Hardware RAID card recommendations

[NeedlessBird]

So I work at a university bookstore and we are in the process of replacing our old network storage server with a new box. The box is already built but I was having issues with the RAID card we purchased for the build. Long story short I bricked the card trying to flash the IR firmware onto it. We're going to send this back to the vendor for a replacement but before we do I figured we should investigate some other solutions. We originally purchased this: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADP08PP6440  as it supports RAID 1E (we have 3 2tb drivers for this server) and this fits our use case. Do any of you have recommendations for a hardware raid card? In another post I was told that the card we purchased wasn't great for RAID use. Should we just get another of the same card or should we get a refund and get a different raid controller. Many thanks in advance!

 

~Connor J. Edling, CpE

[Electronics Wizardy]

What are the specs of the server?

 

Is this your boot drive?

 

Budget?

 

 

[NeedlessBird]

I'll attach a PCpartpicker list with the system specs. We are using an m.2 nvme SSD for the boot drive. I'd like to keep it as close to $100 USD as possible but if that's not possible whatever the cheapest you'd recommend works too.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/NeedlessFoal/saved/CRncYJ

[Electronics Wizardy]

p320h

2 minutes ago, NeedlessBird said:

I'll attach a PCpartpicker list with the system specs. We are using an m.2 nvme SSD for the boot drive. I'd like to keep it as close to $100 USD as possible but if that's not possible whatever the cheapest you'd recommend works too.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/NeedlessFoal/saved/CRncYJ

Just use storage spaces then. Really, its better than hardware raid here.

 

But man thats some weird specs for a server.

[NeedlessBird]

Cheap was the primary goal for this server

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, NeedlessBird said:

Cheap was the primary goal for this server

so why not storage spaces? Its free here as you already have the ports on the card and its comes with windows.

[NeedlessBird]

I'll talk to my boss about it and see what he thinks. Just reading briefly tho it seems like it would work great for our purpose. Do you know what kind of data protection/redundancy Storage Spaced has? If we had a motheboard failure and needed to replace it, would we be able to rebuild the storage with Storage Spaces?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, NeedlessBird said:

I'll talk to my boss about it and see what he thinks. Just reading briefly tho it seems like it would work great for our purpose. Do you know what kind of data protection/redundancy Storage Spaced has? If we had a motheboard failure and needed to replace it, would we be able to rebuild the storage with Storage Spaces?

you can do either mirrors(single or dual) or parity. You can also have mixed levels array.

 

You can easily put the drive in anouther windows 10 system and read the data.

[NeedlessBird]

Hows the reliability and ease of setup?

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, NeedlessBird said:

Hows the reliability and ease of setup?

setup is pretty easy, Id do it through powershell as its much more powerfull than the gui, but lots of guides and doc.

 

Its pretty reliable. Shouldnt just die on your. But always have good backups.

[NeedlessBird]

Thanks so much for the recommendations, my boss gave me the go ahead for Storage Spaces.