Raid 1 for my OS

[big_dave]

Hi all,

 

Just saw the Linus Raid videos, and thought the timing was cconvenient. I am building a server in a couple weeks, and wanted some tips on my RAID1 boot and RAID10(I hope) storage drives. Here is the basic configuration:

 

I have 2 512 gb SSD drives that I want to  install the OS onto in a RAID1 configuration. My concern here is how the OS will handle being installed onto a RAID1 array. Does anyone have any experience with boot drives being set up in a RAID1 configuration?

 

I'm also going to set up a RAID10 array of 4 6tb 7200 rpm drives. I need both speed and data reliability. I'm going to be hosting about 90 HD simultaneous camera feeds, all of which I need to store and archive full 10+fps to the drives. I'm hoping that the array will be able to keep up using striping, and be redundant enough to survive a single drive failure.

 

Any thoughts on the use of RAID? Any problems with the boot raid, or having multiple raid types on the same system?

 

Thanx,

Big-Dave

 

 

P.S.

 

For those interested in the full build:

 

Asus M5a99FX Pro R2.0 

AMD 8350 CPU (not overclocking, so sticking with the stock CPU cooler)

Asus Geoforce GT 610 video card

Rosewill Glacier-850M power supply

G.Skill Ripjaws X Series DDR3 1600 4x8gb

Mushkin 2.5" 512 GB SSD drives x 2

IBM PCI Express x4 quad gigabit nic card (feeds are spread out over 4 separate gigabit networks)

Generic no-brand 7200 RPM 6tb hard drives x 4

Rosewill 5.25" bay card & usb device with onboard eSATA

Phanteks ATX Full Tower case - Black

OS will be an OEM version of Windows Server 2012 R2 - DataCenter

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

What OS? This will work fine in linux, but in windows you need a hardware raid card. Also why windows server? Thats over 1000 dollars. Why not use linux?

 

 

 

Why are you using ssd's? For this use it won't help at all.

 

Id personally suggest going intel. Look at getting a xeon d/avaton or a i7. For file transfers you need single threaded

 

Id personally run raid 6 as you can upgrade and any 2 drives can fail.

 

Whats are you using the server

[scottyseng]

Yeah, I think the SSDs in RAID1 are a tad overkill. You can still do it, but that's money that can be put into another hard drive for you. I personally would just use one SSD.

 

You're definitely going to want to use a hardware RAID card in this case, you can do it with onboard RAID, but it's a bit dicey, especially when you want lots of speed.

 

You might want to double check those no brand drives, you want drives that are RAID ready (Like the WD Red, Red Pro, or any of the enterprise lineup. Alternatively, Seagate NAS or HGST NAS / their enterprise drives). If they're no brand consumer drives (like the WD Blue or Black), you might have issues with them dropping from your array on their own due to lack of TLER. Do note that as the array gets filled, the speeds will drop.

 

I personally would go with RAID6. Since you sound like you're doing video editing and handling large files rather than a bunch of tiny ones, RAID6 will help you out here. It lets you read from all four drives at the same time. If you're curious, I had four 4TB WD Reds in RAID10 and achieved 350MB/s sequential read and write. This is on my LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i RAID card.

 

I now have six 4TB WD Reds in RAID6:

 

And eight 4TB WD Re SAS drives in RAID6:

[big_dave]

On 7/9/2016 at 11:42 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

What OS? This will work fine in linux, but in windows you need a hardware raid card. Also why windows server? Thats over 1000 dollars. Why not use linux?

 

***I'm buying the Server 2012 R2 OEM surplus, and can get is for only a few hundred dollars. I am going with the Server 2012 because I want to set up 4 VM's and run 2012 in each; as the surveillance software only runs on Windows.

 

 

Why are you using ssd's? For this use it won't help at all.

 

***The intent of the SSD's is to have a reliable OS in the event of a drive failure (up time is important), and the SSD's will let me boot and copy virtual machines at lightning speed, so I can throw up quick VM's if something goes wrong in the software.

 

On 7/9/2016 at 11:42 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id personally suggest going intel. Look at getting a xeon d/avaton or a i7. For file transfers you need single threaded

***I realize most people would go Intel, but I've been an AMD guy since my first K6. The 8350 comes complete with virtualization on-board, and is only $150 for the 8 core chip. I can't come close to that with a virtualization ready Intel 8 core CPU.

