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Looking for a RAID card

I am looking for a RAID card with at least 16 ports and the SAS 3 interface. I am looking for a RAID card that is safe to use 24/7. I have found a few but I am concerned about the temperature of the RAID card. Please help me find a RAID card with a fan or a way to improve airflow in my case.

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1 minute ago, TheCherryKing said:

I am looking for a RAID card with at least 16 ports and the SAS 3 interface. I am looking for a RAID card that is safe to use 24/7. I have found a few but I am concerned about the temperature of the RAID card. Please help me find a RAID card with a fan or a way to improve airflow in my case.

What type of drives are you going to use? SATA? SAS?

 

You can get one two port RAID card and use a SAS expander to get the ports you need.

 

All good RAID cards are rated for 24/7 use (Why they cost so much). You need to make sure you get one with a backup battery on the RAID card. Finally, be sure you have a UPS unit as well for the server.

 

The RAID will run hot. They are not meant for desktop PCs. They are meant to be in servers with high amounts of airflow. You  will need to direct a fan towards it and make sure it's not next to a GPU otherwise the GPU will heat the RAID card up.

 

You might look at the LSI 9361-8i with a SAS expander. What chassis are you going to use? It's possible the backplane may have a LSI expander built into it.

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I am using SAS 12 gb/s drives in a Corsair 900D. I have the graphics card in the bottom PCIe slot. The top PCIe slot is empty which is two full slots away from the graphics card.

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5 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

I am using SAS 12 gb/s drives in a Corsair 900D. I have the graphics card in the bottom PCIe slot. The top PCIe slot is empty which is two full slots away from the graphics card.

do you need 16 ports or can you use a expander?

 

What drives? What raid level? What OS? Id personally get a HBA and use software raid like ZFS or btrfs.

 

If you want a pure raid card id go with something like a lsi 9361 8i and get a expander if you want more ports. If you want a hba for software raid id get a lsi 9300 16i.

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1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

do you need 16 ports or can you use a expander?

 

What drives? What raid level? What OS? Id personally get a HBA and use software raid like ZFS or btrfs.

 

If you want a pure raid card id go with something like a lsi 9361 8i and get a expander if you want more ports. If you want a hba for software raid id get a lsi 9300 16i.

It depends on how much an expander costs and if it produces more heat. My current boot drive is two Seagate Cheetah 15K.7s in RAID 0. I have purchased a new SAS 3 SSD which would be bottlenecked by my current RAID card. I plan to migrate my OS from the Seagate Cheetah drives to one 1.6 TB SSD that is not in RAID. This PC is used as a Workstation for virtualization, file storage, and application development.

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2 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

It depends on how much an expander costs and if it produces more heat. My current boot drive is two Seagate Cheetah 15K.7s in RAID 0. I have purchased a new SAS 3 SSD which would be bottlenecked by my current RAID card. I plan to migrate my OS from the Seagate Cheetah drives to one 1.6 TB SSD that is not in RAID. This PC is used as a Workstation for virtualization, file storage, and application development.

Since your using a single ssd, Id probably suggest a HBA as you don't need the raid copoment of a raid card. Then the storage drives can be rain in raid with something like zfs or btrfs which is normally about the same speed and much better at protecting data.

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1 minute ago, TheCherryKing said:

It depends on how much an expander costs and if it produces more heat. My current boot drive is two Seagate Cheetah 15K.7s in RAID 0. I have purchased a new SAS 3 SSD which would be bottlenecked by my current RAID card. I plan to migrate my OS from the Seagate Cheetah drives to one 1.6 TB SSD that is not in RAID. This PC is used as a Workstation for virtualization, file storage, and application development.

If you just want a pass through connection to the SSD, get a HBA card and don't use RAID on it.

 

What type of RAID are you using? If you want to use software RAID, you can get away with a HBA card / use SAS expander as needed. Software RAID is quite a great option these days, cheaper too.

 

Yeah, it's going to add heat, but you can't really get around that. These RAID / HBA cards have to work somehow.

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2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Since your using a single ssd, Id probably suggest a HBA as you don't need the raid copoment of a raid card. Then the storage drives can be rain in raid with something like zfs or btrfs which is normally about the same speed and much better at protecting data.

