Looking for a RAID card

[TheCherryKing]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

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.

The SAS SSD I am using will not be in RAID. TRIM is also working fine. My motherboard does not support any of the PCIe SSDs.

[TheCherryKing]

4 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

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

 

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.

Is the flash cap battery required?

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, TheCherryKing said:

The SAS SSD I am using will not be in RAID. TRIM is also working fine. My motherboard does not support any of the PCIe SSDs.

Then a LSI 9300-4i for the SAS SSD plus a older 6Gb RAID card for the existing disks will cost much less. What I'm a little confused about is why you went with a SAS SSD?

[TheCherryKing]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Then a LSI 9300-4i for the SAS SSD plus a older 6Gb RAID card for the existing disks will cost much less. What I'm a little confused about is why you went with a SAS SSD?

I went with a SAS SSD because my motherboard doesn't support the NVMe SSDs. SAS was the next best option.

[leadeater]

If you were planning on a recent workstation upgrade you could have still gotten a PCIe SSD, motherboard support is only related to being able to use it as a boot disk. You can still use a PCIe SSD in any computer as a data disk.

 

Then once you upgrade just backup what was on the PCIe SSD then use that as the boot disks. Besides that I wouldn't use a boot disk for anything other than OS and program files, any VM hosting should be done on a dedicated storage device.

 

Sorry this is a little off topic to what you are actually asking but I think it is worth pointing out.

 

On topic yes that RAID card you want is fine, little pricey. As for the SuperCap/Battery you need that if you are going to run RAID5/6.

[scottyseng]

6 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

Is the flash cap battery required?

Yeah, if you want the RAID card to make use of that RAM cache and be safe. The battery is there so if the power goes out, or if your PC crashes and you have to unplug/force it to turn it off, all of the data in the RAM cache of the RAID card remains powered with that battery. Otherwise you risk damaging your arrays because you lose what is in that RAM cache with power loss.

[TheCherryKing]

The whole point of the SSD is for it to be bootable. My virtual machines are on a 4 TB SAS HDD. Is it ok not to have the battery if I am only using RAID 0 or 1?

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, scottyseng said:

Yeah, if you want the RAID card to make use of that RAM cache and be safe. The battery is there so if the power goes out, or if your PC crashes and you have to unplug/force it to turn it off, all of the data in the RAM cache of the RAID card remains powered with that battery. Otherwise you risk damaging your arrays because you lose what is in that RAM cache with power loss.

And the default behavior of a RAID card is to not even use it's cache without a battery/super cap in place, you have to force it on without one which is super dangerous.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, TheCherryKing said:

The whole point of the SSD is for it to be bootable. My virtual machines are on a 4 TB SAS HDD. Is it ok not to have the battery if I am only using RAID 0 or 1?

Yep that will work fine, working write-back cache is mostly there to help RAID 5/6 perform well. For RAID 0/1 it's just a nice to have for slower disks to give a bit of a speed boost when writing data, you've got nice fast ones so little point.

[scottyseng]

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

And the default behavior of a RAID card is to not even use it's cache without a battery/super cap in place, you have to force it on without one which is super dangerous.

Yeah, I just now remembered that.

12 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

The whole point of the SSD is for it to be bootable. My virtual machines are on a 4 TB SAS HDD. Is it ok not to have the battery if I am only using RAID 0 or 1?

That should be fine, but if you do want to do RAID5/6 in the future, you'll want to get the battery otherwise performance will be poor without the RAM cache.

 

Though, curious, what are the specs of the PC? It feels weird when the RAID card might cost more than the PC...You might weigh if it's cheaper to upgrade the PC for PCIe NVMe drives...

 

Also make sure you have the needed SAS breakout cables for 12Gb/s from this card to your drives.

 

You might also consider a two port 12GB/s SAS RAID card with a SAS expander...I'm almost certain it's cheaper than this Areca RAID card.

[TheCherryKing]

9 hours ago, scottyseng said:

Yeah, I just now remembered that.

