Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720
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Hey guys,
I figured I'd post my plan here since I usually get good input that improves my decision making with these sorts of projects.
I have a spare Dell R720 with 8 x 2.5 drive bays. I need about 20TB of storage space (a little less is fine) and I'd like to use enterprise SSD drives for this. I plan to get 6 x 4TB drives in a RAID5 for about 20TB - or some other configuration that yields the same amount of space.
The first place I looked was xbyte.com and then newegg. I'm not 100% sure what drives to use or if it really matters so long as they are "Enterprise SSD" drives, right?
In the past, I usually go through Dell or xbyte to purchase the proper supported hardware for servers (CPUs, RAM, Cards, etc).
Drives I'm looking at now: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100011695 600415791 601114487 601117981 601325569
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In terms of hardware vendors Xbyte is great and I would absolutely look at them for your chassis and or storage.
If you can't afford the enterprise storage you could look at the business class Samsung SSDs which'll likely come in under the dell branded drives etc.
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@DustinB3403 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
In terms of hardware vendors Xbyte is great and I would absolutely look at them for your chassis and or storage.
If you can't afford the enterprise storage you could look at the business class Samsung SSDs which'll likely come in under the dell branded drives etc.
Yeah I always look at xbyte if I can, I just don't know 100% if it really matters what drive I buy for what server - and what I mean by that is on xbyte if I select my server model (R720) for hard drives, there seems to be a limited selection and not very many high capacity SSDs. However, if I just search xbyte for "4TB or 3.4TB SSD", I come up with a lot of results.
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@dave247 xByte is a Dell certified reseller/refurbisher etc, so they'll only list equipment which is certified by Dell.
You can add (more often than not) any drive you want to a Dell server, but you might lose things like Indicator light functionality (among other possibilities).
But usually most drives work just fine.
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@DustinB3403 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@dave247 xByte is a Dell certified reseller/refurbisher etc, so they'll only list equipment which is certified by Dell.
You can add (more often than not) any drive you want to a Dell server, but you might lose things like Indicator light functionality (among other possibilities).
But usually most drives work just fine.
Yeah I have learned that there is Dell firmware loaded onto Dell brand drives so that's probably why only certain drives are listed as "supported" at least on Dell's website - but as you said, likely any drive will work fine. I may just not know it is dying in the iDRAC until its actually dead.
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The Samsung DCT drives appear to be listed as compatible and would be what I would look at using if at all possible. They may be a bit more money compared to the consumer drives (EVOs) but are worth it (from a functionality standpoint).
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Have a look at Samsung PM883. It's their latest datacenter SATA drives and they are relatively low cost.
https://www.newegg.com/p/1Z4-000R-001K8?Description=samsung pm883
Still, it's a lot of money to put into flash storage on such an old server...
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@BRRABill bought some non Dell Drives from Xbyte a few years ago - and they completely failed on him... Luckily that happened before he put them in production.
While some are saying you can slap nearly any drives you want in that server - you just might not be able to do that.
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@Dashrender said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@BRRABill bought some non Dell Drives from Xbyte a few years ago - and they completely failed on him... Luckily that happened before he put them in production.
While some are saying you can slap nearly any drives you want in that server - you just might not be able to do that.
Define "completely failed on him" were these cheap off-brand disks that no one has ever heard of or where they something like a Samsung EVO (consumer line) that just ended up dying or having all kinds of array issues?
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@DustinB3403 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@Dashrender said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@BRRABill bought some non Dell Drives from Xbyte a few years ago - and they completely failed on him... Luckily that happened before he put them in production.
While some are saying you can slap nearly any drives you want in that server - you just might not be able to do that.
Define "completely failed on him" were these cheap off-brand disks that no one has ever heard of or where they something like a Samsung EVO (consumer line) that just ended up dying or having all kinds of array issues?
@BRRABill needs to chime in - They definitely weren't cheap knockoff drives.. they were certified by xbyte... xbyte ended up biting the bullet and traded out whatever brand the drives were for genuine Dell drives because they couldn't solve the problem.
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@Dashrender said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@DustinB3403 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@Dashrender said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@BRRABill bought some non Dell Drives from Xbyte a few years ago - and they completely failed on him... Luckily that happened before he put them in production.
While some are saying you can slap nearly any drives you want in that server - you just might not be able to do that.
Define "completely failed on him" were these cheap off-brand disks that no one has ever heard of or where they something like a Samsung EVO (consumer line) that just ended up dying or having all kinds of array issues?
@BRRABill needs to chime in - They definitely weren't cheap knockoff drives.. they were certified by xbyte... xbyte ended up biting the bullet and traded out whatever brand the drives were for genuine Dell drives because they couldn't solve the problem.