 

On 7/9/2016 at 11:42 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id personally run raid 6 as you can upgrade and any 2 drives can fail.

***Raid 6 is an interesting idea. I hadn't researched Raid 6. 

 

On 7/9/2016 at 11:42 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Whats are you using the server

***The server is going to run 4 VM's to transcode on the fly and archive HD security footage from between 80 and 90 camera feeds. It will be running constantly, with no down time.

[big_dave]

On 7/10/2016 at 3:20 AM, scottyseng said:

Yeah, I think the SSDs in RAID1 are a tad overkill. You can still do it, but that's money that can be put into another hard drive for you. I personally would just use one SSD.

The intent of the RAID1 is to protect me from a failure of a single SSD, which would cause the entire system to go down. That is where I plan to store the virtual machines.

On 7/10/2016 at 3:20 AM, scottyseng said:

 

You're definitely going to want to use a hardware RAID card in this case, you can do it with onboard RAID, but it's a bit dicey, especially when you want lots of speed.

That is a good point. I'll look at what options I have for the onboard RAID card. Will I be able to run a RAID1 using the on-board motherboard RAID controller, and then use the RAID card to run a different RAID configuration?

On 7/10/2016 at 3:20 AM, scottyseng said:

You might want to double check those no brand drives, you want drives that are RAID ready (Like the WD Red, Red Pro, or any of the enterprise lineup. Alternatively, Seagate NAS or HGST NAS / their enterprise drives). If they're no brand consumer drives (like the WD Blue or Black), you might have issues with them dropping from your array on their own due to lack of TLER. Do note that as the array gets filled, the speeds will drop.

The serial numbers indicate they are Western Digital, but they aren't branded. I was mostly looking for reasonably high speed large drives that I could get at a bargain from Newegg. Also, thank you for reminding me about the speed drop. My intention was to add another pair of 4tb drives in a few months using ESATA, as the current system will be able to become parts after I wait 45 days to allow the videos to become stale.

On 7/10/2016 at 3:20 AM, scottyseng said:

I personally would go with RAID6. Since you sound like you're doing video editing and handling large files rather than a bunch of tiny ones, RAID6 will help you out here. It lets you read from all four drives at the same time. If you're curious, I had four 4TB WD Reds in RAID10 and achieved 350MB/s sequential read and write. This is on my LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i RAID card.

Interesting thought on RAID6, I thought RAID6 would be less reliable in the event of a drive failure that needs to be replaced and rebuilt. Have you experienced a failure and rebuild in a RAID6 configuration? What kind of rebuild time was there by comparison to the RAID10, and did it effect the ability to stay up even during the rebuild?

On 7/10/2016 at 3:20 AM, scottyseng said:

I now have six 4TB WD Reds in RAID6:

 

And eight 4TB WD Re SAS drives in RAID6:

 

[scottyseng]

1 hour ago, big_dave said:

 

Ah, I see. RAID1 is okay for the SSDs then.

 

Yeah, you'll be able to use the onboard to have one configuration separate from the RAID card. You might be able to get away with having both arrays on the onboard controller, but it depends if you have enough ports and if the speeds are good enough.

 

Yeah, I would just hope they are unbranded OEM WD enterprise drives. You might run into drives dropping out of arrays if you have the consumer WD drives.

 

There's pros and cons to RAID6. The pros is that it uses all of the drives, can handle two drives failing (Where with RAID10, you have to have the correct two drives fail...otherwise the array is gone (You can only have one drive fail in each of the RAID1 pairs). The cons is that yes, it does take quite some time to rebuild a array after a drive failure, but you probably can survive it for the most part. If all of the drives in the array were bought at the same time and from the exact same batch, then the changes of another drive failing soon is a possibility. The being said, you'd have to have three drives die to kill a RAID6. That's kind of hard to achieve usually.

 

I have not experienced a drive failure because I have enterprise drives and they are probably laughing at the consumer level load I put on them. They pretty much just feed anime and music to my PC as my NAS storage, that's it. Nothing extremely hard like constant video editing. I usually give a drive five years, then I'll replace it too. That's how I've never seen a array with a failed drive ever.

 

That being said, my really old WD Black finally died after 8 years. I think surely by that time you probably have another stack of drives lying around to rebuild the array with.

 

Ah, I just saw in your previous post that this system is being used for security footage, you might consider WD's Purple series of drives (They're made to handle security footage and constant video writing..do not use these for normal desktop use though)