows that one of the hardware solutions, under RAID 1, utilizes 33% less of the processor than anything else. Second place was just a normal, non-raid, setup.

My main concern is redundancy and minimum CPU utilization. See next paragraph.

Due to comments by ilMater, I might go with RAID 5. It sounds like a good idea to get the performance boost and redundancy. It also makes the purchase of a hardware solution much more logical/reasonable.

For the record, I am not taking comments perosnally. I built my last PC in 1998 and upgraded in 2000. In '98, I built my PC and left an upgrade path. So, essentially, I had a new PC in 2000. Went from a CyRix processor w/ 64 meg of ram and a voodoo 1 to a K6-2 400, 128 meg and a voodoo 3. I've been out of hte game for a while and I want to be able to play Doom 3, but i also want someting that acts as a SOHO machine. So, I'm building a gaming rig with redundancy, as to make it act as a reliable home office PC to store financial information on among other things. i don't need speed for Excel 😉 I probably should have stated this off the bat. Truth is, I want to decide on the RAID setup now because I have never done a raid setup before.

RAID 5 with 4 hardrives does sound sweet after thinking about it.

My current thought is. get a hardware based RAID controller that handles 6+ hard drives. Do a RAID 5 setup with three hard drives, and then when I need more storage, i can just get three more HDs. It's all about the upgrade path 🙂

OK, from writing this, I've decided to go with a RAID 5 hardware solution!!!! I'll continue to use the comments everyone has given me to look up more info on a good solution.

THANKS AGAIN, and I'll be back with a more detailed decision in the near future.

karl
 
THE FINALISTS ARE:
I narrowed it down to the following hardware based cards:
PROMISE SuperTrak SX6000
ATA 100, 6 drives.
($256)

3ware
parellel 7500-8 (133/100/66/33, 64/32 bit PCI 2.2 compliant) ($373)
serial 8500-8 (133/100, 64 bit PCI 2.2 compliant) ($???)
ATA 133!!! 8 drives!!!!

ELIMINATED:
HighPoint
Adaptec

NOTES:
Well, it's obvious why people like 3ware. I now do! Good price on the 7500-8. The PROMISE SUPERTRACK supports two less drives though, but is $100 cheaper. What a dilema.
Well, hopefully when I go to build the new rig, I'll decide the 7500-8 is affordable. maybe I'll jsut get the 7500-4. 4 drives in RAID 5 could be sick. i'll jsut spend alot from the start, then I won't have to worry about hte upgrade.
 
3ware Linux support rocks!
Great RAID1 read speeds as well. Not sure how it would compare with software RAID1 though. Does the software RAID optimally split reads up across drives the way the 3ware card does?
 
If RAID 5 is what you want, then don't choose anything but the 3Ware 7500 series. RAID 5 performance for every other IDE card is either abysmal or close to it.

If reliability is truly what you are after for the price of the 3Ware card alone you could get a SCSI160 card and a 36GB 10k drive (with money left over) which would still probably be more reliable than any form of IDE RAID and be a much simpler setup. Add in the cost of all the IDE drives and you can up the SCSI drive to 73GB or buy 2 additional 36GB 10K drives for backup purposes or additional space.
 
Originally posted by: Pariah
If RAID 5 is what you want, then don't choose anything but the 3Ware 7500 series. RAID 5 performance for every other IDE card is either abysmal or close to it.
Click to expand...
I don't want to question someone who probably knows more than I do about RAID (though I do know a decent amount), but I'm a debater-at-heart and have to ask this question: do you have any evidence to back up that claim?
 
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