RAID card needed? Recommendation for one

[lubblig]

So I'm planning on building a file server for off site backups (at a friends house) and I'm planning on getting four 6TB WD Red in Raid 10. Though, as I haven't had a whole lot of experience with Raid, I have a few questions.

 

First, what type of Raid should I go for? Would software Raid 10 be a good idea? I'm planning on running Debian/Cent OS/Ubuntu. Or could I use the motherboard for RAID? (I'm using this rather expensive asrock board) Or should you simply not use software/motherboard raid due to reliability etc and get a proper raid card? If yes, what do you recommend that isn't super expensive but can handle four sata3 drives with 6TB of storage each? I looked at a couple myself, though it was only tested with drives up to 4TB and I'm unsure if it will work with my 6TB drives. If someone's interested, this is the one I was looking at: http://www.startech.com/eu/Cards-Adapters/HDD-Controllers/SATA-Cards/4-Port-PCI-Express-SATA-6Gbps-RAID-Controller-Card~PEXSAT34RH So if anyone know if it does handle 6TB drives please let me know!

 

Also, if it really doesn't matter due to all of them, potentially being good/reliable nowadays, what is the easiest to do? Also, please do look at the motherboard and see if that would work as it is rather expensive and it would be nice if that's all I needed.

 

Thanks.

[Altecice]

Dont use a software RAID at all. If you are wanting good,fast and reliable storage grab yourself a RAID controller with onboard cache. My HP server in the house runs a P410 512 BBC controller and it does what I want it to do perfectly.

[Electronics Wizardy]

I suggest using no hardware raid card and using zfs or btrfs. Its more secure than a raid card is and even though its software raid its much better than normal software raid and it does check sums and other things to protect you data. I also suggest raid 5 and raid 10 should only be used for performance on low end raid cards. 

 

Also the raid card you showed is very low end. If you have to use a raid card get something withb a battery back up from someone like lsi or adaptec.

[Altecice]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I suggest using no hardware raid card and using zfs or btrfs. Its more secure than a raid card is and even though its software raid its much better than normal software raid and it does check sums and other things to protect you data. I also suggest raid 5 and raid 10 should only be used for performance on low end raid cards. 

 

Also the raid card you showed is very low end. If you have to use a raid card get something withb a battery back up from someone like lsi or adaptec.

no no no no no... ALWAYS use dedicated RAID controllers over Software every time. What you said was stupid. ZFS/BTRFS <-- still in Alpha btw are file systems that are hardware independent.

[Altecice]

Just now, Altecice said:

 Double post?!

 

[Tmt97]

Just now, Altecice said:

I suggest using no hardware raid card and using zfs or btrfs. Its more secure than a raid card is and even though its software raid its much better than normal software raid and it does check sums and other things to protect you data. I also suggest raid 5 and raid 10 should only be used for performance on low end raid cards. 

 

Also the raid card you showed is very low end. If you have to use a raid card get something withb a battery back up from someone like lsi or adaptec.

 

 

10 minutes ago, Altecice said:

Dont use a software RAID at all. If you are wanting good,fast and reliable storage grab yourself a RAID controller with onboard cache. My HP server in the house runs a P410 512 BBC controller and it does what I want it to do perfectly.

 

 

Just now, Altecice said:

no no no no no... ALWAYS use dedicated RAID controllers over Software every time. What you said was stupid. ZFS/BTRFS <-- still in Alpha btw are file systems that are hardware independent.

The Raid Controller fanboy is strong in this one...

[lubblig]

2 minutes ago, Altecice said:

no no no no no... ALWAYS use dedicated RAID controllers over Software every time. What you said was stupid. ZFS/BTRFS <-- still in Alpha btw are file systems that are hardware independent.

But the motherboards on-board raid capabilities, are they any good? I'm thinking since it's rather expensive. Would that be via bios or does it just mean that it supports software raid?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Altecice said:

 

ZFS is safter than a hardware raid,  especially the cheap one that you where showing. There is nothing a raid card can do to help with bitrot. Hardware raid isn't more safe with data.

 

 

 

[lubblig]

Ok, fuck it. Raid is too scary for me.. I'm just going to have the backup software make a copy to two drives instead of just one and not care about raid. I don't need it to be one large drive anyway so it'll probably work just fine to me. Thanks anyway guys.

