Recommended RAID Controllers

Issues related to hardware problems
alpha754293
Posts: 69
Joined: 2019/07/29 16:15:14

Re: Recommended RAID Controllers

Post by alpha754293 » 2019/09/14 04:32:15

I've used HighPoint controllers in a pinch before. Works ok for Windows. Don't be expecting to break any records or anything like that, but it "functions" (sort of) as a RAID controller. In a pinch.

I used to use Adaptec RAID controllers, but I haven't followed them nearly as much now.

My latest RAID controller that I literally just picked up today is a Broadcom/Avago/LSI MegaRAID 9341-8i 12 Gbps SAS HW RAID HBA.

They're definitely a lot cheaper than they used to be. I don't have a battery backup for it, or more cache/(SO-)DIMM(s) for it, but it works.

I'm using it in CentOS 7.6.1810.

With four Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps SSDs, I can actually max out the SATA 6 Gbps connection to each drive with buffered sequential writes. (full 3.0 GB/s for the entire RAID0 array. I'm using RAID0 because it's for my scratch data server, data that has a very "spiky" (short bursts of a lot of data) data write pattern, and losing the data means that I will have to restart the run from scratch anyways, so redundancy isn't an issue for me at all.)

Unbuffered sequential writes, I max out at about 462.35375 MB/s which the rated spec according to the manufacturer is upto 520 MB/s or something like that. So very close to that.

For a SAS 16 Gbps HW RAID controller, that's not bad at all.

And I second what TrevorH said - I MUCH prefer HW RAID over SW RAID.

I've been burned pretty badly before with SW RAID, so...anything that's critical to me, I now use strictly HW RAID.

User avatar
Hix
Posts: 23
Joined: 2019/09/10 14:09:25
Location: Prague, CZ

Re: Recommended RAID Controllers

Post by Hix » 2019/09/23 11:34:47

kbocek wrote:
2019/09/02 18:34:19
Because hardware RAID offer so many features: a management interface *outside* of the OS, hot swap and automatic rebuild, automatic integrity checking, performance since these functions are done by the controller.
I can hardly imagine switching from a ZFS (=software) RAID to HW RAID. I just got used to all those snapshots, sync over SSH etc.
...after 20 years on BSD, we're switching to RHEL/CentOS...

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