SOHO Raid 5 Setup - Suggestions
Hi Guys,
Nice forum you have here, it has been very useful in getting me started.
I am looking for some advice on a home RAID setup. I am System Arch working on enterprise SOA apps, so large systems are no stranger to me. Of course when budgets are in the millions picking a solution can be a lot easier particular when it's not your money.
My career and personality make me a natural data whore. Everything from high res videos to installs of enterprise apps and IDE (WebLogic, WebSphere, Oracle, etc). Over the years I have increased storage when and where I can. At this point I am running a very risky JBOD setup on 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo box on an intel D33 board (not the best but I picked up the box from a CompUSA that was goingg out of business for $400). Array size is about 1.2tb and im at about 80% utilization. Obviously the thought of loss is freaking me out and the onboard Controller is admitedly flakey.
The system is primarily a file-server/streaming/transcoding for the internal network but also does double duty as an app server/general purpose machine from time to time. The system is connected to the network via 2x1gigabit ethernet and serves both PC clients as well as 4 seprate media centers (Linux boxes hooked up to TVs running XBMC).
The need here is to be able to have video streaming while not impacting general file system perfromance and vice-versa. Someone should be able to sit down and use the machine (say compile an App in Eclipse or Visual Studio, run a VM, etc) while someone else is watching a video in the living room or accessing files off the array.
I have done some digging around the net, including here and I THINK I have layed out a good setup for a SOHO Raid 5 array. Though honestly I would love to have some opnions from folks who likely do this WAY more than I do.
My thought is the D33 board I have with a 1088 FSB and 4gb of ram on the 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo processor is plenty of horsepower. It's a Micro-ATX board but has plenty of PCI-x slots for my purposes. Im not intrested in a hard core gaming box here. The included NVida 256mb PCIx16 card will suit my needs more than adquadetly. I don't see alot of issues with the motherboard itself. The case is more consumer oriented (gateway brand) so that will have to go.
My plan is to purchase a new case, power supply, Raid controller and 4 SATA hard disks and build using the exsiting Mobo, Ram, Proc and Vid card. Cooling of course is of critical importance here.
I am considering the following gear:
Antec P180 Case with addtional Optional 120mm fans
Antec Neo Power 650 PSU
Adaptec 3805 SATA Raid Controller
4x 1tb Segate Baracudda 7200 RPM 32mb cache drives (total of approx 3tb when configured Raid 5)
The array will be data only and I will use 2 of the existing Western Digital 500gb drives as OS drives in a Raid 1 configuration using either the Onboard controller or the new controller (not sure yet).
So far best price I have on this is about $1300 shipped.
A few questions I have about this setup are:
1. With 5 120mm fans on this case and 6 total drives in the case will I still have cooling issues with an average ambient temp of 75* F? Should I consider water cooling?
2. Is a 650w PSU enough? I assumed I would need 850 but ran a few online calculators and most came in at about 550w needed for a config like this.
3. I plan to go for the 128mb version of the 3805 would it be worthwhile to get the 256mb cache?
4. What is the value of the battery backup unit for the 3805? I have seen conflicting information on its use for maintaining the write cache for performance and reliability reasons.
5. Am I missing anything? Other than the standard warnings does this have some unseen potential to blowup in my face due to some of my choices? Are there any more cost effective options? Any other advice is welcome.
Thanks for reading my long post. I apperiacte any input or insight you guys can offer.
Nice forum you have here, it has been very useful in getting me started.
I am looking for some advice on a home RAID setup. I am System Arch working on enterprise SOA apps, so large systems are no stranger to me. Of course when budgets are in the millions picking a solution can be a lot easier particular when it's not your money.
My career and personality make me a natural data whore. Everything from high res videos to installs of enterprise apps and IDE (WebLogic, WebSphere, Oracle, etc). Over the years I have increased storage when and where I can. At this point I am running a very risky JBOD setup on 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo box on an intel D33 board (not the best but I picked up the box from a CompUSA that was goingg out of business for $400). Array size is about 1.2tb and im at about 80% utilization. Obviously the thought of loss is freaking me out and the onboard Controller is admitedly flakey.
The system is primarily a file-server/streaming/transcoding for the internal network but also does double duty as an app server/general purpose machine from time to time. The system is connected to the network via 2x1gigabit ethernet and serves both PC clients as well as 4 seprate media centers (Linux boxes hooked up to TVs running XBMC).
The need here is to be able to have video streaming while not impacting general file system perfromance and vice-versa. Someone should be able to sit down and use the machine (say compile an App in Eclipse or Visual Studio, run a VM, etc) while someone else is watching a video in the living room or accessing files off the array.
I have done some digging around the net, including here and I THINK I have layed out a good setup for a SOHO Raid 5 array. Though honestly I would love to have some opnions from folks who likely do this WAY more than I do.
My thought is the D33 board I have with a 1088 FSB and 4gb of ram on the 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo processor is plenty of horsepower. It's a Micro-ATX board but has plenty of PCI-x slots for my purposes. Im not intrested in a hard core gaming box here. The included NVida 256mb PCIx16 card will suit my needs more than adquadetly. I don't see alot of issues with the motherboard itself. The case is more consumer oriented (gateway brand) so that will have to go.
