10 Gigabit or Raid card?

[dark_xzyph3r]

Hey guys, should I get a raid card or 10 Gigabit ethernet card? I don't currently have a raid card and it will go in my Storage Server with 4 HDD's in it right now..

[Juanse]

I'd say you could make a 10gbit card with a RAID 0 from the board, i don't really know if you could match 10gbit with a RAID 0 though

[SPAS-ID]

10Gigabit

[KemoKa]

Well, it depends on what you actually need at the moment. You won't be able to really take advantage of 10Gb transfers to and from the fileserver without the raid card, because a single drive will never fill the bandwidth available.

[dark_xzyph3r]

Well, it depends on what you actually need at the moment. You won't be able to really take advantage of 10Gb transfers to and from the fileserver without the raid card, because a single drive will never fill the bandwidth available.

 

10Gigabit

 

I'd say you could make a 10gbit card with a RAID 0 from the board, i don't really know if you could match 10gbit with a RAID 0 though

 

I have my Storage Server build in my sig now I would like for you guys to tell me now if I should get a 10 Gb card or Raid card.. Thanks

[SPAS-ID]

I have my Storage Server build in my sig now I would like for you guys to tell me now if I should get a 10 Gb card or Raid card.. Thanks

i do say "10Gigabit"

[Juanse]

I have my Storage Server build in my sig now I would like for you guys to tell me now if I should get a 10 Gb card or Raid card.. Thanks

You should get some SSD's if you really want to make 10gbit worth it

[manikyath]

10Gbit in your nas will cost a lot more than the 10Gbit card to drop into your nas.

 

you'll need to set up a 10Gbit network, your clients need 10Gbit cards as well.

[KemoKa]

I have my Storage Server build in my sig now I would like for you guys to tell me now if I should get a 10 Gb card or Raid card.. Thanks

well... neither, because honestly if you're looking to increase redunancy on your machine with good error correction, you'd be better off using a zfs filesystem, and for that you need more memory on your server. RAID is no longer considered reliable.

 

The 10Gb NIC won't even be taken advantage of by the fastest SATA III SSD.

[Opask]

10gig.

 

If its not already your storage server should be running ZFS with its software raid. Much better and if one byte gets corrupted the rest of your server won't follow suit like it would with a raid card.

[deafboy]

What hardware/software are you running for your server?

[dark_xzyph3r]

well... neither, because honestly if you're looking to increase redunancy on your machine with good error correction, you'd be better off using a zfs filesystem, and for that you need more memory on your server. RAID is no longer considered reliable.

 

The 10Gb NIC won't even be taken advantage of by the fastest SATA III SSD.

 

Im not really looking for Redundancy because I have another server offsite with the same hardware.. I am running Raid 0 right now on my main and Raid 10 on my offsite..

[dark_xzyph3r]

What hardware/software are you running for your server?

 

Hardware: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks Software: Freenas, was using Ubuntu Server but was only getting 12MB/s to my computer instead of 120MB/s

[dark_xzyph3r]

10gig.

 

If its not already your storage server should be running ZFS with its software raid. Much better and if one byte gets corrupted the rest of your server won't follow suit like it would with a raid card.

 

Yeah I am running Raid 0 right now I might move over to ZFS if there is a raid 0 type option.. I know if one drive fails then I lose all data but I have an offsite backup so I have a second copy of my stuff and all my important stuff is in dropbox too..

[deafboy]

Hardware: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks Software: Freenas, was using Ubuntu Server but was only getting 12MB/s to my computer instead of 120MB/s

 

 

Sounds like it was improperly configured and really you should have way more memory than that for ZFS.  Ideally 1GB per usable TB

 

Striped vdevs should net you similar performance to raid-0

[dark_xzyph3r]

Sounds like it was improperly configured and really you should have way more memory than that for ZFS.  Ideally 1GB per usable TB

 

Striped vdevs should net you similar performance to raid-0

 

I didn't know ZFS needs that kind of ram.. Thats kind of insane.. That means I need about 10 GB of ram in my server for it..

[deafboy]

I didn't know ZFS needs that kind of ram.. Thats kind of insane.. That means I need about 10 GB of ram in my server for it..

