Raid 5 Volume

[GTM]

Hi,

 

I need some advice on building a storage server for in home use (bulk storage, Plex, FTP server, personal files backup)

The parts I've got:

CPU: Intel I7 6700k (a bit overkill but i may do some rendering in the future)

Motherbord: Gigabyte Z170 D3H (http://www.gigabyte.com.ro/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5486#ov)

Ram: 16GB DDR 4

Boot drive: Samsung 950 Pro m.2 256Gb

Storage: 6 x 4Tb Seagate SSHD (i've got 2 more but the motherboard has only 6 sata connectors)

Power: Corsair RM 550W

 

First thing i tried is Windows 10 and Intel Rapid Storage for the raid. The first bump was that i had to install Windows in RAID mode not AHCI (IRST doesn't work in this mode) and that limits the boot SSD performance alot (random writes go way down) but still usable, I used the wizard to build a RAID 5 volume, it took 4 days to initialize, and the results were terrible - 20-30MB write speed. I've tried to disable Write-Cache Buffer Flushing and select different cache modes but nothing worked.(stripe size 128kb on my first attempt and 16kb on my second on a smaller volume 100GB).

 

Now I am trying Windows Server 2016 and building a software RAID 5 (resynching reached 10% in 12 hours) but the writes are a bit better even with the resynching not complete but it still drops to 40MB after a few GB of writing.

 

I need to choose between a fake hardware raid from intel and a software raid from windows. I will like to try more options but the initializing take a lot of time. I need some advice. The picture shows writes on windows software raid after a few GB.

 

Thanks,

Gabi

 

P.s. One second problem is that access to my shared folders on my other PC comes and goes at random - the network is stable and no changes are made. (Windows cannot access \\ComputerName) 

[GTM]

11% resynching ... at this rate it will be done in a week

[ChineseChef]

Few items:

1.  Get a cheap enterprise grade RAID card from Ebay, they are like $50-100 for an older card that cost $500-1500 new.  They should work just fine for you, but make sure you do some googling to ensure compatibility (between mobo and raidcard).

2.  Are you stuck with windows?  (I personally use windows due to using flexraid, but each OS/Solution has its pros/cons).

3.  Remember, any RAID solution you choose, if the controlling hardware fails (whether card or mobo), you will have to replace it with the exact same model if you want to recover anything.  So keep that in mind when choosing a solution.

 

I use flexraid on windows, with an HBA card running my 32 drives as a jbod.  I like flexraid personally, simply due to the easy recoverability of the array should you lose more drives than you have parity for.  And mine rebuilds in a day or two, with 50+TB of data spread across 32 drives.  You can set it for as many parity drives as you want, and expand as desired.  It is only as fast as a single drive, but that is only because I just use it as drive pooling+parity. 

 

But again, there are tons of other solutions if you want those instead. 

[GTM]

Thanks ChineseChef

 

1. I am looking for a raid card, but not a lot of cards support 4TB drives and are available in my area.

2. No I am not stuck with windows, I was looking at FreeNas with raidz, the only think I lose is the ability to stream games from steam(not that important but i wanted the option).

3. From what I read you can move the volume created with windows software raid if that OS or hardware fails. 

I am waiting for the resync to finish - its at 49% - to test the read/write performance and the cpu usage. If I write a large file now the CPU usage is around 5-10% mostly on one core. I attached some ATTO benchmark runs, its not looking good...

Would a Fujitsu 5/6 SAS LSI MegaRAID SAS2108 PCIe 2.0 work? (https://www.vexio.ro/accesorii-pc/fujitsu/47348-raid-controller-fujitsu-5-6-sas-lsi-megaraid-sas2108-pcie-2-0/ --- use translate) is about 200 Euros

 

 

 

First is single drive in AHCI mode, second is the current windows software raid 5.

[ChineseChef]

1.  Ebay should have tons of cards, and most of them should support 4TB drives. (didn't realize you were in Romania though, that may be a problem for shipping)

2.  I see nothing wrong with sticking on Windows.

3.  For software raids made by windows, they are rather easily* recovered with Windows.  (* this assumes it windows recognizes the array at all, from my understanding it can be real hit or miss)

 

For speeds, remember that parity RAID does take a big write performance hit.  Also, unless you have dedicated resources (hardware RAID card), your performance numbers will not be anything special.  I have primarily switched away from RAID 5/6, simply due to the cost of good performance, and the insane rebuild/repair times.

 

Checked out that card/site, didn't see an option to switch to English, lol, so not much I can tell there.

 

Something like one of these should be good, but I would try to find one with 256 or 512 MB of RAM.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-9240-8i-PCI-E-6Gb-LSI-RAID-Card-Bulk-packin-IBM-M1015-46M0861-US-Seller-/301828785550?hash=item464665c58e:g:rFAAAOSwrnNXPiNN