RAID Gurus - tell me what i need

[bob4432]

with my wife's consulting biz going well the data produced for her many clients is becoming more and more valueable. thus i would like to setup a raid 5 or 6 using sata hdds with an intial size of 1TB. i would also like to make sure that the card and hdds are real hot swap units and also a recommendation for one of the internal 5 hdd cases that take up 3 5.25 bays would be nice - again following the needs i have.

the mother board that is going into the server is a good brand, will ave an available 4x, 16x and a couple of 1x pci-e slots open. obviously the machine will be thoroughly stress tested before this raid setup is put into place with probably 48hrs of orthos and also memtest. psu will be an efficient, good brand such as fsp, enhance, enermax, pc&p or seasonic. gpu will be handled by a pci card as all i need is a 1280x1024 output w/ just 32K colors, or hell, even 256. the machine will be running xp pro since that is what i am most comfortable with and can still use regular software and no need for server stuff. backups will be handled through a cat5e/cat6 GbE lan and acronis.

with the raid setup i am not too concerned about str as it will be a place where hdd images will end up. i may even look into backing up the array to a external usb2/1394 750GB-1TB hdd once the price comes down.

so please tell, without breaking the bank, what controller would you trust your data too without going scsi? if the price is not too high possibly a sas controller is an option for future upgradeability. obviously i want a quality controller, but my limits will more than likely be at most 5hdds and also i would like the ability to, if possibly, expand the array - say i go raid 5 w/ 3 500GB hdd giving me a total of 1TB, then decide another 500GB hdd to move it up to 1.5TB - is this possible without re-creating the entire array? same as if i went with a raid 6 setup w/ 4x500GB hdd netting me 1TB - could i add another 500GB to get 1.5TB without re-creating the entire array.

i don't want a nas as the machine will be doing other stuff too such as running http/https servers, ftp/ftp-ssl server, a print server but the usage will be pretty low so the a64 i put in will be more than adequate with a hardware based card.

also, i believe the board i have has the nvidial nvraid on it and i think i can use a raid 0+1 setup - how bad is this compard to what i would like to do above?

the machine will be on a large ups, so if the power goes out it will shutdown nicely.

thanks in advance for your time and expertise,
bob

 

[bob4432]

bump for the day crew

 

[MichaelD]

What kind of budget are you looking at for this setup? You mention an internal HD cage; what CASE will this be going into? There are external SAS cages that would foot the bill nicely.

For what you've specified, you'll need:

PCI-E SATA RAID card with E-SATA port (Very expensive ATM! Does your motherboard have any PCI-X slots?)
At least 3, 500GB SATA drives.
External cage that supports SAS and ESATA connection...OR
internal cage that supports your needs.

You're looking at a minimum of $1.5K and we go up from there.

If you havne't bought the case already, I highly recommend something like a SuperMicro pedestal server that already has hot swap cages installed and supports SATA drives. Much better, cost-wise.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
What kind of budget are you looking at for this setup? You mention an internal HD cage; what CASE will this be going into? There are external SAS cages that would foot the bill nicely.

For what you've specified, you'll need:

PCI-E SATA RAID card with E-SATA port (Very expensive ATM! Does your motherboard have any PCI-X slots?)
At least 3, 500GB SATA drives.
External cage that supports SAS and ESATA connection...OR
internal cage that supports your needs.

You're looking at a minimum of $1.5K and we go up from there.

If you havne't bought the case already, I highly recommend something like a SuperMicro pedestal server that already has hot swap cages installed and supports SATA drives. Much better, cost-wise.

thanks for the quick response

the motherboard is a desktop board, so no pci-x slots, just 32bit pci. as far as the case - again a desktop case that has 4external 5.25 bays along with 4 internal 3.5 ones which will host the main hdd - ~80-160GB or - whatever i find a deal on.

with the hdds, i know that even though the sataII description usually means hot swap, are there drives that you have used that most certainly do do this? also, is it the card or the drive that needs to support this feature, or both?

i should add that since i am not concerned with str i guess even a pci-x card that is backwards compatible with a 32bit slot would do the trick. if i got 60MB/s read/write out of it i would be fine.

 

[MichaelD]

It's the BACKPLANE (and it's associated software) that supports the hotswap capability, not the drive.

Putting a PCI-X card in a PCI slot will work (99% of PCI-X cards are backwards compatible) and I've used RAID cards like that. The problem will be bandwidth.

But as long as you're not accessing the array constantly, you'll be fine.

For the cheap way out (at hot swap expense) you could:

- Get a PCI-X SATA RAID card that will accomodate however many drives you want to use.

- Buy the appropriate number of SATA drives/cables.

- Mount all the drives internally, set up your array and be done with it.

You CAN make a decent server out of a desktop board. Does the MB have onboard RAID capability?

I recommend a RAID 1 array for the OS; if 1 drive dies, the box keeps running.
RAID 5 (5 for speed, but needs 3+ drives...you could do a 2-drive RAID1 mirror) for your databases/client data/projects. If one drive dies, the card will alert you to this fact. You shut down, swap out dead drive for good one, power up, array rebuilds itself.

You've already stated that you've got a nice UPS with autoshutdown software/capabiltiy, and that's a really good thing.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
It's the BACKPLANE (and it's associated software) that supports the hotswap capability, not the drive.