[Altecice]

1 hour ago, Tmt97 said:

 

 

 

 

The Raid Controller fanboy is strong in this one...

No its just common sense. You get better performance and data security via a dedicated piece of hardware. If I was doing a data audit for a company and they showed me a Software RAID solution it would be an instant fail due to not following best practice (hardware RAID).

 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

ZFS is safter than a hardware raid,  especially the cheap one that you where showing. There is nothing a raid card can do to help with bitrot. Hardware raid isn't more safe with data.

 

 

 

 

ZFS uses ECC RAM to check for errors. It has nothing to do with the RAID controller... I fail to see how this is relevant. You dont even need to be using RAID to use ZFS.... RAID is how you arrange and present your disk, ZFS is the partitioning system you put on the disks.

[Altecice]

17 minutes ago, lubblig said:

Ok, fuck it. Raid is too scary for me.. I'm just going to have the backup software make a copy to two drives instead of just one and not care about raid. I don't need it to be one large drive anyway so it'll probably work just fine to me. Thanks anyway guys.

The onboard is fine but you might find it lacking in performance. Dont be put off by what people with little knowledge in the subject tell you.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, Altecice said:

No its just common sense. You get better performance and data security via a dedicated piece of hardware. If I was doing a data audit for a company and they showed me a Software RAID solution it would be an instant fail due to not following best practice (hardware RAID).

 

 

ZFS uses ECC RAM to check for errors. It has nothing to do with the RAID controller... I fail to see how this is reliant. You dont even need to be using RAID to use ZFS.... RAID is how you arrange and present your disk, ZFS is the partitioning system you put on the disks.

ZFS has raid built into it, it is also a file system. Also the reason zfs needs ecc is becuase it checks the data with the ram caches and when there different it assumes that the ram is correct, so using ecc keeps memory errors from making zfs think that the hdd is making bad data. ZFS isn't software raid that your normally think of it. ZFS is uses in mamy large companies due it its data security.

[scottyseng]

19 minutes ago, lubblig said:

Ok, fuck it. Raid is too scary for me.. I'm just going to have the backup software make a copy to two drives instead of just one and not care about raid. I don't need it to be one large drive anyway so it'll probably work just fine to me. Thanks anyway guys.

I think since you're running Linux already, you could probably make do with ZFS or BTRFS, but I have no clue on how to set them up as I'm not a Linux person. You should have backups anyway, RAID or not.

 

Hardware RAID is quite easy to set up / stable, but it comes at a massive price ($600-700 for a decent RAID card with the battery). In your case, I would stick with ZFS / BTRFS (If you can figure out how to set them up). 

[Jarsky]

Even mdadm is fantastic these days as far as a software solution, and its native to Linux.

 

As far as hardware, that card is quite expensive for what it is - considering you'd be populating all 4 slots with HDD's - you may want to look at the LSI 9211 or the Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with SFF-8087 breakout cables, or some of the other second hand Sata2/3 HBA's on eBay by HP/IBM.

[lubblig]

53 minutes ago, Altecice said:

The onboard is fine but you might find it lacking in performance. Dont be put off by what people with little knowledge in the subject tell you.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind if I do decide to try raid. I'm still kind of scared since I've had quite a few hdd's fail on me and I really hate data loss

[lubblig]

51 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

ZFS has raid built into it, it is also a file system. Also the reason zfs needs ecc is becuase it checks the data with the ram caches and when there different it assumes that the ram is correct, so using ecc keeps memory errors from making zfs think that the hdd is making bad data. ZFS isn't software raid that your normally think of it. ZFS is uses in mamy large companies due it its data security.

Thanks, I might look into that. Also, I am going to use ECC ram with this build (just because it was supported, not that I'm really going to get a benefit from it) so I guess that is good if this would turn out to be something I'll do.

[lubblig]

50 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

I think since you're running Linux already, you could probably make do with ZFS or BTRFS, but I have no clue on how to set them up as I'm not a Linux person. You should have backups anyway, RAID or not.

 

Hardware RAID is quite easy to set up / stable, but it comes at a massive price ($600-700 for a decent RAID card with the battery). In your case, I would stick with ZFS / BTRFS (If you can figure out how to set them up). 

This is the backup. I have my main rig at home that I will backup to the computer I'm building now. I just thought it'd be smart to have two copies if one drive does fail.

