RAID Card recommendations

[vadumis]

Hello everybody.

 

I`m looking to raid a few WD reds 3 TB drives for back up. Mainly photos and videos with my daughter. So as you have already guessed, these are important.

 

I have been eyeballing a few raid cards on Newegg but as I have no prior experience with these, I`m not really sure what I`m looking at.

My main concern is that, all though some of the raid cards have similar specs, the prices vary drastically - sometimes twice the price - and I can`t understand why.

 

So, as I was saying, I was looking at some LSI Raid cards like the 9207-8i and similar. I`ve seen a few similar versions.

 

I`m planning on fitting it in a Be Quiet Dark Base 900, fully rigged with fans - 4 intake + PSU and 3 exhaust. Also got a Noctua NH-D15 on a 4790K and an MSI 1070 Gaming X. Have no issues with cooling I think.

 

Someone worked with these and can recommend something reliable?

Also, is HBA important in any way? I`m not sure what it means.

And btw, I already have 2 x 3 TB Red drives. Would you recommend fitting them in RAID 1 or get a few extra and put them in RAID 5?

Thank you.

V.

[hl2master]

HBA means host bus adapter. As far as I know, cards that are advertised as HBA cards don't have any RAID functionality, unless you're going to use software RAID through your OS (I don't recommend it, especially in Windows, since carrying over a RAID array to another hardware combo can be troublesome). If I'm correct, software RAID is what @LinusTech used to use on Whonnock server before the NVMe SSD upgrade. Whonnock used to have three separate hardware RAID 5 arrays on three separate RAID cards, an those three arrays were striped (so RAID 0) in Windows using software RAID, meaning if any one of the three RAID 5 arrays dropped out, data was lost.

 

Also, for my personal machine, I run eight 120 GB SSDs in RAID 0 on an LSI 9260-8i. It's actually very similar to what @LinusTech used to run on Personal Rig Update 2012, but with SATA III drives (doesn't matter anyways, since the 9260-8i  is only capable of SATA II).

 

As for the 9207-8i, it doesn't seem to support RAID at all, since it's just an HBA card (check this link out: https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9207-8i#specifications). Getting something like a used 9260-8i on eBay for a bit less than $100 seems like the best option (look for ones with battery backups included, since they can save your butt in striped RAID levels with Always Read Ahead enabled).

 

As for RAID levels, RAID 1 would be fine if you don't mind the lack of speed improvements, and need the utmost redundancy (RAID 1 can loose all but one drive without any data loss). RAID 5 can be a good option if you want both fault tolerances (up to one drive) and read speed improvements (parity levels like RAID 5 and 6 can impact write speeds due to the parity drive requiring more processes to be done on the RAID controller). Also consider RAID 6 if you want two drive tolerances at the expense of slower speeds.

 

Also, don't forget to buy cables. Most used RAID cards on eBay don't include any. Look for Mini-SAS (also called SFF-8087) to SATA cables on Amazon or somewhere else.

Edited August 4, 2017 by tyler020705
Additional info

[vadumis]

Thank you for your suggestions.

 

The hba makes sense then.

So I'm looking at an LSI 9271-8i. This one seems a legit one, with ok reviews.

 

I take it LSI is one of the most trusted brands?

 

Also, I already have a backup PSU. My whole rig is running through it so I'm not worried about the bbu for the LSI cards. Besides, those cost as much as the whole card...

 

V

[H4nn3s]

1 hour ago, vadumis said:

Thank you for your suggestions.

 

The hba makes sense then.

So I'm looking at an LSI 9271-8i. This one seems a legit one, with ok reviews.

 

I take it LSI is one of the most trusted brands?

 

Also, I already have a backup PSU. My whole rig is running through it so I'm not worried about the bbu for the LSI cards. Besides, those cost as much as the whole card...

 

V

If you want to spend that much money on it, it is a great option but since you are only using 2 drives right now you could get a 9211-8i for 100$ new on Newegg or even cheaper used on eBay. It doesn't support RAID 5 or 6 but if you want to add two more drives you could run RAID 10, that way two of your 4 drives can fail.

[vadumis]

I get your point and you are correct.

 

I am planning on expanding this in the future. Photography is a hobby of mine so I will definetly be gathering more and more photos in time.

Besides, 250 GB SSDs are more and more affordable, and fitting a few of those in raid 0 sounds "Speedy"

 

I also plan on getting a threadripper 8/16 or 12/24 version in the future for the 64 pcie lanes. Photoshop and the merge option takes a lot of space (SSD and RAM wise) and benefits from a lot of cores.

 

If someone has any particular suggestions, I`m all ears! (eyes )

Thank you for your inputs so far

 

V.