Putting a PCI-X card in a PCI slot will work (99% of PCI-X cards are backwards compatible) and I've used RAID cards like that. The problem will be bandwidth.

But as long as you're not accessing the array constantly, you'll be fine.

For the cheap way out (at hot swap expense) you could:

- Get a PCI-X SATA RAID card that will accomodate however many drives you want to use.

- Buy the appropriate number of SATA drives/cables.

- Mount all the drives internally, set up your array and be done with it.

You CAN make a decent server out of a desktop board. Does the MB have onboard RAID capability?

I recommend a RAID 1 array for the OS; if 1 drive dies, the box keeps running.
RAID 5 (5 for speed, but needs 3+ drives...you could do a 2-drive RAID1 mirror) for your databases/client data/projects. If one drive dies, the card will alert you to this fact. You shut down, swap out dead drive for good one, power up, array rebuilds itself.

You've already stated that you've got a nice UPS with autoshutdown software/capabiltiy, and that's a really good thing.

will look for this stuff. i guess, when i really think about it, hotswap is really not a big deal as i could shutdown the machine and put in another hdd for the array to be rebuilt.

the m/b does have the built in nvraid so putting the os in a raid1 array is a good idea...

too bad i need the amount of storage i do as i have a lsi u320 scsi raid card that does 0,1,5 and i think 10 just sitting here on my desk that hasn't been used...but even 10K 300GB scsi drives are way too expensive, especially the fact that i would need 5 just to get to 1.2TB...

 

[bob4432]

would a card like this do what i want - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115027

also, how much cpu overhead is needed to run basically a software raid5 array? for the $$$ i could go a 1.5TB array...

 

[MichaelD]

Hey, that's a nice little card! (thinking back to Ye Olde Highpoint IDE Raid Days)

It would indeed do what you want. I would NOT boot from it, however. It's not a true hardware RAID card. IMO, it's perfect for any type of storage array. It takes four drives...make it a four drive RAID5 array and keep your eye on it. If a drive fails, swap it out for a good one.

For what you want to do with it, that card will take most of the stress off the CPU; especially since it's going into a newer setup (as opposed to a Pentium3 setup.)

You probably know this already, but for the server; NO overclocking, NO running anything out of spec. Default speeds for everything. Nice and normal and boring...will last a good long time.

I feel your pain about SCSI; I have a few U160, 66MHz cards and some 15K drives laying around. The drives are 36GB, max. I have 3, 320GB, 16MB cache drives in my PC...they balance the scale, AFAIK vs. the SCSI drives complexity of setup and much smaller capacity goes.

SCSI still has it's place in the Enterprise environment, but even that is slowly shrinking. We recently got a few HP DL380G4 servers at work; they have the new 2.5" SAS SATA drives. 146GB, 10K rpm in a package the size of a pack of cigs. Blows my mind.

 

[Minerva]

Does the board have PCI-E slots?

Forget running a PCI-X card in a 33MHz PCI slot. Many won't POST (bios blackout) or just weren't designed to run. It's like a hung person driving with a hole in the floorboard over tar and chip. Hello bloodyballs!

But anyway, Areca makes some nice controllers. I have the 1280 multilane with 8 raptors and it's blazing. Get a battery and 1GB or more cache and it will flat out fly. Even in RAID6 where you can lose TWO drives it freaking flies big time. It's expensive BUT you can use SATA drives which are cheap compared to their SCSI breathen and the controller is doing so much of the work especially with a big cache module.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Hey, that's a nice little card! (thinking back to Ye Olde Highpoint IDE Raid Days)

It would indeed do what you want. I would NOT boot from it, however. It's not a true hardware RAID card. IMO, it's perfect for any type of storage array. It takes four drives...make it a four drive RAID5 array and keep your eye on it. If a drive fails, swap it out for a good one.

For what you want to do with it, that card will take most of the stress off the CPU; especially since it's going into a newer setup (as opposed to a Pentium3 setup.)

You probably know this already, but for the server; NO overclocking, NO running anything out of spec. Default speeds for everything. Nice and normal and boring...will last a good long time.

I feel your pain about SCSI; I have a few U160, 66MHz cards and some 15K drives laying around. The drives are 36GB, max. I have 3, 320GB, 16MB cache drives in my PC...they balance the scale, AFAIK vs. the SCSI drives complexity of setup and much smaller capacity goes.

SCSI still has it's place in the Enterprise environment, but even that is slowly shrinking. We recently got a few HP DL380G4 servers at work; they have the new 2.5" SAS SATA drives. 146GB, 10K rpm in a package the size of a pack of cigs. Blows my mind.

sounds good. i hear you about no o/c or anything - won't do that. just stock . cpu is a 3000 venice and there won't be too much usage on the array. probably a couple hours a weak just for backups. the os/app hdd will be running the sites that are on it, but again, not heavy usage. this is kind of a 2nd stage machine - i have one machine that i try all kinds of stuff out on to learn - apache - mysql, php - stuff where i can wipe the machine and not care, this one will be the stuff that has been tested and works and is stable - one i can just leave alone and forget it is there.

i hear you about those littlle sas drives - just too expensive for basically a redundant home backup machine.



minerva - i appreciate the information but for this usage i think it would be overkill in performance and $$$. if it was for doing a lot of i/o activity i would go the route needed, but this one is not going to get much i/o work, just a place to keep all the backups with some insurance.