That should be fine, but if you do want to do RAID5/6 in the future, you'll want to get the battery otherwise performance will be poor without the RAM cache.

 

Though, curious, what are the specs of the PC? It feels weird when the RAID card might cost more than the PC...You might weigh if it's cheaper to upgrade the PC for PCIe NVMe drives...

 

Also make sure you have the needed SAS breakout cables for 12Gb/s from this card to your drives.

 

You might also consider a two port 12GB/s SAS RAID card with a SAS expander...I'm almost certain it's cheaper than this Areca RAID card.

This RAID card does not cost more than my entire PC. My motherboard is an Asus Z9PA-D8. I picked that motherboard because it was one of the very few dual socket motherboards in an ATX form factor. When I purchased it I had a Corsair 650D as a case. Last year I upgraded to a Corsair 900D. When I purchase my next motherboard I will get something bigger with more PCIe slots. My PC also have two Intel Xeon E5-2697v2's and 64 GB ECC DDR3 1866 MHz RAM. I researched some SAS expanders but I am not sure where to put them. I have the same SAS breakout cables in this picture below. I am not currently using them because the Asus PIKE 2008 does not use Mini SAS HD cables.

[scottyseng]

53 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

-snip-

Yeah, that proprietary ASUS RAID card kind of screwed you over here.

 

I'm surprised there is a ATX form factor dual socket. I only know of the E-ATX ones.

 

There are two types of SAS expanders, ones that go in PCIe slots, and ones you can leave freely hanging in the case or screw them in.

 

PCIe type:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/servers/raid/raid-expander-res3fv288.html

 

Screw-in or free hanging type:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/42489539?wmlspartner=wmtlabs&adid=22222222222030349921&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=e&wl1=o&wl2=c&wl3=10361711698&wl4=kwd-1103085627607&wl12=42489539_10000000656&wl14=intel SAS 12gb%2Fs expander&veh=sem

 

Note that both need one Molex 4-pin power.

 

As for RAID card, I would use a LSI 9361-8i (with battery if you plan to do RAID 5/6). If you want to go software RAID, get a HBA card, such as the above mentioned LSI 9300-8i HBA card. https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9300-8i

 

Your next question is if you want software RAID or hardware RAID. Personally I'm kind of nudging you towards software RAID since you don't seem to plan to use RAID 5/6 and it'll let your SAS SSD have TRIM support direct from Windows.

 

Do note that regardless if you go hardware or software RAID, you're going to have to delete your current RAID0 array of 600GB hard drives since I don't think ASUS Pike will transfer to LSI MegaRAID (You can transfer between LSI cards, but not usually between brands unless it's a rebrand of a LSI controller).

[TheCherryKing]

How do I install the RAID expander in the case? How hot would the expander get? The Asus PIKE RAID should transfer because it is based on LSI MegaRAID. The only difference is that the Asus PIKE 2008 has SAS 2 BIOS and the LSI-9361-8i has SAS 3 BIOS.

[scottyseng]

6 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

How do I install the RAID expander in the case? How hot would the expander get? The Asus PIKE RAID should transfer because it is based on LSI MegaRAID. The only difference is that the Asus PIKE 2008 has SAS 2 BIOS and the LSI-9361-8i has SAS 3 BIOS.

Depends on how "nice" you want it to look. You can literally just have it velcro'd to the case. Heck, you could even leave it hanging. The nice way is to have it screwed in with standoffs (I think it comes with some), but it's kind of a pain to drill / tap the holes for those.

 

The PCIe version just screws into a PCI slot. It doesn't even need to be in a motherboard slot either, it can be in a slot outside of the motherboard as long as you give it molex power.

 

All you do is you feed your two SAS3 outputs from the RAID / HBA card to the expander. From the expander, you feed out to your drives using breakout cables.

 

However, you'll need SAS3 to SAS3 cables to go from the RAID / HBA card to the expander (I don't think the Intel SAS expander comes with cables). This should cost you roughly 600-700 for both the expander and the RAID card and give you a lot more ports than you'll probably ever need.