[Lubi97]

7 hours ago, H4nn3s said:

If you want to spend that much money on it, it is a great option but since you are only using 2 drives right now you could get a 9211-8i for 100$ new on Newegg or even cheaper used on eBay. It doesn't support RAID 5 or 6 but if you want to add two more drives you could run RAID 10, that way two of your 4 drives can fail.

Not having any idea about the RAID cards, there is a little flaw in your statement:

 

In RAID 10 it is not guaranteed that your data is still intact when 2 drives fail. The moment 1 drive fails you are at the risk of loosing data if the wrong drive fails (33% chance).

 

Explanation: In RAID 10 you have 2 mirrors (RAID 1) of one striped array (RAID 0)

So essentially in RAID 0 you would have:

A1 and B1

If one fails, all is lost.

In RAID 10 you have:

A1 and B1 - and - A2 and B2

If now A1 fails, there is no problem, because you still have a copy -> A2.

But if after that A2 fails, B1 and B2 will not be able to help you in any way.

 

 

4 hours ago, vadumis said:

I get your point and you are correct.

 

I am planning on expanding this in the future. Photography is a hobby of mine so I will definetly be gathering more and more photos in time.

Besides, 250 GB SSDs are more and more affordable, and fitting a few of those in raid 0 sounds "Speedy"

 

I also plan on getting a threadripper 8/16 or 12/24 version in the future for the 64 pcie lanes. Photoshop and the merge option takes a lot of space (SSD and RAM wise) and benefits from a lot of cores.

 

If someone has any particular suggestions, I`m all ears! (eyes )

Thank you for your inputs so far

 

V.

For just a storage system I would very much consider something like RAID 6 (where 2 different drives can fail), as rebuilds of a big RAID array may take some days, during which all the drives are active and the risk of another one failing is severely higher. (Also since you seem to have a rather big budget (talking about Threadripper and the like), you might want to consider FreeNAS, as it is both speed and reliable. (It's just a tad more expensive to implement, since the ZFS (the filesystem used) relies on ECC memory. The RAID 6 equivalent would be called RAID Z2 in FreeNAS.

I am currently going for a RAIDZ2 with 4x 6TB and will upgrade, if and when I need it (or if I get a good deal) to 7x 6TB with RAIDZ3 (so 3 drives can fail).

 

Don't get me wrong, RAID 10 is great, I have a RAID 10 array of 4 3TB WD Reds in my main rig as well. It delivers faster performance than RAID 5 and is way easier to rebuild, since the only thing happening during a rebuild ist copying the data from A2 to the new A1. But as a storage system for very important data, I would not use it.

 

Again, since you don't seem to have a budget problem, I would also very much encourage you to get a separate storage server (or NAS) rather than putting all of that in your main rig. (Maybe even better: do both for your most important data.) But above all else: a backup is key to prevent a single point of failure.

 

All of this was kinda stitched together while watching TV, but I hope I could help you at least a little bit.

 

BTW: Why do you need a RAID card after all? I wouldn't necessarily recommend a motherboard-RAID like Intel's, as they can be very fragile when it comes to BIOS updates, but why not go for software RAID (like I mentioned FreeNAS - or if speed is not that important UnRAID (which I haven't used yet, but I hear great things about - but also has licensing costs I believe)).

[H4nn3s]

1 hour ago, Lubi97 said:

Not having any idea about the RAID cards, there is a little flaw in your statement:

 

In RAID 10 it is not guaranteed that your data is still intact when 2 drives fail. The moment 1 drive fails you are at the risk of loosing data if the wrong drive fails (33% chance).

 

Explanation: In RAID 10 you have 2 mirrors (RAID 1) of one striped array (RAID 0)

So essentially in RAID 0 you would have:

A1 and B1

If one fails, all is lost.

In RAID 10 you have:

A1 and B1 - and - A2 and B2

If now A1 fails, there is no problem, because you still have a copy -> A2.

But if after that A2 fails, B1 and B2 will not be able to help you in any way.

Oh, I thought it worked somehow different, thanks for clearing that up.

 

1 hour ago, Lubi97 said:

BTW: Why do you need a RAID card after all? I wouldn't necessarily recommend a motherboard-RAID like Intel's, as they can be very fragile when it comes to BIOS updates, but why not go for software RAID (like I mentioned FreeNAS - or if speed is not that important UnRAID (which I haven't used yet, but I hear great things about - but also has licensing costs I believe)).

I agree with you there. I have been running UnRaid for 4 months now and it is working great for me. All the features you get with it definitly justify the 60$

[scottyseng]

10 hours ago, vadumis said:

So I'm looking at an LSI 9271-8i. This one seems a legit one, with ok reviews.

 

I take it LSI is one of the most trusted brands?

