Raid controller advice (pls heelp)
Hello,
I have had a read around the forum and have noticed that quite a few of you know about RAID so here goes:
History
I have the ASUS A8Nsli deluxe motherboard which, has a silicon 3114 raid chip along with the nforce 4 raid chip. I have not had much luck with either as the nforce 4 is fast but unrealiable and the silicon 3114 has better reliablity but rubbish speed e.g. 5mb/s write in Raid 5. :sad2:
I have found after a while of using these, windows crashes and the Raid degrades. When I rebuild the array it then becomes non-boo-table as there are corrupted files/sectors on the disk. Even if I repair windows it does not boot leaving me with the job of a fresh installation.:sad2::sad2::sad2:
Moving on
Anyway after researching the net I have concluded that these Raid solutions are in fact a pile of poo!!. So I have decided to invest in some decent hardware Raid. As I understand, hardware Raid uses its own processor/memory and sustains massive read/write speeds with great reliability. One of the apparent problems with my motherboard based Raid solution was that if the system crashed the Raid would become corrupted/degraded due to the cached data not being written to the array.
So what card should I get?
I want a 12-16 port sata 300 that is able to perform Raid 6.
I intend to run 8 or 12x 500gb seagate barracuda's in a raid 6 for database and 4x 74gb western digital's in a raid 10 for boot.
After talking to technical advisers and researching the web I have been told that 3ware and lsi make the most reliable/speediest cards.
So I am looking at 3ware's 9650se 16ml, which does raid 6 and uses the pci express x 8 for 2gb/s throughput.
What does anyone else think of this card?
Lsi do various cards using the pci express interface but, few support raid 6 and according to some tec-heads the lsi card is a lot slower at sequential writes and reads than the 3ware.
Is this true? has anyone else ran a raid 6 on either?
Oh and:
As you maybe aware SAS drives are set to take over SATA's as they are a lot faster reliable ect but price per gb is 10 times higher than SATA's for the time being.
So would I be better off going for a SAS controller as they are compatible with SATA's ?
The problem is 3ware only do a 8 port (9690sa) model that isnt even out yet although, they claim that you can connect more drives with the use of SAS expanders. I know that lsi make a SAS expander but I can't find anywhere that sells them regardless of what make it is.
Does anyone know anything about SAS expanders or where to buy them?
And
What card would you buy?
Cheers
:):)
I have had a read around the forum and have noticed that quite a few of you know about RAID so here goes:
History
I have the ASUS A8Nsli deluxe motherboard which, has a silicon 3114 raid chip along with the nforce 4 raid chip. I have not had much luck with either as the nforce 4 is fast but unrealiable and the silicon 3114 has better reliablity but rubbish speed e.g. 5mb/s write in Raid 5. :sad2:
I have found after a while of using these, windows crashes and the Raid degrades. When I rebuild the array it then becomes non-boo-table as there are corrupted files/sectors on the disk. Even if I repair windows it does not boot leaving me with the job of a fresh installation.:sad2::sad2::sad2:
Moving on
Anyway after researching the net I have concluded that these Raid solutions are in fact a pile of poo!!. So I have decided to invest in some decent hardware Raid. As I understand, hardware Raid uses its own processor/memory and sustains massive read/write speeds with great reliability. One of the apparent problems with my motherboard based Raid solution was that if the system crashed the Raid would become corrupted/degraded due to the cached data not being written to the array.
So what card should I get?
I want a 12-16 port sata 300 that is able to perform Raid 6.
I intend to run 8 or 12x 500gb seagate barracuda's in a raid 6 for database and 4x 74gb western digital's in a raid 10 for boot.
After talking to technical advisers and researching the web I have been told that 3ware and lsi make the most reliable/speediest cards.
So I am looking at 3ware's 9650se 16ml, which does raid 6 and uses the pci express x 8 for 2gb/s throughput.
What does anyone else think of this card?
Lsi do various cards using the pci express interface but, few support raid 6 and according to some tec-heads the lsi card is a lot slower at sequential writes and reads than the 3ware.
Is this true? has anyone else ran a raid 6 on either?
Oh and:
As you maybe aware SAS drives are set to take over SATA's as they are a lot faster reliable ect but price per gb is 10 times higher than SATA's for the time being.
So would I be better off going for a SAS controller as they are compatible with SATA's ?
The problem is 3ware only do a 8 port (9690sa) model that isnt even out yet although, they claim that you can connect more drives with the use of SAS expanders. I know that lsi make a SAS expander but I can't find anywhere that sells them regardless of what make it is.
Does anyone know anything about SAS expanders or where to buy them?
And
What card would you buy?
Cheers
:):) 0
Comments
i havent had any problems with mine and ive had it about 2 years now. They make larger cards ranging in 12,16, and 24 port versions. and the newer cards have 700MHz processors on them and take desktop ECC DDR2 memory for cache. They are definitly the real deal.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115022
The [FONT=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial][SIZE=-1]Areca 1280ML looks good as it does SAS and the memory is upgradeable to 2 gb. Shame its so expensive though. Have you had any degrades on the raid 5 you are running? How many mb/s write/read do you get?[/SIZE][/FONT]
i do know that it will run circles around the array setup i support at work, its 3 compaq SmartArray 5300's running 10-15000 rpm scsi's that we 'aqquired' from the LAN dept as they wee decommisioning servers.
i dont have alot of experiance with any SAS devices but i know as soon as you say SAS you're looking at alot of money. i mean the cables alone for the multilane connectors are like $150. there's still nothing wrong with the 1230.
i'm sure im not testing the speeds in ATTO correctly but ive seen read/write speeds in the 150-250mb/s range for SATA1 drives. not too shabby for SATA1 drives.
this should give you a better idea of what the card can do with SATA2 drives
http://tweakers.net/benchdb/testcombo/1032
The only trouble is that in the UK there is no-where that sells them!!!
I think I will buy it from PC-Pitstop as they are about the cheapest and seem to have a good reputation. Another problem with me buying from the US is that when the card arrives I will have to pay 29.5% tax/duty RIPP-OF-OR-WHAT!!!
Any ideas on other suppliers?