SSDs in buisness

[Hanksy]

I am just starting a build for my parents small buisness and I am just wondering if it is safe to use SSDs in raid 1 and does raid 1 affect the speed

[ACK]

Usually most RAID cards don't support TRIM signals. Also there might be incompatibilities between some SSDs and RAID.

If data security is really important I would suggest scheduled buck ups to a different pc or other service so that your data are as safe as possible, because RAID 1 doesn't protect you from accidental data deletion, while a back up does.

[Dave :)]

RAID 1 means that DATA is written to both drives at the same time. So if 1 drive fails, you have the second drive as a back up. I'm not sure the impact RAID1 will on speed of the drivers, i assume it would make them slower as each piece of data it has to be written to two drives, but don't quote me on that. Even so, SSDs are so fast anyway, the performance will still be there.

[Hanksy]

Yes i will be using a second drive for backup but I can't afford to have downtime on the computer. I am looking at 2 crucial M4 128g

thanks for the quick replies

[Money]

RAID one has full redundancy, which means all data is safe to up to one drive failing in a 2 drive RAID array. It's a good way to run things, but there's no performance benefit.

[SaNE]

Just remember that you should be setting up a backup routine for data that is on the RAID array, RAID is for redundancy (disk fails) not backup (user error, files deleted/corrupted etc).

Example, 128GB RAID1 which does daily/weekly/monthly backups (incremental) to a RAID1 external enclosure, then since it's a business you should also get a second external enclosure which you store offsite for a regular monthly sync with the onsite external closure.

Just curious, is there a reason you're using SSDs for the RAID instead of HDDs?

[Dragon_Cannon]

TRIM is only something to consider if the operating system that is going to be used is one that supports trim. If the operating system doesn't support trim then don't get one with it.

You said that you were gonna get Crucial M4 128GB SSD for the Raid 1 they are good SSD and will be fast enough and you should have no problem running them through raid on the mother board that you choose so long as the board supports raid.

If they are using the computer for business then you are gonna need to also look at getting a storage drive for the computer as well because they will fill up those ssds quickly depending on what they are doing.

[Hanksy]

Im getting SSDs because they make a big difference to the speed of the pc. I don't need much space as at the moment they are only using 60g of their hdd

[SaNE]

Im getting SSDs because they make a big difference to the speed of the pc. I don't need much space as at the moment they are only using 60g of their hdd

It would be more cost efficient to have a single SSD for the OS (so you have the speed for booting and launching) and then have HDDs in RAID where they are actually storing the files, just an idea to think about.

[Hanksy]

Yes that is a great idea and sounds good but the problem is I need the computer running everyday as we have a important program we use for everything

[MicroApple911]

I would have a work machine and a backup sever or something like a WD Sentinel (for backups..). Linus did a video about the sentinel:

But RAID 1 is fine with one drive failing, as the data is written to both effectively having a clone of the drive, with no performance hit (No added speed but doesn't slow down, meaning same speeds as one normal ssd).

[Hanksy]

Thanks for all your help ppl

[SaNE]

Yes that is a great idea and sounds good but the problem is I need the computer running everyday as we have a important program we use for everything

Sorry I must have missed something, what would stop you running a SSD as the boot drive and having a HDD RAID1 volume as your storage everyday?

[Hanksy]

i want the main program to run off my ssd

[Ghost]

I recommend RAID 5 as its fast and has good backup.

[LeeJC73]

Can I just confirm my understanding of the solution you're trying to implement please.

It sounds like you have a specific application and associated data you want to run from the SSD Array - is this correct?

Can I ask what the application is?

It also sounds like you want to boot from this SSD Array - is this correct?

Is the machine used locally or is it connected to in a server/client environment?

Have you given any consideration to virtualisation to manage your backup? Snapshots mean anything to you?

Raid 1 as suggested above is "mirroring" it doesn't impact on your read speeds as such, but will impact on your write speeds as it's writing the same information to both drives (this may be negligable with SSD's as it's hardly noticeable with good quality 10/15k enterprise mech drives)

I'd be really interested in helping you, if we could get a bit more information to try and find best fit.

[bill]

If speed and reliability are your concerns I would look into the enterprise 10k or 15k sas drives or Intel makes enterprise SSD's that have a crazy number of writes before failures.

[Eric1024]

No one has said this yet but from what I've read, RAID 1 will give you a theoretical maximum of 2x read speeds. The RAID controller pulls alternating sectors of data from each drive at the max speed of each drive, giving the user what appears to double the read speed of each individual drive. Keep in mind though that 2x read speeds is a theoretical maximum, and it completely depends on the controller.