ssd Making a RAID 10 SSD array more reliable.

[09FireDragon]

I am in the process of building a server and for storage I will be using a 4 drive RAID 10 SSD array. However im still somewhat concerned about drive failure. The server will also have a HDD for backups, as well as an offsite storage VPS to upload backups too. However im more concerned about the interruption to the running of the server if multiple drives where to fail.

Since SSD's have a limited number of R/W cycles and RAID 10 will mean all 4 drives are under roughly the same workload therefore will be coming to the end of their life expectancy around the same time. So the chance of 2 or more drives failing around the same time is somewhat likely.

 

Since RAID 10 is a stripe of mirrors drive 1 & 2 contain the same data, and so do 3 & 4. I am considering buying drive 1 & 3 from one manufacturer and 2 & 4 from another. I would make sure both drives had different life expectancies, therefore they are more likely to fail in pairs, rather than all 4 around the same time. (Since RAID 10 can take 2 drive failures as long as the drives don't contain the same data. Hence why I will arrange them 1 & 3, 2 & 4 etc).

 

As an added note, I will be purchasing consumer grade drives, since I don't have a great deal to spend. Though i am aware enterprise grade drives do last substantially longer.

 

How I see it, that makes complete sense. However I wanted to ask for others opinions that have more experience that I do, since I could be completely missing something. Would it work, or would it just be a waste of time?

[COUPER MILLAR]

Why are you needing to use ssd over hdd? 

[fjdhdhcyfhf]

you really dont getting anything useful out of striping on a SSD. buy two large SSDs and put them in raid 1; less drives less fail

[COUPER MILLAR]

The reason for my question above, unless you are on a 10 Gib network you will only notice a speed difference on the local machine as a 1 Gib network maxes out at 120 mb/sec transfer speeds which would be saturated by both an ssd or hdd drive array. 

[09FireDragon]

It will mostly be used for webhosting, and databases. I understand that RAID 1 would be an okay option. Cheaper too, since 2 x 480GB SSD's are cheaper than 4 x 240GB. However RAID 10 is needed more for a selling point than actual performance. Since with advertising higher numbers is often more important than actual performance from a selling perspective.

[Doramius]

I'd still go with the cheaper HDDs in RAID 10 and use a small SSD RAID 10 cache.  Cheaper still, more reliable.  If using HDDs, I'd use NAS or Enterprise NAS.  

[09FireDragon]

I have already looked into other options, I just need to know if what what i stated in the thread would help.

[Doramius]

It'll definitely work.  The suggestions made are just higher reliability with lower cost, while keeping speeds.