I need to set up a storage server for my personal use. The current
solution on my little local network is a haphazard collection of old
machines with disks in them, and backups are so-so.
I could just set up a "normal" FreeBSD server, with single disks, and
setup another one for the backup. However, I would like to try something
new for me; raid. Specifically, I'm looking to set up a server with raid
5 for storage.
For the backup server, I haven't decided yet, but I am thinking about a
normal server with external (firwire or usb 2.0) disks.
I was thinking about gvinum for the storage server, but given the
current documentation and the discussions about it now, I don't want to
risk it. So, I'm looking at hardware raid 5 controllers. From this list,
it seems that areca and 3ware are the best ones, but they are very
expensive here. I also know that anything with a SIL 3112 on it are to
be avoided. So here is the list over controllers I can get for a
reasonable price: Highpoint RocketRAID 1640 (4 ports)
Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 (4 ports)
Promise FastTrak S150 SX4-M (4 ports)
Highpoint RocketRAID 1810A (4 ports)
Highpoint RocketRAID 1820A (8 ports)
Intel RAID Controller SRCS16 (6 ports)
Which one should I get?
Are there some that are not supported or should be avoided for other
reasons?
Other questions:
1) can I install several 4-port RAID controllers in one machine? I can
get two RocketRAID 1640's for the price of one RocketRAID 1820A.
2) Rebuilding a damaged array - are some of these controllers "better"
than others? (Easier to handle, rebuilds in shorter time, ?)
3) disks - I understand the importance of using disks from different
production runs. Some people have suggested to use disks of different
brands as well, but there were no conclusions. Should I stick to the
same brand and model, or can I use disks of different brands as long
as they are of the same size?
4) PSU considerations. How big a PSU do I need if I want to run two
controllers and eight disks in one machine? are there any rules of thumb
for sizing this?
Other suggestions are welcome.
--
Regards,
Torfinn Ingolfsen,
Norway
Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:> I was thinking about gvinum for the storage server, but given the > current documentation and the discussions about it now, I don't want to > risk it. So, I'm looking at hardware raid 5 controllers. From this list,You could use graid3(8) - it has data+parity components like raid5. I've been using it for more than a year now and didn't have problems with it. Didn't have to try recovery from a dead disk also, but should work ok. It's like "regular" RAID3 but uses sector-sized data chunks.
On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 at 12:18:57AM +0100, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:> I was thinking about gvinum for the storage server, but given the > current documentation and the discussions about it now, I don't want to > risk it.IMHO it's pretty stable in 6.0. I've been running gvinum RAID-5 for a while now; other than one strange panic (something to do with out of memory situations, see kern/89660) I haven't had a hitch yet. That said, I haven't needed to replace a disk yet either (I've demoed this but it was not yet needed in production use). In short, don't write gvinum off just yet. Documentation is around the corner (as a result of a SoC project). --Stijn -- "Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred." -- The Mahabharata. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 187 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20051208/eb01bd16/attachment.bin
Sorry for the late reply ... Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen@broadpark.no> wrote: > Highpoint RocketRAID 1640 (4 ports) > Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 (4 ports) > Promise FastTrak S150 SX4-M (4 ports) > Highpoint RocketRAID 1810A (4 ports) > Highpoint RocketRAID 1820A (8 ports) > Intel RAID Controller SRCS16 (6 ports) > [...] > 1) can I install several 4-port RAID controllers in one machine? Yes. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do that. > I can get two RocketRAID 1640's for the price of one RocketRAID 1820A. Note that the HPT 18x0A have an onboard processor which does the XOR (parity) calculations for RAID-5. For the non-A versions, the host CPU has to do those calculations (in the driver), which can be quite a noticable burden. > 3) disks - I understand the importance of using disks from different > production runs. Some people have suggested to use disks of different > brands as well, but there were no conclusions. Should I stick to the > same brand and model, or can I use disks of different brands as long > as they are of the same size? Well, both strategies have advantages and disadvantages. But given the fact that the "big" commercial appliance companies (such as NetApp) ship their filers with disks of the same brand, I guess it's not terrible mistake to do so. > 4) PSU considerations. How big a PSU do I need if I want to run two > controllers and eight disks in one machine? are there any rules of thumb > for sizing this? There are usually three numbers of power-usage provided for hard disks: power usage when idle, max power usage when busy during normal operation, and max poer usage during spin-up. The latter is the largest number, of course. If your disks all spin up at the same time, then you PSU have to be able to provide enough power for the sum of all of your disks (plus the rest of the system), which can be quite a lot. Some controllers have a setting to enable staged starting of the drives, i.e. one after the other. This can reduce the maximum PSU requirement considerably if you have a lot of disks. Best regards Oliver PS: I assume you already know this, but I'd like to note this for all readers: RAID (of any kind) does not replace reliable backups. Always make proper backups, independent of your RAID (if any). -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way. (On the statement print "42 monkeys" + "1 snake":) By the way, both perl and Python get this wrong. Perl gives 43 and Python gives "42 monkeys1 snake", when the answer is clearly "41 monkeys and 1 fat snake". -- Jim Fulton
Joseph Kerian wrote:> Hmm... I have to ask if you (or anyone else) has actually done this. > I attempted to run two Highpoint cards in the same machine about a > year ago, and the Highpoint driver became extremely confused. They > were nowhere near the same card (one was IDE, the other was a 1640), > but the driver seemed to be having difficulty seperating the drives.I'm running two RocketRAID 454 cards (4 channel ATA = 8 disks each) in one of my servers. There is however explicit support for doing this in the BIOS/firmware on these cards.> Only one of the setup screens would appear on boot. I tried different > combinations of PCI slot locations and specific instructions to the > driver to no avail. I ended up using g/vinum for the IDE drives. > I don't exactly remember the other card's model, but the 454 > looks likely.The disappearance of the BIOS/firmware config for your card(s) is not a FreeBSD problem unfortunately. It has to do with how resources are allocated by the motherboard's BIOS. I have a Tyan Tiger 2466M mobo myself (dual Athlon MP) that I have populated with a SCSI card, a dual port Gbit NIC and two RocketRAID 454 cards. To get it to boot I had to use a jumper to forcefully disable the onboard 100Mbit NIC. And I still cannot boot off of a floppy without first disconnecting at least one of the cards. You could try to update the BIOS on your motherboard. Some motherboards also allows you to disable BIOS/firmware loading for certain PCI slots. This could help free up some resources for cards that you don't boot from. /Daniel Eriksson