You should get the CacheVault (BBU) unit for the LSI MegaRAID card, even if you have a UPS. If you plan to use RAID5 or 6, you will see a pretty hard hit on speed without the BBU unit. Also, if your system locks up or have to force shut down the system, you also risk losing the data on the RAID controller. Yes, it's expensive, but that's the nature of enterprise gear.

 

Also, if you're buying new, maybe consider a LSI 9361? It's 12 Gb/s and lets you future proof more. I have a LSI 9260-8i CV myself and it runs 16 4TB drives without issue.

 

I personally would recommend getting two more drives and using RAID6. For LSI MegaRAID, only RAID5 (min 3 drives, can lose 1) or RAID6 (Min 4 drives, can lose 2) are expandable.

 

Finally, please make sure you have airflow on the RAID card. They get hot under load. They aren't really meant to be inside of silent PCs with limited airflow.

[vadumis]

8 hours ago, Lubi97 said:

Not having any idea about the RAID cards, there is a little flaw in your statement:

 

In RAID 10 it is not guaranteed that your data is still intact when 2 drives fail. The moment 1 drive fails you are at the risk of loosing data if the wrong drive fails (33% chance).

 

Explanation: In RAID 10 you have 2 mirrors (RAID 1) of one striped array (RAID 0)

So essentially in RAID 0 you would have:

A1 and B1

If one fails, all is lost.

In RAID 10 you have:

A1 and B1 - and - A2 and B2

If now A1 fails, there is no problem, because you still have a copy -> A2.

But if after that A2 fails, B1 and B2 will not be able to help you in any way.

 

 

For just a storage system I would very much consider something like RAID 6 (where 2 different drives can fail), as rebuilds of a big RAID array may take some days, during which all the drives are active and the risk of another one failing is severely higher. (Also since you seem to have a rather big budget (talking about Threadripper and the like), you might want to consider FreeNAS, as it is both speed and reliable. (It's just a tad more expensive to implement, since the ZFS (the filesystem used) relies on ECC memory. The RAID 6 equivalent would be called RAID Z2 in FreeNAS.

I am currently going for a RAIDZ2 with 4x 6TB and will upgrade, if and when I need it (or if I get a good deal) to 7x 6TB with RAIDZ3 (so 3 drives can fail).

 

Don't get me wrong, RAID 10 is great, I have a RAID 10 array of 4 3TB WD Reds in my main rig as well. It delivers faster performance than RAID 5 and is way easier to rebuild, since the only thing happening during a rebuild ist copying the data from A2 to the new A1. But as a storage system for very important data, I would not use it.

 

Again, since you don't seem to have a budget problem, I would also very much encourage you to get a separate storage server (or NAS) rather than putting all of that in your main rig. (Maybe even better: do both for your most important data.) But above all else: a backup is key to prevent a single point of failure.

 

All of this was kinda stitched together while watching TV, but I hope I could help you at least a little bit.

 

BTW: Why do you need a RAID card after all? I wouldn't necessarily recommend a motherboard-RAID like Intel's, as they can be very fragile when it comes to BIOS updates, but why not go for software RAID (like I mentioned FreeNAS - or if speed is not that important UnRAID (which I haven't used yet, but I hear great things about - but also has licensing costs I believe)).

A few reasons that would make sense to me:

1) hardware raid is more reliable?

2) not enough sata ports on the z97 board

3) takes the overhead off the CPU

4) I can connect even non raid-ed drives to it

 

I looked at the Freenas a little bit. Does that one suppose software raid or the raid card is still necessary?

I have a smaller PC with a Pentium 2 core CPU, 8 GB of RAM and an SSD that I could repurpose.

As for the threadripper, this is gonna take a while. Got other priorities right now. For the moment I'd like to have a simple but reliable raid array which I could expand on the future. Threadripper might or might not come, but the backup is a must. 

Right now i have to handle it manually...

 

@scottysengi hear you about the bbu. The 9362 however is 2÷3 times the price. Way out my budget atm

 

V

 

PS: Here is a photo of the build as well. I have a spare Noctua 80mm that I can point to the raid card if needed.

[scottyseng]

On ‎8‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 1:00 AM, vadumis said:

A few reasons that would make sense to me:

1) hardware raid is more reliable?

2) not enough sata ports on the z97 board

3) takes the overhead off the CPU

4) I can connect even non raid-ed drives to it

1. Technically FreeNAS is a little more reliable as it has the ability to error check files for corruption (It relies on memory though, hence the ECC requirement). Hardware RAID is very rock solid (It also does error checking, but not as good as ZFS (FreeNAS) and BTRFS) though to be honest it's still good, otherwise it wouldn't be used in the enterprise still.

2. You can use a HBA card (basically a RAID card without the RAID) for FreeNAS or any other software RAID.

3. These days the CPU is fast enough to tolerate the overhead of RAID.

4. You can connect non RAID drives, but only if you put them in RAID0. You can't just connect a non RAID drive and run it on hardware RAID. That's what HBAs are for (They are direct pass through).

