RAID card

[noobftw]

Can someone recommend me a decent 8-12 port raid card that supports RAID 0,1,5 and 10 that will allow everything to run at full speed when using Western Digital RED's, thanks in advance

[dalekphalm]

41 minutes ago, noobftw said:

Can someone recommend me a decent 8-12 port raid card that supports RAID 0,1,5 and 10 that will allow everything to run at full speed when using Western Digital RED's, thanks in advance

8-port RAID cards are very common. They're actually 2-port SAS cards - each port being a Multi-channel SAS Port w/ 4 lanes each (giving you 8 lanes total, for 8 drives).

 

There are lots of varieties: SAS 6 Gbps are very common, and dirt cheap on eBay. Examples:

IBM m1015

LSI 9240-8i

 

There's also the newer gen SAS 6 cards, such as the 9266, 9270, etc.

https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/raid-controllers/#tab-span3

 

These are more expensive on eBay ($150-$200 or more).

 

Usually they'll end with a number then a letter (-8i). The number refers to how many channels (8 channels, 4 per port, 2 ports), and the letter refers to internal connectors vs external connectors.

 

If you want optimal performance, you will need to get ones with onboard cache (RAM), and a BBU (Battery backup unit). Many don't come with these, and you'll have to buy them separately. You can pretty much find everything on eBay if you wanted.

 

LSI has typically been the gold standard. They're now owned by Broadcom, but should still be good.

 

You can also buy a smaller RAID Card, and then a SAS Expander (Takes one 4-channel port, and multiplies it to give you more ports). The downside here is you lose bandwidth, as all the drives on the expander will share the single 4-channel port.

 

In practice, this isn't much of a problem until you get to larger arrays.

 

You can buy used or new, but new will generally cost a lot more.

[noobftw]

Thanks pal

[noobftw]

Lets say just for testing purposes if i was to RAID 0 six drives which gives me speeds of around 1000MB/s, would the suggested raid cards be able to utilise that much bandwidth, around a 10gbit connection

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, noobftw said:

Lets say just for testing purposes if i was to RAID 0 six drives which gives me speeds of around 1000MB/s, would the suggested raid cards be able to utilise that much bandwidth, around a 10gbit connection

yep those cards can all do 1000mB/s easily in raid 0.

 

What os and raid level are you runnig? if your running 5 or 6 get a bbu.

[noobftw]

For the time being Windows 10 (not my choice) and most likely raid 0 and raid 10 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, noobftw said:

For the time being Windows 10 (not my choice) and most likely raid 0 and raid 10 

Why get a raid card and not use storage spaces then and get a hba to add more drives?

[noobftw]

The performance is not even comparable to the onboard RAID of the motherboard in my experience

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, noobftw said:

The performance is not even comparable to the onboard RAID of the motherboard in my experience

No your not useing onboard raid, you would use storage spaces in windows, and thats about the same speed or faster than a hardware raid card.

[noobftw]

Well when I tested the speeds of the current motherboards onboard hardware/software RAID, whichever you want to call it, it was much faster than Storage Spaces, especially regarding striping. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, noobftw said:

Well when I tested the speeds of the current motherboards onboard hardware/software RAID, whichever you want to call it, it was much faster than Storage Spaces, especially regarding striping. 

Did you setup columns correctly? Thats how you get the speed from a raid 0.

[noobftw]

Hmmm, could you possibly link me to a tutorial of some kind for that  

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, noobftw said:

Hmmm, could you possibly link me to a tutorial of some kind for that  

Look here https://dataonsupport.dataonstorage.com/support/solutions/articles/6000015451-what-are-columns-and-how-does-storage-spaces-decide-how-many-to-use-