 

Yeah, it's pretty crazy but it's all for the sake of data preservation.  My FreeNAS box is my only box with 16GB dimms for that very reason.

[wpirobotbuilder]

If your main is already running RAID 0, then you could potentially take advantage of a 10Gb configuration, but your main AND your storage server would have to have NICs, which is relatively costly. I'd get the RAID controller and configure it in RAID 10, if possible. Yes, you already have offsite backups, but restoring from offsite is a slow process.

[EmeraldFlame]

If your main is already running RAID 0, then you could potentially take advantage of a 10Gb configuration, but your main AND your storage server would have to have NICs, which is relatively costly. I'd get the RAID controller and configure it in RAID 10, if possible. Yes, you already have offsite backups, but restoring from offsite is a slow process.

Not to mention 10Gb capable switches/routers.

[dark_xzyph3r]

If your main is already running RAID 0, then you could potentially take advantage of a 10Gb configuration, but your main AND your storage server would have to have NICs, which is relatively costly. I'd get the RAID controller and configure it in RAID 10, if possible. Yes, you already have offsite backups, but restoring from offsite is a slow process.

Should I go for a couple of gigabit connections and bond them and use a gigabit switch instead of 10 gigabit?

[scottyseng]

Should I go for a couple of gigabit connections and bond them and use a gigabit switch instead of 10 gigabit?

 

I would say try to save up for 10gigabit. If the NAS is close to your PC, you could just direct attach the NAS to the PC with cables (no switch inbetween) and then use the existing 1gigabit system for internet. I think the switch has to support bonding as well (if I remember right) otherwise the bonding doesn't work so well.

 

I have a RAID card (Right now the hard drives are capable of 500MB/s sequential) and right now I'm limited to 80MB/s because my single Ethernet port on my PC taps out at that much (Of course it drops if I'm downloading / streaming anything). My server has two of them teamed together, but as far as I can tell, the team only uses one port for transferring data to my PC and internet on the other. So I'm saving up for 10gigabit myself.

[dark_xzyph3r]

I would say try to save up for 10gigabit. If the NAS is close to your PC, you could just direct attach the NAS to the PC with cables (no switch inbetween) and then use the existing 1gigabit system for internet. I think the switch has to support bonding as well (if I remember right) otherwise the bonding doesn't work so well.

I have a RAID card (Right now the hard drives are capable of 500MB/s sequential) and right now I'm limited to 80MB/s because my single Ethernet port on my PC taps out at that much (Of course it drops if I'm downloading / streaming anything). My server has two of them teamed together, but as far as I can tell, the team only uses one port for transferring data to my PC and internet on the other. So I'm saving up for 10gigabit myself.

Server side I get 600MB/s read write and my server is in the same rack as my computer so they are direct attached right now with only 1Gb for storage and 100Mb for internet so I was thinking just a 2 or 4 port Gbit card in the server and one in my main rig with link aggregation on the cards

[Jarsky]

What is your existing network switch, and what sort of budget are you looking at?

Which do you need more, the network access speed or expansion to your array?

[dark_xzyph3r]

What is your existing network switch, and what sort of budget are you looking at?

Which do you need more, the network access speed or expansion to your array?

I am not using a switch right now for the server, only a 24 port 100Mb switch for internet connections and direct attached 1Gb connection from my server to my computer with 100Mb for everybody else.. I need more speed probably because I do a lot of audio work on it as my storage array..

[Jarsky]

OK, that makes it signifcantly cheaper if you're only doing direct client to client. Probably just get a set of single port 10gbE Copper NIC's and some cat6a cable and you'll be good to go.

Gets much more expensive once you start factoring in switching.

 

You could try buying these, pretty sure they're priced wrong so you might get an awesome deal: http://www.amazon.com/Dual-Port-10Gigabit-Ethernet-Card/dp/B0025B0FEI

They are SFP+ cards so you would need a DAC cable to connect them together which could be fairly pricey depending on length needed.

Otherwise you may be able to find some single port 10GbE copper cards second hand if those are too expensive.

 

But yeah for 10Gbit your cheapest would be 10GBASE-T copper, followed by SFP+ with DAC's (Direct Attached Cables), and most expensive being SFP+ fibre modules with fibre cables.