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Okay, first of all I'm not all that au fait with RAID (but have read up on it), so here goes... I have 4 x 1.5TB Seagate SATA II drives, and hoping to enable RAID to cater for mirroring in the event that a drive (or 2) crashes. My 3 questions are:
- What RAID level should I be looking into - RAID 5?
Will onboard RAID (onboard SATA) give me the same performance versus a RAID Controller card?- Lastly (most importantly) what can I do to recover my data and the drive if any of the components contributing to the RAID array fail - like the motherboard or RAID Controller card?
My apologies if the title is a bit misleading as I have asked other questions, but i really didn't know what to call it!
Thank you (in advance)!
EDIT: Sorry, I should also mention that I intend to have keep a backup drive (external HDD) and run incremental backups to it at the end of every day.
EDIT2:: Okay, forget about question #2, as I found a really good article here explaining it.
Thanks for the reply vcsjones! Any particular reason as to why you have never used RAID1+0 onboard? Also, I thought that software RAID referred to onboard, and hardware RAID to controller cards (like Adaptec or LSI)? – Shalan – 2010-11-08T06:53:07.023
3One concern about dedicated RAID controllers is that you can't freely interchange them. If your controller fails, you can't just pick any new RAID controller... IMHO, that's a major weak spot in a hardware-based RAID setup. A company would just buy a couple of spare controllers right from the start to avoid this problem, but that would be too expensive for the average consumer. For consumers, a software-based RAID solution is, well, hardware-independent but at the cost of some performance because the computer itself (CPU) must deal with the RAID stuff. – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun – 2010-11-08T07:07:34.287
I'd updated my answer. In addition I've always used controller cards simply because at work I am able to. – vcsjones – 2010-11-08T07:07:45.990
Addition based on Shalan's comment: Hardware RAID means having either a dedicated controller, or a controller on the motherboard, taking care of the RAID stuff. In both cases, it's a physical thing: a controller chip in your computer. Software RAID means letting the operating system deal with it: you don't have a dedicated controller chip but instead the computer's CPU is doing the work (at the expense of slowing the rest of the operating system a fraction). – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun – 2010-11-08T07:11:42.710
Turned my answer into a wiki. Feel free to add additional information. – vcsjones – 2010-11-08T07:14:30.270
Thanx guys for both of your valuable inputs...much appreciated! I should add that whilst I am going to backup once a day as a precuation, I would also have need for mirroring I guess. What I forgot to mention is that I intend to run a small server for my small business and install VMWare ESXi 4 to run 3 VMs - 1 for Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint; 1 VM for Ubuntu Server (Database and general file serving); and 1 VM for Asterisk IPBX. I unsure on the exact architecture, but this is what I have in mind to do. – Shalan – 2010-11-08T07:22:47.470
If you will be running ESX on it, then you have to use a hardware controller, simply because ESX will "See past" any software solutions. At least that has been my experience. – vcsjones – 2010-11-08T07:30:11.187
@torbenbg - just to clarify...say you have an ASUS motherboard with 6 SATAII connectors and ASUS specify that it is capable of RAID 1/0/1+0/5...would that mean that it has an hardware-based "onboard" controller capable of native RAID support (configured thru the BIOS I suppose), which would therefore be similar to the likes of an Adaptec RAID Card that you would install into a PCI slot? Therefore Software RAID would mean that your OS would "run" your RAID array irrespective of what RAID levels the board supports? Sorry, I seem to be a bit confused :$ – Shalan – 2010-11-08T07:31:14.133
@vcsjones - WOAH! I didn't know that. I was looking thru a whitebox compatibility list for ESXi and noticed that my board (Intel DG45FC - http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=34685) was supported and therefore would not need a RAID card.
– Shalan – 2010-11-08T07:37:23.817Okay, I feel a bit silly, as I just unearthed a problem based on my intended soultion - the board I have has 4 SATA ports built-in, and I have my 4 drives that I intend to ONLY store data on....yet I forgot about a drive for my Operating System/s! DOH! – Shalan – 2010-11-08T07:42:03.903
@Shalan - Just to clarify, that was with my experience using ESX 2.0. Maybe the tech has gotten better since then and that is no longer the case. – vcsjones – 2010-11-08T07:43:22.903
Hey vcsjones, sorry for the delayed response, but looks like you've helped me understand the RAID level options. I'm still ambivalent wrt a dedicated RAID card versus software RAID - I think its more vendor lock in that I'm concerned about, especially if the RAID array needs to be recovered...but thats more a financial decision. I'm going to post a question a little later regarding my proposed virtual architecture, but for now you've answered my question effectively. Thank you for your time and patience! – Shalan – 2010-11-08T11:51:30.283