Which parity storage?

[Carson Dyle]

I'm thinking of finally implementing some type of parity storage on my Win2k3 R2 home file server with 15 storage drives. Then later on, some type of drive pooling. It's all media files, with the important stuff backed up to external drives, so it's not a huge loss if I were to lose a drive, just something of a pain.

Which parity software would you recommend? Free or low cost commercial products (<$50) are both acceptable.

 

[Elixer]

Wait, title says parity storage, and then you ask about parity software...

Do you mean you want to do RAID 5 ?
Or, do you mean you want to create parity backups of the media files ?

 

[Carson Dyle]

Wait, title says parity storage, and then you ask about parity software...

Do you mean you want to do RAID 5 ?
Or, do you mean you want to create parity backups of the media files ?

Parity via software. FlexRAID, UnRAID, SnapRAID, etc.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

If you're using win2K3, then I'd honestly recommend switching operating systems. Win2K3 doesn't even support self-healing NTFS, and as a Storage Server, is pretty poor compared to today's alternatives. I would put at least some consideration into something like FreeNAS or NappIt, both of which would let you do software parity on a drive pool.

If you are fine with double parity being the limit, and not-exactly-realtime parity calculations, go with SnapRAID, because it's free. If you want parity greater than +2, and/or want realtime parity, go with FlexRAID. unRAID is an entirely separate OS, just like FreeNAS.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Ugh. Win2k8 R2. Sorry.

 

[smitbret]

Get 1 or 2 HDDs that are at least as big as the largest HDD in your system right now. With that many data drives, I strongly recommend 2 since the odds of losing more than one drive are greater than if you just had 4 or 5. If 2 is out of the budget, then 1 is better than nothing for right now.

Go to www.flexraid.com and get their RAID over File System
Add the new drive(s) as PPU units and build the array.

FlexRAID will let you import the drives with data already on them. When the rebuild is done, everything will be there and be parity protected, pooled into 1 drive. You won't have to worry about moving data around, copying from backups, etc.

 

[Data-Medics]

I'm guessing from your OS that you're running on old hardware. In which case, a software RAID will likely be slower than just installing one large modern drive.

You really should consider hardware RAID.

 

[imagoon]

Use the built in RAID functions in 2008R2 if you are ok with software RAID or get a cheap last generation controller (Dell PERC6, H510 as examples) and use those. Or upgrade to server 2012 (R2) and use the storage spaces and ReFS for the Windows version of ZFS.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I'm guessing from your OS that you're running on old hardware. In which case, a software RAID will likely be slower than just installing one large modern drive.

You really should consider hardware RAID.

The OS is on SSD, which gets non-realtime mirrored for backup. It's a freaking home file server, so I'm not that worried about speed. At least 99% of what it serves consists of media files that will _never_ change. I don't need hardware RAID.

 

[Data-Medics]

Then why RAID at all. Just do a JBOD if all you need is a large amount of storage and aren't concerned about speed.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Then why RAID at all. Just do a JBOD if all you need is a large amount of storage and aren't concerned about speed.

See the original post.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Get 1 or 2 HDDs that are at least as big as the largest HDD in your system right now. With that many data drives, I strongly recommend 2 since the odds of losing more than one drive are greater than if you just had 4 or 5. If 2 is out of the budget, then 1 is better than nothing for right now.

Go to www.flexraid.com and get their RAID over File System
Add the new drive(s) as PPU units and build the array.

FlexRAID will let you import the drives with data already on them. When the rebuild is done, everything will be there and be parity protected, pooled into 1 drive. You won't have to worry about moving data around, copying from backups, etc.

Question about FlexRAID's drive pooling: Is there a facility for removing a drive? That is, if you want to pull a drive out of the pool, can you run a procedure that would move all of the files to other drives in the pool?

 

[Carson Dyle]

Are there any advantages to using W2k12 Storage Spaces over 3rd party drive pooling?

 

[imagoon]

Are there any advantages to using W2k12 Storage Spaces over 3rd party drive pooling?

I consider native operating system a large advantage over a 3rd party with how fleshed out Storage Spaces is on 2012R2. Storage spaces + ReFS, snapshot support (VSS) tiering (using an SSD as fast disk for active information) write back caching, dual parity, virtual "hotspare" among a few things it supports natively out of the box.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Does ReFS have similar memory needs as ZFS? This is an older system with a maxmem of 8GB.

 

[imagoon]

Does ReFS have similar memory needs as ZFS? This is an older system with a maxmem of 8GB.

No, not even close. ReFS uses much less memory.