RAID controller recommendation HP Z820

[larkra]

Hello!

Since Im a novice at storage hardware I am posting a question here asking for directions.

I am looking for a RAID Controller that supports RAID-5 and have come across this: LSI Megaraid-SAS-9260-8i[/U

I understand this controller has 2 mini SAS connectors, and I will need a breakout cable that can connect to my SATA Drives.
In the HP Z820 machines we have 2 RAID Arrays:

#1
Four 2 TB mechanical disks in RAID5
#2
Four 480 GB SSDs (Kingston) in RAID5

The problem is that currently the raid arrays are setup on two HighPoint RocketRaid controllers, RocketRaid 640 and 640L , those controllers seems to be incompatible with the Z820 machines and causes random BSODs and system hangs. (We have other Z820s without those controllers and they have never crashed.)

How would the LSI Megaraid-SAS-9260-8i handle this? Can I create two new RAID5 Arrays on the same controller (one mechanical disks , one SSD) or will the performance suffer?
The users of the machines is working with images/photos up to 800 mb and geographical data.
They process the images on the SSD array and then copies it over to the mechanical disk array.

If the LSI Megaraid-SAS-9260-8i controller is a bad choice, can anyone suggest an alternative?

best regards

Lars

 

[Rhinox]

I do not say it is a bad choice, but IMHO LSI2208-based controller (i.e. 9266/9270) might be better. It has dual-core cpu and bigger/faster chache (1GB/ddr3 vs 512MB/ddr2). With 2x raid5 you might make use of it...

 

[Jeggs101]

The other option you would have is getting a HP RAID controller. They have some good options and some are relatively inexpensive.

HP812 controller with 1GB of Flash Backed cache $475: HP Smart Array P812 1GB FBWC 6g SAS RAID Controller 487204 B21 587224 001 | eBay

You would also get external ports if you ever wanted to add more disks.

 

[dba]

Since it's an HP workstation, you very well may be able to use the HP P420/1GB FBWC RAID card. It's a very fast current-generation PCIe3 card with a large flash-backed cache. They are surprisingly inexpensive compared to their $700 LSI-branded equivalents - mrkrad once found them for something around $250 from the nerds.net, but they seem to be more like $375 now. At that price they would be the deal of the century for all RAID needs, except that I was unable to get them to work on any non-HP server. Give HP a call to confirm that they work with your workstation and, if they do, grab one and celebrate.

Check out: http://compu-america.com/hp-smart-a...troller.html?gclid=CI2D1PKN_LsCFYw1QgodJn0AwA

 

[Chuckleb]

You can definitely create two volumes on the 9260 and it will run fine. If you throw a battery on it then you can enable the write cache which will give you a slight speed boost, though honestly with 4x480 SSD drives you won't be missing much.

I have a bunch of users who do GIS work as well and they have large data volumes, we generally throw a single SSD and they are pretty content, do you notice much difference with the raid5 of SSDs? We tried many configurations and our users could barely tell after a pair of ssd drives on a raid 0.

Last option is raid 5 of the hard drives and trying cachecade on the LSI card, in which you use the ssd as cache.

Realistically, not sure you saturate the 9260 with 4 SSDs so go for it if you can get it cheap.