The old boot drive can remain plugged into the old RAID card while the SSD and the other hard drives can be plugged into the new card. I use hardware RAID in LSI MPT SAS BIOS.

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1 minute ago, TheCherryKing said:

The old boot drive can remain plugged into the old RAID card while the SSD and the other hard drives can be plugged into the new card.

Yeah, just leave the old RAID card in there and then have the new HBA card manage the SSD / software RAID the new hard drives?

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3 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

The old boot drive can remain plugged into the old RAID card while the SSD and the other hard drives can be plugged into the new card. I use hardware RAID in LSI MPT SAS BIOS.

what is the rest of the drive config?

 

Id probably get rid of those old segates once you migrate the data off them. There very hot drives and much slower than a ssd and about the same speed as many modern 7200rpm drives.

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8 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

what is the rest of the drive config?

 

Id probably get rid of those old segates once you migrate the data off them. There very hot drives and much slower than a ssd and about the same speed as many modern 7200rpm drives.

As long as they are still working I plan to use them as a DVR when recording TV from Windows Media Center. They actually perform pretty well with read and write speeds above 300 MB/s. I have two 600 GB SAS 6gb/s HDDs, one 4 TB SAS 6 gb/s HDD, two optical drives, one 1.6 TB SAS 12gb/s SSD, one 480 GB SATA SSD, one 180 GB SATA SSD, and one floppy drive.

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7 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

-snip-

Which drives did you want in a RAID array though? So far I got:

 

No RAID:

1.6 TB SAS SSD

 

RAID0:

two 600GB SAS HDDs

 

What about the 4TB SAS, 480 GB SSD, and the 180GB SSD? Are those going to be in a array or are they plugged into the motherboard?

 

Why did you need 16 SAS ports for? Future drive array?

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3 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Which drives did you want in a RAID array though? So far I got:

 

No RAID:

1.6 TB SAS SSD

 

RAID0:

two 600GB SAS HDDs

 

What about the 4TB SAS, 480 GB SSD, and the 180GB SSD? Are those going to be in a array or are they plugged into the motherboard?

 

Why did you need 16 SAS ports for? Future drive array?

The only drives that are RAID are the two 600 GB SAS HDDs. I need 16 SAS ports because I plan to upgrade my motherboard and processors sometime this year. My current RAID controller will not be compatible with any new motherboards. I have eight devices now and I plan to expand later.

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1 minute ago, TheCherryKing said:

The only drives that are RAID are the two 600 GB SAS HDDs. I need 16 SAS ports because I plan to upgrade my motherboard and processors sometime this year. My current RAID controller will not be compatible with any new motherboards. I have eight devices now and I plan to expand later.

You are aware that one SAS port can expand out to four SATA ports right? Or if you have a server chassis, you usually only need one SAS port to feed a row of drives. If it's a SuperMicro server with a SAS expander backplane, it only needs two SAS ports in.

 

What RAID card do you have currently? I'm kind of doubtful it would stop working in the newer motherboards.

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7 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

You are aware that one SAS port can expand out to four SATA ports right? Or if you have a server chassis, you usually only need one SAS port to feed a row of drives. If it's a SuperMicro server with a SAS expander backplane, it only needs two SAS ports in.

 

What RAID card do you have currently? I'm kind of doubtful it would stop working in the newer motherboards.

I have a Mini SAS HD cable that splits into 4 SAS cables for 4 SAS or SATA drives. I have spare Mini SAS HD cables but I do not currently use these cables because my current RAID controller uses different SAS cables.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F378UF6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I am using the Asus PIKE 2008 which uses a proprietary form factor for Asus C602 motherboards. It supports eight SAS devices at 6 Gb/s but uses different cables. Since the Asus PIKE 2008 does not use a standard PCIe slot I have space for a RAID card that uses a standard PCIe slot.

71d34vIALgL__SL1500_.jpg

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That is one of RAID cards I am considering. I also found one from Highpoint Technologies for half the price.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115206&cm_re=HighPoint_RocketRAID_3740A-_-16-115-206-_-Product

 

Is 60C as hot as it will get? That's about 140F. How hot does the card need to get for it to be a serious fire hazard?

