Requesting tips to chose a RAID array Controller

[speed2001]

Hi all,

Need to buy a good quality array controller for a server running Windows 2019 Server Essentials. 

The idea is to have two RAID 1's being one with two 512GB SSD's/NVME's for the Operating System and another RAID 1 with two 1 TBSSD's/NVME's for the data.

I need to be as much as possible fault tolerant. Software being run is not heavy at all but it must be available 24x7 with no interruptions (or, at least that they happen very, very occasionally)

The idea is that if a OS drive or a data Drive the other drive assumes it with automatically, no downtime and relay a warning message to replace the faulty drive (hot swap) and the re-sync of the failed drive should be as much as possible automatic.

Is there such a controller to buy? As I said it does not need to be the fastest one available as the requests are not that heavy and to keep price in check. 

I have two options pending price and availability: one controller capable of supporting 2 Raid 1's (each with 2 drives) or 2 controllers, each with 1 Raid 1 with 2 drivers.

In any case the computer must be able to boot from the array.

Any comments will be greatly appreciated. Thank you all

[Electronics Wizardy]

There really aren't any hardware raid cards for nvme drives, you want to use software raid here.

 

Id use software raid for the non boot drives.

 

Id run a hypervisor on the hardware that supports booting off raid, like proxmox, and then run windows in a vm. That also makes things like snapshots and backups much easier.

 

What hardware are you using here.

[speed2001]

Oh yes, Highpoint has raid controllers for NVME's (4 and 8) but they are pricey...
I didnt buy the server yet but it will be a Dell as all here in the company
But let's leave NVME out, they can be SATA drives, no problem
Ideally I would have two controllers, one for each RAID 1 array (both with 2 drives) and one being the boot one
My most important request is that once a drive fails all continue to work transparently, no downtime. 
Other requests if at all possible: hot swap of faulty drives and automatic re-sync of the replaced drive beginning as soon as it is available.

Thanks for the reply but I'm not looking for to add any complexity to the rig/software hence not using VM or something like it, just plain Windows Server OS
 

[Electronics Wizardy]

23 minutes ago, speed2001 said:

Oh yes, Highpoint has raid controllers for NVME's (4 and but they are pricey...

Well there not really raid card. There pcie switches and use software raid for the actual raid part.

 

23 minutes ago, speed2001 said:

I didnt buy the server yet but it will be a Dell as all here in the company

Which dell server? those normally include raid cards, use those. Id wouldn't put a third party raid card in a dell server

 

And for boot, id use a boss card in the server

 

23 minutes ago, speed2001 said:

Ideally I would have two controllers, one for each RAID 1 array (both with 2 drives) and one being the boot one

Why have 2 controllers, one can easily do this.

 

 

24 minutes ago, speed2001 said:

Thanks for the reply but I'm not looking for to add any complexity to the rig/software hence not using VM or something like it, just plain Windows Server OS

Really you want a vm, makes everything much easier to manage and work with. Id really stay away from running windows server on the hardware