 

Ah, you lucked out then, the RAID array should transfer just fine since it's LSI to LSI.

[TheCherryKing]

1 minute ago, scottyseng said:

Depends on how "nice" you want it to look. You can literally just have it velcro'd to the case. Heck, you could even leave it hanging. The PCIe version just screws into a PCI slot. It doesn't even need to be in a motherboard slot either, it can be in a slot outside of the motherboard as long as you give it molex power.

 

All you do is you feed your two SAS3 outputs from the RAID / HBA card to the expander. From the expander, you feed out to your drives using breakout cables.

 

However, you'll need SAS3 to SAS3 cables to go from the RAID / HBA card to the expander (I don't think the Intel SAS expander comes with cables). This should cost you roughly 600-700 for both the expander and the RAID card and give you a lot more ports than you'll probably ever need.

I could not get the PCIe expander because I only have one empty PCIe slot. It would also be hard to find a place to put the other expander. For $100 more I can get the LSI-9361-16i which wouldn't require expanders.

[scottyseng]

1 minute ago, TheCherryKing said:

I could not get the PCIe expander because I only have one empty PCIe slot. It would also be hard to find a place to put the other expander. For $100 more I can get the LSI-9361-16i which wouldn't require expanders.

Well, I'm the cheap type of person that will hang server equipment freely in my home server if it means I save $100. The SAS expander I linked is 9 ports...so two in, and seven out. It's a lot more ports than the 16i with four ports. There's also a cheaper 24 lane six port SAS expander.

 

The 9361-16i is a great option though.

[TheCherryKing]

8 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Well, I'm the cheap type of person that will hang server equipment freely in my home server if it means I save $100. The SAS expander I linked is 9 ports...so two in, and seven out. It's a lot more ports than the 16i with four ports. There's also a cheaper 24 lane six port SAS expander.

 

The 9361-16i is a great option though.

I'm going to make a decision depending on how which will produce the least heat.

[scottyseng]

6 hours ago, TheCherryKing said:

I'm going to make a decision depending on how which will produce the least heat.

How much airflow do you have in the case? The sas expander would let you separate the heat at least.

 

Would the RAID card set next to any GPUs?

 

@leadeater Would a 9361-16i have less heat output vs a 9361-8i with a Intel 36 port SAS expander?

[leadeater]

36 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Would a 9361-16i have less heat output vs a 9361-8i with a Intel 36 port SAS expander?

@TheCherryKing

 

The Areca card is 37.2W and the LSI 9361-16i is 16.29W(idle)/23.17W(max peak).

 

For the LSI card you need some actual case airflow to keep it cool, it is a server focused card.

Quote

Airflow must be at least 300 linear feet per minute (LFPM) to avoid operating the SAS3316 processor above the maximum ambient temperature

 

I would pick the LSI as it's a brand I use and trust, plus it at least has the potential to import the existing RAID arrays.

[TheCherryKing]

4 hours ago, scottyseng said:

How much airflow do you have in the case? The sas expander would let you separate the heat at least.

 

Would the RAID card set next to any GPUs?

 

@leadeater Would a 9361-16i have less heat output vs a 9361-8i with a Intel 36 port SAS expander?

The graphics card and RAID card will be separated by a wireless network card. When I get home I will take a picture of the interior of the case.

[scottyseng]

1 hour ago, TheCherryKing said:

The graphics card and RAID card will be separated by a wireless network card. When I get home I will take a picture of the interior of the case.

Please do. Yeah, I have my RAID card next to my 980 Ti, and let me tell you, it's only surviving because I have a fast case fan on it. I sadly can't separate the RAID card in my chassis (Not enough room).

[TheCherryKing]

[scottyseng]

Do you have a side panel case fan? You're going to need airflow pushing towards the RAID card somehow...

[TheCherryKing]

Side panel fans? I have never even seen a case with side panel fans.

[leadeater]

21 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

Side panel fans? I have never even seen a case with side panel fans.

They were popular pre side window case craze that we have now.