December 19, 2001 at 6:08 am
Hi,
I'd quite like to set up a RAID 1+5 system at home for proof of concept studies. Obviously I don't want to spend more than I have to - could someone tell me the cheapest way to go about this (hardware, cards etc), and preferably in a way that allows me to continue using my normal hard disk. Thanks.
Paul Ibison
Paul Ibison
Paul.Ibison@replicationanswers.com
December 19, 2001 at 10:34 am
What's RAID 1 + 5?
Some options,
Software - Nt/2K support software raid, but will be slow.
Hardware - there are some cheap Adaptec cards. If yuo search Ebay, you might get really cheap. also check out uBid.com.
RAID 5 - 3 drive minimum, so IDE is tough to do here.
RAID 1 - 2 drives, IDE is possible. There are also some IDE raid controllers (searhc IDE RAID on google).
Steve Jones
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January 3, 2002 at 4:03 am
Hello,
I won't give any financial preference, but there are some points to considere:
Soft Raid is by far slower than Hard Raid, and it might corrupt your datas in case of OS crash .
If you choose RAID solution within the main dealers ones( they're also the more expensive ones), I recommend you not to choose DELL solution. Their RAID management tool is very poor, and the RAID is not really effective. I know HP and Compaq ones, and never suffered any data loss (it happend with DELL).
Finally, if your RAID configuration is for a Database, you should carefully select your RAID type:
RAID 5 is in average faster for writes than other raids, BUT it is slower for little writes. Since logs are writen by small IOs, avoid placing log files on RAID 5 partitions.
If you want to use RAID 5+1 to balance the read load, it might be expensive and not optimal.
Prefere RAID 1 only (reads are by far faster) and place your LOGS,DATAS,INDEXES and TEMPDB files on different physical disks whenever possible (TEMPDB file may not be mirrored)
Hope it might help...
Benjamin
January 3, 2002 at 6:30 am
If you want to setup a cheap home raid go with a promise SuperTrak100 controller. It is one of the very few IDE controllers to support raid 5. Next find the cheapest drives you can. If this is just proof of consept then size should not be a factor. To answer bvesan about scsi raid solutions in the server space I can tell you this. I would go with Compaq out of any other solution on the market. What bvesan doesn't realize is that some of HP's raid solutions and Dells solutions are EXACTLY the same. HP uses AMD raid controllers on most of thier product line almost all of the 2 and 4 channel controllers are AMD. Dell also uses the new AMD controllers. Dell also uses adaptec's solution. With the roll out of the dell poweredge x4xx servers raid controllers were built onto the board for quality purposes. I won't argue the point but they are there. Second, the adaptec controllers work on the principle of contaners vs. logical disk. It looks good on paper but is very hard to manage and keep clean. A problem both HP and Dell have are noisy scsi backplanes. Once apon a time, all scsi drives had lots of noise reduction on them. About 3 years ago most drive manufactures pulled it off the drive and left it up to the controller or backplane manufacturer to add it. Well, HP and Dell did a poor job implamenting it. Compaq suffered the same problems but since they build their backuplanes and controllers it didn't take long for them to fix this issue. As drives get faster and larger noise becomes more of an issue. Also, you may want to search the forums for the old what raid is best threads we have already hashed out time and again. You may also want to check out http://www.storagereview.com/ It is a general HDD and Controller review site some interesting reading there.
Good luck!
Wes
January 3, 2002 at 11:07 am
Wes, thanks for the info.
I've used DELL Compaq, Adaptec, Mylar. No issues with any but some are easier than others to setup and work with. I have had SCSI backplace issues with DELL. No data loss, but downtime to resolve and replace parts. One server needed 2 backplane replacements.
COMPAQ - no issues, but $$.
Adaptec - Only on low end solutions and it worked fine.
Mylar - Problems with NT 4 booting from it, but nothing after that.
Steve Jones
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January 14, 2002 at 9:35 am
I have used the Promise SuperTrack series with IBM 60 Gig Hard Drives in two production machines and can only say that they work great. Cost effective, true Raid 5, excellent performance with controller based ram cache.
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