 

However, hardware RAID is good if you have a Windows based system and don't want a separate NAS to run the RAID. Also, hardware RAID is really easy to move between systems and is pretty much plug and play. I've moved my RAID array between my PC and server a few times while migrating data and it did not skip a beat at all.

[hl2master]

On 2017. 8. 2. at 10:26 PM, vadumis said:

Thank you for your suggestions.

 

The hba makes sense then.

So I'm looking at an LSI 9271-8i. This one seems a legit one, with ok reviews.

 

I take it LSI is one of the most trusted brands?

 

Also, I already have a backup PSU. My whole rig is running through it so I'm not worried about the bbu for the LSI cards. Besides, those cost as much as the whole card...

 

V

I see your point, but here's the thing:

 

BTW, my 9260-8i for my eight SSD array was a used purchase on eBay, and it has been rock solid (apart from the fact that TRIM is not supported in RAID with the 9260-8i, and my SSD array's performance gets worse overtime).

 

Even if it seems unnecessary, I highly recommend getting a battery backup unit, or at least, buy a card that comes with it (the BBU saved my butt a couple of times). If you enable "Always Read Ahead" for your virtual drive (which in layman's terms, is the RAID partition you'll end up seeing in an OS), the performance will be dramatically better, but at the expense of potential data loss when power goes out. That's where the BBU kicks in by running the RAID card during a power loss. So, I'd say the BBU is a must.

 

As for LSI as a brand, their products are one of the most popular and reliable brands for storage solutions (Adaptec and Areca are some others that I can consider "reliable" right off from my head).

[Lubi97]

On 3. August 2017 at 8:22 AM, scottyseng said:

1. Technically FreeNAS is a little more reliable as it has the ability to error check files for corruption (It relies on memory though, hence the ECC requirement). Hardware RAID is very rock solid (It also does error checking, but not as good as ZFS (FreeNAS) and BTRFS) though to be honest, otherwise it wouldn't be used in the enterprise still.

2. You can use a HBA card (basically a RAID card without the RAID) for FreeNAS or any other software RAID.

3. These days the CPU is fast enough to tolerate the overhead of RAID.

4. You can connect non RAID drives, but only if you put them in RAID0. You can't just connect a non RAID drive and run it on hardware RAID. That's what HBAs are for (They are direct pass through).

 

However, hardware RAID is good if you have a Windows based system and don't want a separate NAS to run the RAID. Also, hardware RAID is really easy to move between systems and is pretty much plug and play. I've moved my RAID array between my PC and server a few times while migrating data and it did not skip a beat at all.

I was worried, that nobody answered the questions he had after my post, but I see you handled that very comprehensively! Great post!

 

On 3. August 2017 at 8:00 AM, vadumis said:

I looked at the Freenas a little bit. Does that one suppose software raid or the raid card is still necessary?

I have a smaller PC with a Pentium 2 core CPU, 8 GB of RAM and an SSD that I could repurpose.

As for the threadripper, this is gonna take a while. Got other priorities right now. For the moment I'd like to have a simple but reliable raid array which I could expand on the future. Threadripper might or might not come, but the backup is a must. 

Right now i have to handle it manually...

Without ECC memory, FreeNAS (and ZFS) can not deliver the definite data-integrity they advertise. ZFS heavily relies on ECC memory. I don't know if UnRAID does too, but maybe that would be a better option. Somebody else should help you with, wether your old PC is usable for something like that, as I don't know.

 

[vadumis]

Spoiler

 

On 8/3/2017 at 8:00 AM, vadumis said:

A few reasons that would make sense to me:

1) hardware raid is more reliable?

2) not enough sata ports on the z97 board

3) takes the overhead off the CPU

4) I can connect even non raid-ed drives to it

 

I looked at the Freenas a little bit. Does that one suppose software raid or the raid card is still necessary?

I have a smaller PC with a Pentium 2 core CPU, 8 GB of RAM and an SSD that I could repurpose.

As for the threadripper, this is gonna take a while. Got other priorities right now. For the moment I'd like to have a simple but reliable raid array which I could expand on the future. Threadripper might or might not come, but the backup is a must. 

Right now i have to handle it manually...

 

@scottysengi hear you about the bbu. The 9362 however is 2÷3 times the price. Way out my budget atm

 

Spoiler

 

 

So guys, on another related topic: which do you consider to be the most silent and reliable HDD s for RAID?

[Lurick]

7 minutes ago, vadumis said:

So guys, on another related topic: which do you consider to be the most silent and reliable HDD s for RAID?

For me it's been WD Reds. Had 24 running for almost 2.5 years and never had a single issue