Raid Card Selection

[Zombi3]

Hey guys long time visitor first time post. I am looking at building a home server and I have everything ready to order but I can't find a raid card to suit, there may not be one.

I need somthing that with run 24 drives at Sata 3 speeds (6Gbs) and support 6Gb or 8Gb HDD's. I'm looking at spending $500ish and I have found some sata 2 cards that sound perfect and will run me around $350.

So my question is will I really need a sata 3 card to run HDD speeds or could I do with the sata 2 card and if I do need the sata 3 card do you have any recommendations?

[scottyseng]

Hey guys long time visitor first time post. I am looking at building a home server and I have everything ready to order but I can't find a raid card to suit, there may not be one.

I need somthing that with run 24 drives at Sata 3 speeds (6Gbs) and support 6Gb or 8Gb HDD's. I'm looking at spending $500ish and I have found some sata 2 cards that sound perfect and will run me around $350.

So my question is will I really need a sata 3 card to run HDD speeds or could I do with the sata 2 card and if I do need the sata 3 card do you have any recommendations?

 

What OS are you going to run on the server?

 

The good RAID cards usually use SAS connectors not SATA. The good RAID cards also cost upwards of $500-700 per card.

 

What cards were you looking at? Usually the SATA only RAID cards are the ones you want to avoid because they're of lower quality.

 

A good RAID card will have its own RAM cache, a battery back up, and use SAS connectors.

 

Another important factor is what enclosure you will be using. Some server chassis have a backplane that has a built in expander (SuperMicro does) where you just need to feed it two SAS cables. The Norco ones do this as well. Otherwise you will need a SAS expander with the SAS RAID card to get 24 drives.

[Zombi3]

What OS are you going to run on the server?

The good RAID cards usually use SAS connectors not SATA. The good RAID cards also cost upwards of $500-700 per card.

What cards were you looking at? Usually the SATA only RAID cards are the ones you want to avoid because they're of lower quality.

A good RAID card will have its own RAM cache, a battery back up, and use SAS connectors.

Another important factor is what enclosure you will be using. Some server chassis have a backplane that has a built in expander (SuperMicro does) where you just need to feed it two SAS cables. The Norco ones do this as well. Otherwise you will need a SAS expander with the SAS RAID card to get 24 drives.

Thanks for all the help mate first time really looking at raid cards. The ones I'm looking at are sas and to have ram and battery pack up. There just cheap because there older.

Would I really need anything quicker then a sata 2 connection for HDD's though at 7200rpm speeds?

I'm also looking at a NORCO 4U as the housing and running Windows Home Server for the OS

[Electronics Wizardy]

Thanks for all the help mate first time really looking at raid cards. The ones I'm looking at are sas and to have ram and battery pack up. There just cheap because there older.

Would I really need anything quicker then a sata 2 connection for HDD's though at 7200rpm speeds?

I'm also looking at a NORCO 4U as the housing and running Windows Home Server for the OC.

Be sure to check that the raid card don't have a 2TB limit. Some of the older ones do and you can use any big drives with it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Thanks for all the help mate first time really looking at raid cards. The ones I'm looking at are sas and to have ram and battery pack up. There just cheap because there older.

Would I really need anything quicker then a sata 2 connection for HDD's though at 7200rpm speeds?

I'm also looking at a NORCO 4U as the housing and running Windows Home Server for the OC.

Windows Home Server is dead, Either run Linux/freebsd/freenas or windows server 2012r2 standard.

[Zombi3]

Windows Home Server is dead, Either run Linux/freebsd/freenas or windows server 2012r2 standard.

I was thinking free nas but requires to much ram. I will have a look at windows server.

[scottyseng]

Thanks for all the help mate first time really looking at raid cards. The ones I'm looking at are sas and to have ram and battery pack up. There just cheap because there older.

Would I really need anything quicker then a sata 2 connection for HDD's though at 7200rpm speeds?

I'm also looking at a NORCO 4U as the housing and running Windows Home Server for the OS

 

Well, with RAID cards on backplanes, the max bandwidth of the connection matters. SAS 6Gb/s will not be filled by one hard drive, but when you start adding a lot of drives to the mix, the hard drives begin to approach the bandwidth cap of the one SAS connection. Most RAID cards have two SAS connections.

 

For example, on my LSI MegaRAID 9260CV-8i, the max bandwidth is 2.2GB/s even with expanders. Right now 6 WD Reds in RAID10 in my array is approaching 500MB/s Seq. If I get all 24 WD RE drives, I'm sure I can get close to 2GB/s.

 

I'm kind of lost when you mention SATA 2 (3Gb/s). If you you're using SAS cards, you should be looking at the SAS speed (Should be 6Gb/s). Would not recommend SAS 3Gb/s. You would be able to hit the bandwidth limit if you load the chassis with all 24 drives. The backplane of the Norco should be SAS 6Gb/s with SATA 6GB/s breakouts.

 

I'm guessing you mean the 24 bay Norco 4U chassis right?

 

Yeah, if you wanted to run FreeNAS, you should get HBA cards instead of RAID cards. Windows Server is nice though.

 

Make sure you get good drives though. I think you need enterprise drives to run so many drives in one chassis safely (Don't use WD Reds...well, you can, but they're recommended for 8 bay max...life span may take a hit).

[Electronics Wizardy]

I was thinking free nas but requires to much ram. I will have a look at windows server.

You can probally get away with 16gb of ram and zfs, soo freenas won't use that much ram. You could also you Linux as it has the same features as windows server, but its free and normally faster.