Good, cost-effective 24+ port raid controller? (and OS?)

MrPsych · October 11, 2015

I'm going to be putting my drives in a raid6 config, and eventually^TM expanding up to 24 drives and I don't wanna have to fully rebuild my array, as I'm going to be expanding in many small increments

preferably under 800cad, and as high as 1200cad

Also, does anyone know what OS I should use? I'm not sure which OS I want to use, but probably some linux distro like FreeNAS or something cos they're free

scottyseng · October 11, 2015

I'm going to be putting my drives in a raid6 config, and eventually^TM expanding up to 24 drives and I don't wanna have to fully rebuild my array, as I'm going to be expanding in many small increments

preferably under 800cad, and as high as 1200cad

Also, does anyone know what OS I should use? I'm not sure which OS I want to use, but probably some linux distro like FreeNAS or something cos they're free

If you're going to run FreeNAS, you need a HBA, not a RAID card.

Where is the system going to be built in? If you are using a Server Rackmount Chassis, you really only need a two port SAS HBA (Or RAID if you're going for Windows) and it will feed out to the SAS backplane in your server.

However if you're planning to have it in your own PC case, then you need a two port SAS HBA with a SAS expander, which will easily cover 24 drives.

I think in FreeNAS, you usually will have to rebuild the array. I think very few RAID cards support expanding RAID5 / RAID 6. I know my LSI MegaRAID does not support expansion for RAID 1, 0, or 10.