RAID performance math problem!

[Dantemoulin]

Please help me with a math problem guys!

If I have 8 1TB WD Red drives and hooked them up to a RAID 10 array I would get 4TB of usable storage, right?

Then what read and write performance would I get out of them?

[SnypeUXD]

You would get the combined performance of four of the drives, but in real life you would probably get less

[IdeaStormer]

For your math, here's the answer: Mathematica RAID Calculator

Write performance depends on a few factors, data being written (small or large), Raid strip size (some controllers let you change that), drive performance. In a generalized analysis:

[Dantemoulin]

You would get the combined performance of four of the drives, but in real life you would probably get less

That is amazing, I thought it was 2x the performance of one disk :D

[Dantemoulin]

For your math, here's the answer: Mathematica RAID Calculator

Write performance depends on a few factors, data being written (small or large), Raid strip size (some controllers let you change that), drive performance. In a generalized analysis:

Thank you very much, one follow up question, is RAID 10 an ideal solution for a home server?

I will use my home server to basically store all my data from all my media devices (windows and android) and also stream uncompressed 1080p bluray movies to mainly my media pc and some other videos and data to my android devices.

Edit: Should I move this question to another directory?

[looney]

Thank you very much, one follow up question, is RAID 10 an ideal solution for a home server?

I will use my home server to basically store all my data from all my media devices (windows and android) and also stream uncompressed 1080p bluray movies to mainly my media pc and some other videos and data to my android devices.

Edit: Should I move this question to another directory?

Well RAID 5 and 6 are more popular for home scenarios, but 10 is more redundant (which also means more $ per GB)

And i was wondering, will you be using hardware or software raid (just curiosity)

Or are you still in the early stages of research :p

[IdeaStormer]

Thank you very much, one follow up question, is RAID 10 an ideal solution for a home server?

I will use my home server to basically store all my data from all my media devices (windows and android) and also stream uncompressed 1080p bluray movies to mainly my media pc and some other videos and data to my android devices.

Edit: Should I move this question to another directory?

Well RAID 5 and 6 are more popular for home scenarios, but 10 is more redundant (which also means more $ per GB)

And i was wondering, will you be using hardware or software raid (just curiosity)

Or are you still in the early stages of research :p

It really depends on what he's after, performance and or redundancy. RAID 5 & 6 really benefit when you have more than four drives, otherwise its not such a good deal price-wise or performance-wise.

[Dantemoulin]

Thank you very much, one follow up question, is RAID 10 an ideal solution for a home server?

I will use my home server to basically store all my data from all my media devices (windows and android) and also stream uncompressed 1080p bluray movies to mainly my media pc and some other videos and data to my android devices.

Edit: Should I move this question to another directory?

Well RAID 5 and 6 are more popular for home scenarios, but 10 is more redundant (which also means more $ per GB)

And i was wondering, will you be using hardware or software raid (just curiosity)

Or are you still in the early stages of research :p

What benefits are there by using raid 5 or 6 over 10 in a home server?

I am 99% sure I will use hardware raid :)

edit: I mean if I have 8 drives in raid 5 or 6, what difference will that make over 8 drives in raid 10?

[looney]

8x 1TB RAID 5:

Drives you can lose without data-loss: 1

Storage: 7TB

Speed: with hardware RAID fast read slower writes (not that slow with a good card)

8x 1TB RAID 6:

Drives you can lose without data-loss: 2

Storage: 6TB

Speed: with hardware RAID fast read slower writes (not that slow with a good card)

8x 1TB RAID 10:

Drives you can lose without data-loss: in worst case 1 drive, in best case 4 drives

Storage: 4TB

Speed: Best read and writes of all redundant RAID's

So as far as $/GB goes RAID 5 takes the crown closely followed by RAID 6, RAID 10 is the least efficient when it comes to $/GB

When it comes to speed its the other way around, 10 then 6 and 5 (not a huge diff between 5 and 6)

And last but not least its Redundancy witch is a tricky one, RAID 5 can only have 1 failure, and RAID 6 can only have 2 failures.

RAID 10 on the other hand can in a worst case scenario only have 1 failure (in which case 6 is better) or if your lucky up to 4 failures.

But if you look at it from a logical point of view all you need to do is just have a spare drive laying around and you should be fine with any of the mentioned RAID array as long as you always have a backup of you array (which you should always have anyway, RAID IS NOT BACKUP)

​I would personally go for either RAID 5 or 6, it will give you the most GB/$, and the performance will be more then enough for streaming audio video.

