What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid'

momurda

Say you spend a few hundred bucks on a SuperMicro server mobo with built in RAID on the mobo. Is that fakeraid? Is it cheap hw raid you dont want, or is it good enough. What about LSI MegaRaid cards? These are hundreds dollars each. I just happen to have 1 sitting in my desk drawer doing nothing. I think it was bought as a backup for our XS hosts raid cards.

scottalanmiller

Good hardware RAID:

Good, enterprise vendor like LSI or Adaptec
Cache of at least 512MB
Support for a wide variety of RAID levels
Fast CPU or ASIC
Can be swapped out in case of failure
Has cache battery, NVM memory is such

MattSpeller

SAM Link blast in 3...2.....1.........

Edit: shit, he beat me lol

scottalanmiller

@momurda said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

Say you spend a few hundred bucks on a SuperMicro server mobo with built in RAID on the mobo. Is that fakeraid?

Can't tell. Sure could be. Depends on what it is. the question is if it is hardware or not. FakeRAID isn't hardware RAID at all, all RAID is in the software instead.

BRRABill

@scottalanmiller said

Good hardware RAID:

Good, enterprise vendor like LSI or Adaptec

Cache of at least 512MB

Support for a wide variety of RAID levels

Fast CPU or ASIC

Can be swapped out in case of failure

Under those guidelines, why wouldn't the PERC H310 qualify?

coliver

@BRRABill said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

@scottalanmiller said

Good hardware RAID:

Good, enterprise vendor like LSI or Adaptec

Cache of at least 512MB

Support for a wide variety of RAID levels

Fast CPU or ASIC

Can be swapped out in case of failure

Under those guidelines, why wouldn't the PERC H310 qualify?

It does, it is a LSI card IIRC.

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

@scottalanmiller said

Good hardware RAID:

Good, enterprise vendor like LSI or Adaptec

Cache of at least 512MB

Support for a wide variety of RAID levels

Fast CPU or ASIC

Can be swapped out in case of failure

Under those guidelines, why wouldn't the PERC H310 qualify?

No. It meets qualification #1 but has no cache and an anaemic CPU that can barely keep up.

https://mangolassi.it/topic/6375/examining-the-dell-perc-h310-controller

scottalanmiller

@coliver said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

@BRRABill said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

@scottalanmiller said

Good hardware RAID:

Good, enterprise vendor like LSI or Adaptec

Cache of at least 512MB

Support for a wide variety of RAID levels

Fast CPU or ASIC

Can be swapped out in case of failure

Under those guidelines, why wouldn't the PERC H310 qualify?

It does, it is a LSI card IIRC.

It is LSI, it's not a serious hardware RAID card. It's only useful for learning, not production.

coliver

@scottalanmiller said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

@BRRABill said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

@scottalanmiller said

Good hardware RAID:

Good, enterprise vendor like LSI or Adaptec

Cache of at least 512MB

Support for a wide variety of RAID levels

Fast CPU or ASIC

Can be swapped out in case of failure

Under those guidelines, why wouldn't the PERC H310 qualify?

No. It meets qualification #1 but has no cache and an anaemic CPU that can barely keep up.

https://mangolassi.it/topic/6375/examining-the-dell-perc-h310-controller

Oh that's interesting I always thought it was a full on RAID card. Looks like it is just a SAS expander from that thread.

scottalanmiller

@coliver said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

@scottalanmiller said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

@BRRABill said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

@scottalanmiller said

Good hardware RAID:

Good, enterprise vendor like LSI or Adaptec

Cache of at least 512MB

Support for a wide variety of RAID levels

Fast CPU or ASIC

Can be swapped out in case of failure

Under those guidelines, why wouldn't the PERC H310 qualify?

No. It meets qualification #1 but has no cache and an anaemic CPU that can barely keep up.

https://mangolassi.it/topic/6375/examining-the-dell-perc-h310-controller

Oh that's interesting I always thought it was a full on RAID card. Looks like it is just a SAS expander from that thread.

It's basically a high end SAS card with some really basic RAID functions tacked on.

momurda

The card i have is LSI Sas 9260-4i
http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/raid-controllers/megaraid-sas-9260-4i#specifications

Seems to check Scott's checkboxes. Although it is getting a bit old spec wise it seems, it has not been used to my knowledge.

This supermicro board would be something i might want for home use.
https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10SRL-F.cfm
I dont really know enough about the Intel C612 chipset it has to know if it is good or not.

scottalanmiller

@momurda said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

The card i have is LSI Sas 9260-4i
http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/raid-controllers/megaraid-sas-9260-4i#specifications

Seems to check Scott's checkboxes. Although it is getting a bit old spec wise it seems, it has not been used to my knowledge.

Yup, very entry level.

coliver

@momurda said in What is considered 'cheap hw raid' vs 'good hw raid':

The card i have is LSI Sas 9260-4i
http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/raid-controllers/megaraid-sas-9260-4i#specifications

Seems to check Scott's checkboxes. Although it is getting a bit old spec wise it seems, it has not been used to my knowledge.

This supermicro board would be something i might want for home use.
https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10SRL-F.cfm
I dont really know enough about the Intel C612 chipset it has to know if it is good or not.

I've used that card before. It was bought for a white-box server build a very long time ago. Worked really well for what we were doing.

scottalanmiller

@momurda what did you end up using? And how did it end up performing?

Emad R

@momurda

From my experience, you are correct about the fake raid terminology.

Fake RAID = is the raid you do on the chip-set level without any dedicated card doing the works, but it fools the operating system that gets installed on-top of it, and does not require any special config from the OS side. I think you can do fake raid for RAID 1 for important workstations like the HR computers for example.

Software raid = is like mdadm in Linux or Windows 10 storage spaces, it relies on the OS side for everything.

Read RAID or Hardware RAID is getting a good RAID card.