adaptec asr-71605 on Windows2019 ?

[lzvolensky]

hi guys, anyone running 71605 successfully on Win2019 ??

It's not officially supported (Win2016 only), last Windows driver seems to be summer2017 == long before 2019 was out. Checked internet and found ONE SINGLE direct reference here RAID failure during OCE

I have 4Kn drives (HGST HUS726060AL4210 = 6TB), eight of them, and want to create Raid6. With that much capacity and drives, I sure want double-drive failure resiliency. These HGST drives are mentioned on compatibility list and generally 71605 controller seems to supports 4Kn drives in general as there are many other Seagate/WD 8TB, 10TB models mentioned (4Kn all of them).

I don't insist on hardware Raid, I know the tendency to move to software (ZFS, unraid etc). My main usage is general file-server and home-lab virtual machines (VHDX, Hyper-V running on Windows 2019/Windows 10 over network) ; minor usage is movies storage (not much of them, around 3TB). I'm not primarily looking into ZFS :

- I don't have ECC RAM
- never ran into bit-rod (surprisingly the whole world doesn't use ZFS) or I don't know about it
- I'm pure Windows guy, I know nothing about Linux (yes, I'm running 3 FreeNAS installations)
- I'm not convinced I need FreeNAS/ZFS at home
- want as much capacity as I can have AND performance (single RaidZ2 vdev is not going to cut it, everything else would be too much wasted space or risky)

Backups will be created on separated 5x 3TB array running different OS (yes, FreeNAS), drives (3TB WD RED) hooked to on-board SATA controller (Intel platform).

4Kn drives are usable with LSI2308 chip only (2008/2108 do not seem to support 4Kn drives) and new LSI 93xx generation which is much more expensive than Adaptec mentioned here (plus Adaptec connects 16 drives, reasonably priced = ~100$ LSI only 8). LSI 92xx support is gone from RedHat/CentOS, it's 12Gbps 93xx series only. Don't want to run FreeNAS at home. There's no software Raid6 on Windows2016/2019 so my options are becoming very slim seems like Adaptec 71605, hardware Raid6 and Win2019 is the combination I should choose - but I'm open to suggestions.


Executive summary : I have not too much worries about hardware Raid6 running on Win2019 for the next 4-5 years and I'm locked by the Win2019 platform to some extent due to my knowledge.
It's just... last Adaptec 71605 drivers are Win2016 [!] dated summer2017 [!], BIOS May2018. Someone with Windows2019 real experience, please ?

 

[kapone]

The 2016 drivers (with the last updated BIOS) run just fine in 2019.

The fact that the 7 series cards don't have 2019 drivers is...the typical "planned obsolescence" BS.

 

[ari2asem]

i have 71605 in windows 10. without any issue, using in IT-mode, 4* 6tb hdd (3.5inch), 8* 2tb hdd (2.5 inch).

if you have the card, try installing driver for server 2016. mostly newer windows version accepts older drivers

 

[i386]

Windows 8/10 and server 2012/2016/2019 use the same driver types, the drivers should work on all the operating systems.

(Information like "this drivers was not developed for this os" are usually just checks in the installer. There are tools available that allow to copy the drivers and inf files into a zip file and to use that on another system without the installer, bypassing os checks)

 

[lzvolensky]

Thank you very much for the info ! I don't have any adapter at this moment - this is essentially my pre-purchase due diligence. I know Win2016 drivers are generally working on Win2019 platform, just wanted to hear real-life experience - something in the back of my head is not entirely happy about 2017 drivers with outlook of using them in 2023/2024 as there is no development at all.

I've been thinking about options... What do I know, what I can troubleshoot, how I use systems, what I really need. At this moment I feel KISS principle would be the best what I can do.

Old LSI controllers are cheap but do not like 4Kn disks ; Windows platform itself doesn't like software Raid6 (damn, Microsoft, why ?) ; I don't need 12Gbit or PCI-e 3.0 for HDDs but performance is my biggest worry with single-vdev ZFS (due to capacity optimization, single RaidZ2).

Drawbacks of HW Raid : being HW controller bound & dependent, I will need to buy two controllers to have instant replacement if the main one breaks. For the price of single LSI 93xx-8i controller, I can buy two Adaptecs. Those being 16 disks, I can hook up some additional SSDs later as there will be plenty of free slots (1Gbit -> 10Gbit home network upgrade next). I'm extremely unlikely to need capacity update in 3 years as I will have ~36TB usable space after Raid6 penalty : I use 11TB now out of which 3TB are movies.

93xx-16i models are unnecessarily expensive for my usage.