[Dantemoulin]

8x 1TB RAID 5:

Drives you can lose without data-loss: 1

Storage: 7TB

Speed: with hardware RAID fast read slower writes (not that slow with a good card)

8x 1TB RAID 6:

Drives you can lose without data-loss: 2

Storage: 6TB

Speed: with hardware RAID fast read slower writes (not that slow with a good card)

8x 1TB RAID 10:

Drives you can lose without data-loss: in worst case 1 drive, in best case 4 drives

Storage: 4TB

Speed: Best read and writes of all redundant RAID's

So as far as $/GB goes RAID 5 takes the crown closely followed by RAID 6, RAID 10 is the least efficient when it comes to $/GB

When it comes to speed its the other way around, 10 then 6 and 5 (not a huge diff between 5 and 6)

And last but not least its Redundancy witch is a tricky one, RAID 5 can only have 1 failure, and RAID 6 can only have 2 failures.

RAID 10 on the other hand can in a worst case scenario only have 1 failure (in which case 6 is better) or if your lucky up to 4 failures.

But if you look at it from a logical point of view all you need to do is just have a spare drive laying around and you should be fine with any of the mentioned RAID array as long as you always have a backup of you array (which you should always have anyway, RAID IS NOT BACKUP)

​I would personally go for either RAID 5 or 6, it will give you the most GB/$, and the performance will be more then enough for streaming audio video.

Thank you very much for your answer! That helped a lot. :D

It seems to me that RAID 6 is the most relevant choice in a home server, right?

But what if I wanted to have a backup with more than 1 drive and without RAID, will it automatically start storing data on the next drive when the first one is full or is there a way to pair them together anyways?

[looney]

It seems to me that RAID 6 is the most relevant choice in a home server' date=' right?[/quote']

I personally use RAID 5 for 8 drives and less and RAID 6 for 9 drives and more. but its up to you.

But what if I wanted to have a backup with more than 1 drive and without RAID' date=' will it automatically start storing data on the next drive when the first one is full or is there a way to pair them together anyways?[/quote']

I think you mean JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks), this will put the drives in a pool without redundancy and fill then one by one.

This will not give any speed or redundancy improvements.

This video will explain JBOD:

Is that what you meant to ask? Or did i just give some weird answer that is in no way related to your question? :p

[Dantemoulin]

It seems to me that RAID 6 is the most relevant choice in a home server' date=' right?[/quote']

I personally use RAID 5 for 8 drives and less and RAID 6 for 9 drives and more. but its up to you.

But what if I wanted to have a backup with more than 1 drive and without RAID' date=' will it automatically start storing data on the next drive when the first one is full or is there a way to pair them together anyways?[/quote']

I think you mean JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks), this will put the drives in a pool without redundancy and fill then one by one.

This will not give any speed or redundancy improvements.

This video will explain JBOD:

Is that what you meant to ask? Or did i just give some weird answer that is in no way related to your question? :p

Ooh that's what JBOD is, I thought it was some old random RAID technology xD

That is exactly what I was looking for from the very first beginning! Thank you very much!

[Dantemoulin]

You may not need hardware RAID for your purposes. What are you going store or use your server for mainly?

I will store all my data on the server and also stream uncompressed 1080p bluray movies if possible :)

As far as I know you have to have better CPU and RAM if you wish to run software RAID.

[Dantemoulin]

I will store all my data on the server and also stream uncompressed 1080p bluray movies if possible :) As far as I know you have to have better CPU and RAM if you wish to run software RAID.

Hardware RAID is completely unnecessary for media storage/streaming. Look into software RAID solutions like unRAID, ZFS or FlexRAID. NZFS is also a future product that's looking very interesting so far. It should out in Spring I believe

http://www.openegg.org/2013/02/12/a-...nt-raid-traid/

And no, you do not need a power CPU to run software RAID. ZFS likes a lot of RAM though yes.

NZFS does look really interesting I must say :)

[looney]

I will store all my data on the server and also stream uncompressed 1080p bluray movies if possible :) As far as I know you have to have better CPU and RAM if you wish to run software RAID.

Hardware RAID is completely unnecessary for media storage/streaming. Look into software RAID solutions like unRAID, ZFS or FlexRAID. NZFS is also a future product that's looking very interesting so far. It should out in Spring I believe

http://www.openegg.org/2013/02/12/a-...nt-raid-traid/

And no, you do not need a power CPU to run software RAID. ZFS likes a lot of RAM though yes.

and if you want to keep an windows system then FlexRAID is the way to go ($60)