yet another raid thread

[mrissmann]

Good day all,

Not to start yet another raid thread but I am after more specifics.

First off, I do not care if Raptors and such boot up faster. I leave my computer on 24/7 and a little speed boost once every weeks or so isn't what I am after.

I am a software developer compiling software and building large databases. I back up to a NAS twice a day so I do not care about raid redundancy on my development machine.

What I am after is a setup that will increase the speed of compiling and the creation of the databases (which take about 2 hours each time).

Serious thoughts on

Raid 0/pci-x with 2/drives or 3 drives or 4 drives?
SCSI setup?
Raptor and the likes?

Thanks

-Markus

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

my personal take...

here is the preference in order of speed, not price.

1) Hardware RAID 0 card running Fibre channel drives. Better speed and failure characteristics.
2) Hardware RAID 0 PCI-E or X, SATAII, fast, but probably the Fujitsu or Maxtor...i forget which has a really fast SATA.
3) Software or onboard RAID 0, (motherboard) with SATAII
4) Software RAID 0
5) One big fast disk

As for the number of drives...the more the merrier. When I went from 2 to 3 drives I saw a huge improvement in performance. It's not linear, but it's a lot faster. If I was really out to get speed, I'd probably take option 2 with 5 or 6 smaller drives.

that's my 2 cents.

 

[Madwand1]

Are your CPU's maxing for significant periods of time during these processes? If so, getting a significant CPU upgrade or a RAM upgrade might be better bets. Note that CPU performance/price is doing better than ever.

Are you seeing significant HD access during these times (e.g. through perfmon)? If so, then the HD upgrade might be the solution, and a RAM upgrade still might help.

Going to a 64-bit OS might help if you can take advantage of greater amounts of RAM.

Drives matter, but SAS/etc., come with a huge price premium. It's better to spend the money on a high-end RAID controller with a big fat cache than on the drives from what I see. And get more drives while you're at it.

As far as RAID configuration goes, RAID 0 simply wins. RAID 5 can be decent with a good controller and configuration, but RAID 0 is simpler therefore faster, and if you have no concerns about uptime and data loss, and the performance difference is actually material, then RAID 0's the way to go.

Finally, there may be things you can do in the process itself to speed it up -- e.g. image the database somehow and recover it rather than build it from scratch, optimize the compilation using intelligent pre-compiled headers, segment the build so that you don't re-build everything; schedule full builds during human downtime, etc.

 

[mrissmann]

I have 2 gigs of RAM and a Intel Duo core 2 6700.

ehehehe, Madwand1 you sound like a programmer. It basically is done during down time but I actually have to create 4 databases each time so I have to keep running back to see if it is finished. Currently we are (arg!!!) using Access so that is probably one of my problems. We will be switching to a complete standalone database that doesn't required drivers.

The other thing I have noticed is Outlook. My email box is 800mb and when it starts up both cores are pegged and of course nothing else is working because of the hard drive bandwidth being taken up.

-Markus

 

[mrissmann]

Thanks Cr0nJ0b,

I am going to assume that Fibre Channel is out of my price range.

I am therefore leaning toward #2 of your options. Do you know of a $200 or so board that is good and faster than the onboard RAID?

Anybody have an informed opinion about which hard drives to use? I am probably looking for 3 or 4 hard drives 160-250gb. (I won't turn down a larger one if it improves speed)

-Markus

 

[Beatnik]

ARECA has really nice RAID controllers. I've used botht the PCI-X and the PCI-e versions of their cards. Very nice stuff.

The killer is going to be if you don't have an onboard slot that would support either. If you are stuck with PCI slots, no good news here.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

Here are some places to look for your answers.

HDD comparison

HDD comparison

I was thinking of the Samsung Spinpoint as a cheaper alternative to the Raptor...but if I were you, I would just look for something that is pretty good that you can get a great deal on.

here's an article on SATA RAID controllers

SATA Controllers

and lastly...another 2 cents...

I looked into the SATA controllers, but when it came down to it...for the cost, I figured it would be better to just buy a new motherboard with lots of onboard SATAII ports. some new boards have as many as 8 ports...way more than you will need...and then just run RAID 0 from there. this will be slower than the SATA card option, but with the money you save, you might afford faster or more drives or even go for a CPU upgrade. In your work, I would think that a faster CPU would have a great effect on speed.

One other note...and I'm not sure if this applies to you, but I have thought a number of times about setting up a RAMdisk with extra memory. The advantage is huge speed gains. the downside is that you won't be able to go that big...depending on mobo, OS etc...but if your files are in the hundreds of MB or up to a GB, this might be a good option.

 

[Jiggz]

A ramdisk made up of 8Gb in an I-Ram disk will help a lot!

 

[Enlightenment]

You should buy Areca is you want a good performing Windows RAID5/RAID6 solution. If you run Linux/BSD and want only speed, then software RAID0 is a good idea. Make sure you choose minimum of 128KB stripe size and make sure there is no misalignment. Either label with 1MB of reserved space or with no reserved space at all ("Dangerously Dedicated").

 

[the Chase]

Originally posted by: Enlightenment
You should buy Areca is you want a good performing Windows RAID5/RAID6 solution. If you run Linux/BSD and want only speed, then software RAID0 is a good idea. Make sure you choose minimum of 128KB stripe size and make sure there is no misalignment. Either label with 1MB of reserved space or with no reserved space at all ("Dangerously Dedicated").

Can you clarify on the misalignment part and what it causes? (Hoping to learn something yet today). Also thanks for the 128KB stripe tip- I'll try it. I've been using a 64KB stripe and haven't been that impressed with 2 Raptors in Raid 0.