Questions about a new 20x1.5tb array (and old data)

[elbweb]

Very nice, wish my RAID card had that feature...

If you are looking for a great new one for a great price... watch this card.

Rocketraid 4320

I bought it last friday, it was $299... the price moves around a lot.

Best I've seen so far was $299 plus a free 1tb hard drive...

 

[Automata]

If you are looking for a great new one for a great price... watch this card.

Rocketraid 4320

I bought it last friday, it was $299... the price moves around a lot.

Best I've seen so far was $299 plus a free 1tb hard drive...

Nah, I'll stick with my Perc 5/i (8 port SATA) that I got for $75

 

[elbweb]

Nah, I'll stick with my Perc 5/i (8 port SATA) that I got for $75

To each his own

 

[Automata]

To each his own

Yup yup, I don't doubt it is a great card. I just can't justify paying that much for it when I don't "need" those features

 

[neonblingbling]

I messaged this thread to my father, and here is what he had to say. Please remember that he does work in a facility that has tons and tons of storage (Exabytes). He doesn't work directly with the systems, but he does know a lot about them. I wanted him to post, but he didn't want to just "jump" in a thread like that

That's good to hear. I'm curious how big each array is.


elbweb - I hope you post a build log. I curious to see how your cables are going to look with 13 drives.

 

[Automata]

That's good to hear. I'm curious how big each array is.

I'll see if I can find out.

 

[elbweb]

That's good to hear. I'm curious how big each array is.


elbweb - I hope you post a build log. I curious to see how your cables are going to look with 13 drives.

Oh I will..

And its 20 drives, not 13.. just 13 new ones haha..

Cables will be fine. The case I am using have backplanes for 1 Sas-> 4sata..

So for hard drive data, there will only be 6 cables...

 

[Randyman...]

I'd lean heavily towards RAID-6 with that many drives. Why not? Is an extra ~1.2TB really gonna make or break what you want to accomplish (Google off-site backup, I believe)? I don't know what their requirements are, but I'd bet Google would recommend RAID-6 as well.

We use RAID-6 for our On-Air SANs and Isilon/Cache servers. I use RAID-6 on my personal NAS, but currently use RAID-5 on my Desktop (soon to add 2 more drives and swap that over to RAID-6 as well).

If (and likely when) the day comes, you'll be glad you went with RAID-6 (or you'll wish you'd went with RAID-6 )...

 

[elbweb]

(Google off-site backup, I believe)?

I don't really know where this started, but it seems like thats the prevailing idea at this point. I'm not to worried...

I'm going to use raid 6, right now I am mostly worried about if raid 6 is enough or not (i.e. should i make smaller more redundant arrays).

Also dealing with some manufacturer issues and problems with a reseller so my build is stuck where its at..


Norco (I bought the RPC-4220) is sending me a new backplane to replace the one that was damaged.
I bought a SAS expander from penguinsexpress.com and they apparently didn't have any in stock. So now I am waiting for them to get it before they sent it to me. Hopefully that will happen today...

I remember when I was putting the parts together for this build, the Chenbro CHK12803 was easy to come by.. now it seems like everyone is sold out. I hope I didn't miss something here...

 

[hitokiri_808]

I'd go with a single 20 drive raid 6 with 1 hot spare. With that many drives you WILL see a drive failure sometime in the next couple years. Just make sure you know when a drive fails so you can swap it out for a new spare. On my old 6 drive software Raid 5 I was scared to **** I would have a drive failure and never know until a second one failed.

I want a NORCO 4020 case for my server.

 

[AceNZ]

With that many drives, you should also be thinking about controller throughput. With a (relatively) inexpensive PCE 1.1 x4 or x8 controller, I wouldn't put more than about 16 drives on it; even less if your access patterns are mostly sequential.

If you're interested in a concrete recommendation, here you go:

Controller A (PCIe 1.1 x4 or x8):
10 drives in RAID 6 (8 data and 2 parity)
8KB strip size (64KB stripe) -- or maybe twice that if you mostly work with larger files.
Partition as two volumes: Drive C, first 25% of the volume. Install and run Windows from there, along with your applications. Drive E, the remaining 75%, use mostly for backup and infrequently accessed files.

Controller B (PCIe 1.1 x4 or x8):
10 drives in RAID 6 (8 data and 2 parity)
Partition as above, into two volumes, the first 25% (fast) and the remaining 75% (slower). Move your files to the volume that matches their usage / speed requirement.

 

[elbweb]

I'd go with a single 20 drive raid 6 with 1 hot spare. With that many drives you WILL see a drive failure sometime in the next couple years. Just make sure you know when a drive fails so you can swap it out for a new spare. On my old 6 drive software Raid 5 I was scared to **** I would have a drive failure and never know until a second one failed.

I want a NORCO 4020 case for my server.

I ended up with an 18 drive raid 6 and a 2 drive raid 1 for the os.

My raid card has a built in NIC connected to my network that will email me if something goes worng, so I will know. I don't really need a hot spare because of this, i'll just switch out the drive when I get the email.

With that many drives, you should also be thinking about controller throughput. With a (relatively) inexpensive PCE 1.1 x4 or x8 controller, I wouldn't put more than about 16 drives on it; even less if your access patterns are mostly sequential.

If you're interested in a concrete recommendation, here you go:

Controller A (PCIe 1.1 x4 or x8):
10 drives in RAID 6 (8 data and 2 parity)
8KB strip size (64KB stripe) -- or maybe twice that if you mostly work with larger files.
Partition as two volumes: Drive C, first 25% of the volume. Install and run Windows from there, along with your applications. Drive E, the remaining 75%, use mostly for backup and infrequently accessed files.

Controller B (PCIe 1.1 x4 or x8):
10 drives in RAID 6 (8 data and 2 parity)
Partition as above, into two volumes, the first 25% (fast) and the remaining 75% (slower). Move your files to the volume that matches their usage / speed requirement.

As for all this.. I don't need speed, I need storage. The most I will ever be dealing with on this machine is:

2x write streams at 14MBps
2x read streams at 50-60mbps

Meaning approx 350mbps of through put in the worst case scenario.

Real world scenarios will be only a single 50-60mbps stream being read.

This is a media server, for personal usage, holding bluray movie rips...

As for the card, I already have the machine up and running (building the first raid 6 array now, with 11 drives) with this raid controller:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115056

 

[cbanakis]

I have a similar setup.
I went with the following.

1 Of these...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115036
4 of these...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111057
And 20 of these...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

I got a custom driver from HighPoint that would allow 20-Drives in a single array.
I have the card in a computer I had laying around, and the 20 1.5's are setup in RAID5.
It was a very affordable setup considering I have a 26TB server now.

Total price tag - $3,380

I have been using it for nearly a year now, and have not had a single problem