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9 hours ago, TheCherryKing said:

-snip-

Just a personal thing, but I'm not a fan of highpoint RAID / HBA cards. You kind of get what you pay for. You might check out the used market as well (Though I'm doubtful there's going to be many 12Gb/s cards used).

 

Usually for me it got as hot as 65-70C, but with a fan, it drops a lot. Pretty much you won't get out of not getting a fan on the RAID card unless this is in a server chassis with high speed fans.

 

The card will never get hot enough to be a fire hazard. it will thermal throttle before it gets to that point.

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4 hours ago, scottyseng said:

Just a personal thing, but I'm not a fan of highpoint RAID / HBA cards. You kind of get what you pay for. You might check out the used market as well (Though I'm doubtful there's going to be many 12Gb/s cards used).

 

Usually for me it got as hot as 65-70C, but with a fan, it drops a lot. Pretty much you won't get out of not getting a fan on the RAID card unless this is in a server chassis with high speed fans.

 

The card will never get hot enough to be a fire hazard. it will thermal throttle before it gets to that point.

I was able to find a RAID card with a fan.

https://www.amazon.com/Areca-PCIe-12Gb-Controller-ARC-1883IX-16/dp/B00N99QN2S/ref=pd_ybh_a_43?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=D20PEBP105YQ7KX3WB71

It costs a lot more but the fan and upgradeable cache is worth it.

51i98hIb51L.jpg

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6 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

-snip-

Still lost here...are you going for a RAID card? Or HBA with software RAID? Otherwise you'd going to have one array with the SSD in RAID0 if going with hardware RAID.

 

The RAID card is good, but do make sure to get the battery for it.

 

@leadeater

Any idea on the specs of this RAID card for the task at hand? (Seems way overkill to me)

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4 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Still lost here...are you going for a RAID card? Or HBA with software RAID? Otherwise you'd going to have one array with the SSD in RAID0 if going with hardware RAID.

 

The RAID card is good, but do make sure to get the battery for it.

 

@leadeater

Any idea on the specs of this RAID card for the task at hand? (Seems way overkill to me)

I should go for a full 16 port RAID card to ensure compatibility with a newer motherboard. Which battery do I need to get for this RAID card. This is one of the very few RAID cards I can find that has a fan.

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Wait so what exact is going to be plugged in to the new RAID card? Just 1 SAS SSD with future plans to add more?

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2 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

I am going to plug all of the drives into this RAID card and remove the other one.

Ok well then I would recommend rather than spending up big on a RAID card like this you save your money and buy PCIe SSD. When it comes time to move to the new motherboard get something like a LSI 9361-8i for the existing SAS disks.

 

SAS SSDs are very expensive and slower than PCIe SSDs, and to top that off SSDs don't actually RAID very well as in usable performance from doing so. Single large SSDs cost less per GB and have a longer wear life and keep TRIM support since they aren't in RAID. If you need redundancy buy 2 and mirror them not using a hardware RAID card so you still keep TRIM.

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12 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

I should go for a full 16 port RAID card to ensure compatibility with a newer motherboard. Which battery do I need to get for this RAID card. This is one of the very few RAID cards I can find that has a fan.

You could do what I do have literally have a case fan freestanding that blows air at it (ghetto I know).

 

Oh, so the old RAID card will be retired? Yeah, I think you have no choice but to use hardware RAID then...but you do know that you're more than likely going to have to rebuild all of the RAID arrays right? I know for sure going from ASUS Pike (I think it's LSI) to Areca will not transfer.

 

Flash Cap battery:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151184

 

According to the bottom of the Areca product page:

http://www.areca.com.tw/products/1883.htm

 

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Wait so what exact is going to be plugged in to the new RAID card? Just 1 SAS SSD with future plans to add more?

Guessing @TheCherryKing plans to plug all drives into it.

 

List:

One SAS 12Gb/s SSD

Two SAS 600GB hard drives in RAID0 (From old RAID card)

Future hard drive array

 

Well, didn't see the new replies...Oh well.

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