Gotcha, at least xByte owned up and fixed the issue.
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@dave247 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@DustinB3403 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
In terms of hardware vendors Xbyte is great and I would absolutely look at them for your chassis and or storage.
If you can't afford the enterprise storage you could look at the business class Samsung SSDs which'll likely come in under the dell branded drives etc.
Yeah I always look at xbyte if I can, I just don't know 100% if it really matters what drive I buy for what server - and what I mean by that is on xbyte if I select my server model (R720) for hard drives, there seems to be a limited selection and not very many high capacity SSDs. However, if I just search xbyte for "4TB or 3.4TB SSD", I come up with a lot of results.
You may want to shoot an email or call your Xbyte contact. I noticed that you can get different drives when ordering a R720 server vs their "Parts and Accessories" section.
If you only need 5000-15000 IOP's per drive and write less than 3.8 TB per day, then the 3.84TB RI 12GB SAS PM1633a should be more than enough for 5+ years.
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@dave247 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
if it really matters so long as they are "Enterprise SSD" drives, right?
Even many non-enterprise drives are okay, too.
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I might end up just going with 6TB SAS spindle drives in a RAID10 to save on cost - provided the RAID controller can handle 8 drives in R10..
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@dave247 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
I might end up just going with 6TB SAS spindle drives in a RAID10 to save on cost - provided the RAID controller can handle 8 drives in R10..
If it can't then it certainly won't be able to handle an SSD OBR5. . .
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@dave247 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
I might end up just going with 6TB SAS spindle drives in a RAID10 to save on cost - provided the RAID controller can handle 8 drives in R10..
R10 has essentially no overhead. R5 has quite a bit, and R6 more than double R5. But R10's power comes from its simplicity.
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@dave247 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@DustinB3403 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@dave247 xByte is a Dell certified reseller/refurbisher etc, so they'll only list equipment which is certified by Dell.
You can add (more often than not) any drive you want to a Dell server, but you might lose things like Indicator light functionality (among other possibilities).
But usually most drives work just fine.
Yeah I have learned that there is Dell firmware loaded onto Dell brand drives so that's probably why only certain drives are listed as "supported" at least on Dell's website - but as you said, likely any drive will work fine. I may just not know it is dying in the iDRAC until its actually dead.
Dell only pays to test certain drives. For Dell to support them, requires that they also test them. There is no incentive for Dell to pay to test competitor's drives.
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Yeah, that is basically what happened.
They were business class drives from xByte.
I think Kingston?
Anyway ... every few hours, days the server would either freeze or reboot. Turns out it was the drives. xByte swapped them for the DELLs and they have been fine every since.
Since we have a limited number of servers, I'd probably only buy DELLs moving forward. But if there were a ton, I'd consider something else I guess.
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@dave247 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
Hey guys,
I figured I'd post my plan here since I usually get good input that improves my decision making with these sorts of projects.
I have a spare Dell R720 with 8 x 2.5 drive bays. I need about 20TB of storage space (a little less is fine) and I'd like to use enterprise SSD drives for this. I plan to get 6 x 4TB drives in a RAID5 for about 20TB - or some other configuration that yields the same amount of space.
The first place I looked was xbyte.com and then newegg. I'm not 100% sure what drives to use or if it really matters so long as they are "Enterprise SSD" drives, right?
In the past, I usually go through Dell or xbyte to purchase the proper supported hardware for servers (CPUs, RAM, Cards, etc).
Drives I'm looking at now: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100011695 600415791 601114487 601117981 601325569
What's the purpose?
Micron 5210 ION are the least expensive options out there. Performance is okay but nothing can touch the $/TB.
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@PhlipElder said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
@dave247 said in Looking to create a 20TB RAID5 volume with SSD drives in an R720:
Hey guys,
I figured I'd post my plan here since I usually get good input that improves my decision making with these sorts of projects.
I have a spare Dell R720 with 8 x 2.5 drive bays. I need about 20TB of storage space (a little less is fine) and I'd like to use enterprise SSD drives for this. I plan to get 6 x 4TB drives in a RAID5 for about 20TB - or some other configuration that yields the same amount of space.
The first place I looked was xbyte.com and then newegg. I'm not 100% sure what drives to use or if it really matters so long as they are "Enterprise SSD" drives, right?
In the past, I usually go through Dell or xbyte to purchase the proper supported hardware for servers (CPUs, RAM, Cards, etc).
Drives I'm looking at now: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100011695 600415791 601114487 601117981 601325569
What's the purpose?
Micron 5210 ION are the least expensive options out there. Performance is okay but nothing can touch the $/TB.
Array monitoring and status from the controller.
I get that price per gb is important, but functionality needs to be considered too.
