New Home FileServer/Gameserver buildup; Storage subsystem comments requested...

[MultimediaMan]

I'm considering the following:

Promise SX4000 4 Channel Hardware IDE RAID Controller w/
2x WD400JB Drives in RAID0 for the boot array, and I already have a pair of WD800JB Drives in RAID1 for online storage that I wish to move over to the Promise Controller.

Does anybody have experience with Mixed Arrays on the Promise SX4000?

Would this work? Would this be a good idea?

[UtwigMU]

Why do you need RAID0 for boot array?

I mean you boot fileserver only few times per year.

WRT to mixed arrays, I have no idea about that controller, but generally consumer controllers don't offer this.

Multiple RAID arrays with multiple controllers are possible (I've seen posts from people in Other Hardware on Ars forums who did it).

Consider 3ware if you want to move to RAID5 in the future.

I recommend: If you insist on 2 arrays, get dinky promise 2 or 4 channel card for RAID0 and have RAID 1 on other controller.

Better:
- WD Raptor on SATA (if you have it onboard or controller) as boot drive, otherwise SCSI or fast IDE drive such as WD800JB.

Now regarding RAID1 array:
Since you're considering RAID1 it's likely data you don't intend to loose. Therefore RAID1, 10 or 5 are your best bets.

Depends how much storage you need.

For small redundant array RAID1 is most cost effective. If you intend to have 4 drives, consider RAID5.

Also cheapo Promise and Highpoint controllers do most of their things in drivers and some people report not so great reliability.

For basic RAID1 that should be enough. Latter on if you need more space, you could move to RAID 5 or just get 2 bigger drives (depends on the price).

http://3ware.com/products/parallel_ata.asp

Check this out.


If you wan't to go gradual and it's not mission crytical, get Promise and 2 drives and expand from RAID1 to RAID10 when out of space.

If it's more mission crytical, get 3Ware Escalade 7506-4LP (retails for about as much as Parhelia here) and 4 drives and go RAID5 right away.

RAID5 array costs more overall and involves immediate big investment, but it's slightly cheaper per GB than RAID10. Decent RAID5 controller adds to the cost.

[Kurt]

Re: New Home FileServer/Gameserver buildup; Storage subsystem comments requested...

Originally posted by MultimediaMan
I'm considering the following:

Promise SX4000 4 Channel Hardware IDE RAID Controller w/
2x WD400JB Drives in RAID0 for the boot array, and I already have a pair of WD800JB Drives in RAID1 for online storage that I wish to move over to the Promise Controller.

Does anybody have experience with Mixed Arrays on the Promise SX4000?

Would this work? Would this be a good idea?

Two things:

1/ You need 64bit PCI if you want to see real improvement over a single fast drive (90MB/sec of the 32bit PCI is not enough anymore -unless you use Intel ICH5R which is not on the PCI bus but has lower performance than Promise)
2/ WD digital suck in RAID 0/1 mode. Their firmware is optimized for single unit operation.

[MultimediaMan]

3Ware contrrollers are very expensive compared to Promise controllers, but it just so happens that I have quite a few 64Bit/33MHz slots on this motherboard (4 to be exact), but one of them will be populated by an Adaptec 62044 4 Port 10/100 NIC.

If I can find an Escalade 7500 4 port or 8500 4 Port, I'd be all over one of those.

[Sasq]

Which OS are you considering?

I really wanted the SX4000 but my budget didn't allow it.

my development server/fileserver. is running on Linux, and I'm using software raid to great benifit. it chews at max about 10% of my cpu (xp1800+) I couldn't tell you the actual transfer speed. however rebuild speed is > 30MB/s which far outstrips my poor little realtek nic's ability to transfer data anyway.

(while it is software raid, and comes with the inherant slowdown associated with that - the plus is, if i loose a controler I don't need to replace it with the same hardware to get the raid back up)

Dan

[MultimediaMan]

Win2003Server (MSDN)

[Sasq]

ahh well in that case, you've got me, as I don't trust M$'s software raid as far as I could spit Billy Boy.

[MultimediaMan]

Neither do I...but Software RAID1 is pretty safe anyway.