RAID-Controller recommendations

I want to build a small server for my business in the near future. It will run owncloud for our Data and Backups and our ERP- and CRM Systems with the necessary Databases for now and maybe some more applications in the future.

I have the hardware pretty much figured out, except for the right Raid-controller. I want to start with 4 drives, two smaller ones in Raid 1 for the database, and two 6TB ones in Raid 1 for the owncloud. I would like to be able to upgrade the owncloud array to a Raid 10 in the future, so the controller should support at least six, better eight drives total.

I also like the idea of having a controller with a battery backup, but I don't know if that's neccessary, especially since the server is hooked up to a UPS-unit anyways.

I came across the HP Smart Array P410/512, that comes with 512MB DDR2 Cache and a BBU for around 350€ here in germany. The only downside is it only  supports SAS/SATA 3Gbps.

Can anybody with experience in this area tell me if that's decent enough or come up with a better solution?

Anyone?

This question gets asked a lot....and I mean a lot. To be perfectly honest it doesn’t sound like you need anything too fancy. Cheap ibm and hp lsi cards can be had off ebay a lot cheaper than 350. Essentially they are oem cards from lsi sold to these companies.You already found one with  the hp card.

 I would keep digging and see what else you can find. There is nothing fancy about battery backup. Just find a card that supports it and find the appropriate battery that goes with it. However if your running the server on a UPS this isn't really necessary. 

 One thing to keep in mind though is to figure out what your going to be running on the card. If your planning on doing ZFS its better to find a card that can be flashed in I.T mode. This basically just allows the card to connect the hard drives with no software in between, letting ZFS do all the work. From the sounds of it though your not getting that fancy.

  This card is a perfect example of what you should be looking for. I own one of these cards and it rocks. It doesn’t have on-board memory, but its never really been a problem with mechanical hard drives. SSD's would be a different story though.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Sealed-LSI-9211-8i-SAS-SATA-8-port-PCI-E-6Gb-RAID-Controller-Card-/121537168350?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c4c2e03de

 

On a side note, if you're going to have a lot of company data on there, don't forget to get a proper backup solution.
RAID is not a backup, it's redundancy. There is still potential for data corruption and a RAID won't protect you from that.

Yes, I'll defenitely keep that in mind. Thanks.

 

Yeah, I thought so. I just want it to be reliable and upgradable.

I saw that the Fujitsu rebrands with the LSI 2208 controller are pretty cheap right now. I think that'd be a good choice. I'll also keep looking on ebay, I still have a couple of weeks time before I need all the hardware since our new office is not ready yet.

Just a note though you'll need to know the chip of the controller because you can't just swap drives from one controller to another if it has a different chip. It might go right but more often than not the new controller won't see it.

That is a downside of hardware controllers. That and just costing a lot more in general to make an array because with hardware controllers comes the added costs of basically needing to buy enterprise drives if you don't want drives to randomly drop out because non enterprise drives miss TLER.

Software raid has its pro's there as it doesn't care whether you use enterprise drives or just for instance WD RED's. Speed isn't really an issue anymore the biggest drawback of software raid is that it isn't as easy as a hardware controller although it has become a lot easier. Solutions like Nexenta, Freenas, ZFSguru make it pretty easy to set up a storage box which performs as well.

Just letting you know there are pros and cons for each way you go.

If you want to know a good card which you can flash in IT mode then it's simple IBM M1015 dirt cheap too. And if the amount of storage is a priority then you can hook up a HP SAS Expander. Have them both running here in a fileserver. Speed is around 550 MB/sec tops, it's just the wall that the M1015 has.

The M1015 comes highly recommended from the FreeNAS community.


One of the key things (Aside from its good price) is that it can handle drives over 2TB in size.

Earlier SAS controllers based on the LSI 1086e chip, and its variants, do not support drives over 2TB. Just something to watch out for!

WD Red Pros and WD SE series have TLER. For Seagate, the equivalent would be ERC in the Seagate Constellation ES drives (which I personally like a lot for their performance).

I think what I'm going to do for the time being is go with a different version of the motherboard I want to use, that has an 8-port LSI 2308 chip onboard. That should do for now. It's the Supermicro H8SML-7f. That'll come in at only 75€ more.

I know you were asking specifically about a raid card. Every time I've shopped, there are always features I missed or needed without moving to FreeNas to meet storage or server requirements. Look at the problem from a different angle. Check Ebay for a fully spec'd out Dell R520. Lots of refurb unit showing up. They are right around $3000,  The Perc H710P embedded is a solid controller for 8 drives. These are the kind of servers that can make ERP's "make sense".