My plan is to purchase a new case, power supply, Raid controller and 4 SATA hard disks and build using the exsiting Mobo, Ram, Proc and Vid card. Cooling of course is of critical importance here.
I am considering the following gear:
Antec P180 Case with addtional Optional 120mm fans
Antec Neo Power 650 PSU
Adaptec 3805 SATA Raid Controller
4x 1tb Segate Baracudda 7200 RPM 32mb cache drives (total of approx 3tb when configured Raid 5)
The array will be data only and I will use 2 of the existing Western Digital 500gb drives as OS drives in a Raid 1 configuration using either the Onboard controller or the new controller (not sure yet).
So far best price I have on this is about $1300 shipped.
A few questions I have about this setup are:
1. With 5 120mm fans on this case and 6 total drives in the case will I still have cooling issues with an average ambient temp of 75* F? Should I consider water cooling?
2. Is a 650w PSU enough? I assumed I would need 850 but ran a few online calculators and most came in at about 550w needed for a config like this.
3. I plan to go for the 128mb version of the 3805 would it be worthwhile to get the 256mb cache?
4. What is the value of the battery backup unit for the 3805? I have seen conflicting information on its use for maintaining the write cache for performance and reliability reasons.
5. Am I missing anything? Other than the standard warnings does this have some unseen potential to blowup in my face due to some of my choices? Are there any more cost effective options? Any other advice is welcome.
Thanks for reading my long post. I apperiacte any input or insight you guys can offer.
0
Comments
Without the battery you can not enable the write cache. Raid-5 suxs on writes. Expect your write performance to be worse then a single 6 or 7 year old ide drive even with the cache. Depending on the number of drives in the array your writing parity data to the other drives in the array between every write. So figure its SLOW. Some controllers do this MUCH better then others. (wink)
If your app is write intensive you need every bit of help you can get.
Look raid is my specialty. I like the forums here but... I suggest you check out the storage forums at 2cpu.com. This site used to have a very active hardware section. I had 11,000 posts at the old Icrontic. The disk storage section was very active. Totaly different world now at 2cpu.com with a bigger focus on disk subsystems. You will find TONS of posts about just the state of the art raid controllers. These guys are high performance nuts! I used to post there often as I tune scsi disk systems.
Cheers
Cowboy
A couple smaller faster raptors would be slicker.
Best of Luck
Cowboy
I don't think water cooling will be necessary, but definitely make sure there is airflow between the drives. Our guide on airflow - old but still potentially enlightening.
I expect so, and a couple online calculators confirmed that suspicion for me as well.
I will leave the other questions to those more qualified
Most here play with raid-0 and its a joke mostly. A toy we play with just for fun. Raid-1 if done right is better. Its just that most the built in raid on MB's are like playing with baby toys. Raid-5 isnt bad if you dont mind the slow writes and understand what to do to recover it ahead of time. (wink)
No raid is a way to get around backups period. raid-5 especially with a hot spare that will rebuild on its own with a failure just keeps the system online more. For some apps thats critical.
Cheers
Cowboy
You guys defiantly made me think some things over. As a result I did some more research into Raid5 and decided it was not for me. I saved up some more cash and went with a larger case and built the hardware from brand new components (ASUS Socket 775 board, Q6600 Proc with 8gb of 1088mhz ram).
One thing I have learned is that it is not a question of IF an array will fail. It is more a matter of when and how much risk you are exposed to in the event of a failure. After much thought and some extra cost I think I have a setup that minimizes my risks while still allowing me maximum flexibility with my storage.
I stuck with the 3805 w/ battery but boosted my drive count to 8 1tb drives in a RAID 6/0 configuration. This ends up with about the same amount of storage and performance as I was planning to get from the smaller RAID 5 setup but with a lot more redundancy against the inevitable bad writes and such. I can have up to 4 drives fail (2 on each side of the /0) before I have a major issue.
The Adaptec software does an excellent job re-verifying the array regularly and notifies me of any possible failures or pre-coursors to failure. I have already had one drive go due to SMART errors (IE it was not dead but SMART prediected failure within a few weeks). Fortunately Segate has excellent warranty replacement procedures that made getting a new drive a snap and with the high level of redundancy re-building the missing drive went off without a hitch. I also now keep 2 1tb drives in my office so I can very quickly swap in should another one fail rather than wait for a new drive from Seagate.
The software even allows for capacity upgrades very easily by swapping out larger drives one at a time and rebuilding with each drive. Not something I am planning to do in the near term though.
The only thing I might want to add in the future is possibly a second 3805 or better card so I can have a few drives in hot swap mode as well as to expand the overall array. Based on the adaptec docs I have read it is possible to do this but I haven't gotten into the details of it yet.
Eventually I would love to have a large tape drive for good incremental backups but the cost is just too high. For not I back things up to a few older 1tb external SATA drives that stay offline, except for backups. It's not the most ideal solution but better than nothing.
I have uploaded a few pics back from when I was building the box. There are a total of 10 drives (8 for data in RAID 6/0 and 2 for OS and Apps in RAID0). There is a ton of cooling in this box, eleven 120mm fans in total. Because of their size and placement in the case they don't need to run very fast to keep things very cool. So it is surprisingly quiet for such a large box.
I have finished the build and the system has run without a hitch since early October. If anyone is interested I will take some snaps of the finished product as well.
Thanks again for the good advice and thoughts.