[lubblig]

13 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

Even mdadm is fantastic these days as far as a software solution, and its native to Linux.

 

As far as hardware, that card is quite expensive for what it is - considering you'd be populating all 4 slots with HDD's - you may want to look at the LSI 9211 or the Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with SFF-8087 breakout cables, or some of the other second hand Sata2/3 HBA's on eBay by HP/IBM.

Thanks for the suggestion on raid cards. I'll look into them if Raid comes back on the table. Although I do not want to spend too much and that might be a bad idea since, to my understanding, you shouldn't cheap out on raid cards since it's a pain to recover? Anyways, thanks.

[Jarsky]

13 minutes ago, lubblig said:

Thanks for the suggestion on raid cards. I'll look into them if Raid comes back on the table. Although I do not want to spend too much and that might be a bad idea since, to my understanding, you shouldn't cheap out on raid cards since it's a pain to recover? Anyways, thanks.

 

FYI - these are HBA cards, suitable for software RAID solutions under Windows, Linux & FreeBSD(FreeNAS) - if you want a hardware RAID controller - a suitable card would be the LSI 9271. It is an 8 port card that supports battery modules, the latest 8TB capacity disks, and can be expanded to large RAIDs by using SAS Expanders. there are LSI based 16 & 24 disk expanders.

[scottyseng]

54 minutes ago, lubblig said:

Thanks for the suggestion on raid cards. I'll look into them if Raid comes back on the table. Although I do not want to spend too much and that might be a bad idea since, to my understanding, you shouldn't cheap out on raid cards since it's a pain to recover? Anyways, thanks.

Not so much that they'd be a pain to recover (They're fairly hard to kill to begin with...) as you can pretty much toss any same generation RAID card of the same brand and still import the array (Expensive though).

 

You don't want to go for the cheap hardware RAID because they lack on board batteries and dedicated RAID card cache (The entry cards are pretty much software RAID on a card...they just use your system RAM as cache and it's not much different than software RAID on the motherboard). I would say 9361-8i if going new, but yeah, with the battery, it's like $500-700.

 

If you decide to do software RAID with HBA cards (ZFS or BTRFS or something else), try to get a UPS unit. Power loss can damage any software RAID pretty bad.

 

Oh, if this is the backup, you're good. I do recommend two drives (One backing up the other) for safety reasons.

[lubblig]

17 hours ago, scottyseng said:

-snip-

 

Oh, if this is the backup, you're good. I do recommend two drives (One backing up the other) for safety reasons.

Yes, but I was thinking of running crashplan to get the backup from my computers at home to the computer at my friends house. But for the actual mirroring of the files to another drive on the backup computer, do you have any suggestions for that? I was thinking of a program but that's windows only (FreeFileSync) and I'm most likely going to run linux (possibly windows server since I can get it on dreamspark for free). So do you know of any such software that can make a copy of all files in a folder to another at an interval like once a day or once a week or similar?

 

The problem with windows is that I eventually have to update to something else (like newer version of Windows due to EOL etc), but a linux distro I will be able to use the same thing and just update for pretty much for ever. So I would like to be able to do it with linux if it's possible to do rather easily.

[scottyseng]

3 hours ago, lubblig said:

Yes, but I was thinking of running crashplan to get the backup from my computers at home to the computer at my friends house. But for the actual mirroring of the files to another drive on the backup computer, do you have any suggestions for that? I was thinking of a program but that's windows only (FreeFileSync) and I'm most likely going to run linux (possibly windows server since I can get it on dreamspark for free). So do you know of any such software that can make a copy of all files in a folder to another at an interval like once a day or once a week or similar?

 

The problem with windows is that I eventually have to update to something else (like newer version of Windows due to EOL etc), but a linux distro I will be able to use the same thing and just update for pretty much for ever. So I would like to be able to do it with linux if it's possible to do rather easily.

 

Hmm, you might look at Windows Storage Spaces, it can do mirroring for you (Windows Server only). I haven't used it personally though.

 

Yeah, I got Windows Server 2012 R2 for free from Dreamspark as well. It just sucks that later this year, I'll have to upgrade to Windows Server 2016...and set everything up again.

 

I don't know much about Linux to recommend a file sync program for it, sorry. I'm on the Windows side of things.