Building storage server

[PLOBBY]

So I am currently in the process of piecing together a storage server. There are two things I am undecided/unsure on. That is the raid card/case. I am going to be using five western digital green 1tb drives in a Raid 5. This server is going to be strictly file storage and doesn't necessarily need to have a lot of speed when it comes to read/write.

I would like to get a rackmount case with 8-12 hot-swap bays but these tend to be on the expensive side. Any suggestions? Along with suggestions on raid cards?


EDIT: I just read that the WD Green drives arent are frowned upon to be in a RAID environment because "R/W heads set very often, and within months the drive could be past the limit of load/unload cycles and start showing as old to SMART monitoring tools." That's off of newegg, not sure how true that is.

[BossBorot]

avoid WD green drives for a raid environment. They throw out a lot of smart errors and can even drop from the array due to time out issues. Not to mention the dropping of TLER from the green lineup.

The greens are good in software raid though. Look into WHS, freenas, and unRaid before opting to go the hardware raid route.

If you want hot swap for that many drives you are looking at 300+. If you want both rack mount and hot swap you are looking at the Norco 4020 and 4220. Personally I have a rack mountable Norco 450 which can fit 10 drives internally with room to add a supermirco 5 in 3 hot swap bay. The case itself is $85 or so and the 5 in 3 would cost $100.

[PLOBBY]

I think I may go this route for Raid Controller/Multiplier

http://www.provantage.com/YADDO1EP.htm

http://www.provantage.com/YADDO18U.htm

Any suggestions on drives? The 2tb drives seem pretty nice for the future, I do plan on adding more storage in a year or so.

I think I may not do the hot-swap as well. It was more so for ease of use and the back plane but if I just do internal storage its so much cheaper. It is going to be going into a rack at work to be backup for our exchange/file server...So I am going to do the hardware route.

[BossBorot]

For that purpose I would go hardware as well. However I think using a multiplier would be a bad idea for a raid array. Look into areca cards they tend to be expensive but well worth it quality wise.

As for drives I would go Hitachi for a business related raid build. Their drives are 7200rpm and therefore don't have the low rpm related issues that most 2tb drives have. WD has some 7200rpm 2tb drives but they are extremely expensive. Samsung just came out with one as well but it is so new that I wouldn't trust it just yet for a business raid build.

[PLOBBY]

What disadvantages does the multiplier have? I was basing the build a little around how they had theirs configured

http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/

I was looking at the hitachi's, I think that is what I will do drive wise. Also I am going to use the case you mentioned.

[BossBorot]

the design philosophy of that build is way different then the correct approach to a hardware raid setup. In that build they have tons of boxes that they can mirror data to. If a drive dies they can just leave it dead and then mirror the data again off of the drive on another system that is still working. Also that build does not use hardware raid the system is JBOD.

Using a multiplier in raid 5 is not only going to be extremely slow its going to be prone to failing. If it does fail it most likely will drop from a port on the raid card dropping all of the drives on the multiplier. Raid 5 can only recover from one drive dropping so this would be a huge problem to fix

edit: also there is a similar case to the Norco 450. The 470 adds an internal fan bracket which would cool the drives better plus it costs around the same as the Norco 450. I went with the 450 due to lower noise but for a business build the 470 would most likely be a better buy.

[PLOBBY]

Good to know -- The issue is the card I am looking at puts me over budget then.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131003

I am looking to spend no more than $650-700 on the case, drives, and raid card.

[BossBorot]

go for a perc i/5 then. They are not the best, but they are the best for the price.

[PLOBBY]

Do those controllers play ok with normal SATA drives? Do you need a special type of cable?

[thideras]

Do those controllers play ok with normal SATA drives? Do you need a special type of cable?Just get a normal (straight-through) SFF-8484 connector. It works with SAS and SATA. I'm running two of these cards in my server. The first is running 7 drives in a RAID 5, 8th drive is a hotspare. The second is running 2 SAS drives in RAID1 with a hotspare (can't do 3 drive RAID1 :-/).

I'm sure that no other RAID cards can come close to the quality of the Perc 5/i in the same price range.

[PLOBBY]

As such?

http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=942&sku=10250

EDIT: Also, thideras -- how much did you pick your cards up for and from where?

[thideras]

As such?

http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=942&sku=10250Yes, but that price is TERRIBLE. I picked mine up for no more than $10 each.

EDIT: No, this is not what you want, that says they are external SATA connectors.

EDIT: Also, thideras -- how much did you pick your cards up for and from where?I paid $75 (used) for my first one. It came with the card, PCI bracket and RAM, that is it.

I paid $125 (brand new) for my second one. It came with the card, RAM, BBU unit/cable and no PCI bracket.

I got them both on the forums here.

[PLOBBY]

Woops -- I believe this is the right one, and also cheaper.

http://www.amazon.com/0-5M-Internal-SFF-8484-4X7PIN-Cable/dp/B0027JQI9O

Ah thats pretty good price wise, cheapest I can find the controllers now for are about $160 on ebay.

[kciaccio]

So I am currently in the process of piecing together a storage server. There are two things I am undecided/unsure on. That is the raid card/case. I am going to be using five western digital green 1tb drives in a Raid 5. This server is going to be strictly file storage and doesn't necessarily need to have a lot of speed when it comes to read/write.

I would like to get a rackmount case with 8-12 hot-swap bays but these tend to be on the expensive side. Any suggestions? Along with suggestions on raid cards?


EDIT: I just read that the WD Green drives arent are frowned upon to be in a RAID environment because "R/W heads set very often, and within months the drive could be past the limit of load/unload cycles and start showing as old to SMART monitoring tools." That's off of newegg, not sure how true that is.

I don't know why you would not go with unraid? It is ten times better then a raid 5 solution if you are not overly concerned about read and write speeds.


You can ADD drives as you are going along and they can be all different sizes. The only important thing is that the parity drive has to be the largest in your array. you should really look into it.