RAID/HBA controller recommendations

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

jcl333

Active Member
May 28, 2011
253
74
28
Hello,

I am trying to decide on a RAID controller / HBA, I am hoping people can offer me some advise. I know no one product can do everything.

Here are some of my thoughts:
* Initially I am probably going to run RAID6 with WD RED drives, but later might play with ZFS. So I was considering an LSI controller that would support RAID6 in IR mode but be able to be flashed to IT mode later if I decided to. Still doing research on which model would be best for this.

* My use case is large capacity / medium performance for home media sharing - data integrity and reliability are more important than raw performance.

* I could simply run multiple cards, this is my fall back plan if this idea is a no-go. Just would like to avoid the power consumption and heat of too many cards in the server.

* Was looking at the Adaptec controllers, they are nice, but the ZFS people are frowning on it because it probably doesn't have an IT mode, and is probably all but untested for use with ZFS.

* Areca is a consideration, but I see them used for ZFS less often.

* Would prefer PCIe3.0 over older standards

* I think 8 ports is minimum, but I might go for 16 or 24 ports to avoid using expanders

* Low power consumption / low heat / and good power management features is a plus

* Price is not a huge consideration, that being said much past $1,000 and I would be skeptical about what the value is. And even then, if I can find something much cheaper that does everything I want to do, even an OEM card flashed to different firmware, why not.

* Will most likely run with ESXi5 and pass-through to guest OS such as Server 2012 or OpenIndiana for ZFS.

* I have been reading some things about ZFS, and it possibly being a no-no to run SATA drives on SAS hardware due to problems with emulation. There are certainly plenty of people doing it without problems. But, a pure SATA controller + SATA port multiplier would be cheap (avoiding all SAS), and have low power and heat. But it would likely not offer much in the RAID6 + enterprise features, but likely I would only go this route if going with ZFS anyways.

I would very much appreciate hearing from people who may be following a similar thought process.

Thanks

-JCL
 

mobilenvidia

Moderator
Sep 25, 2011
1,956
212
63
New Zealand
LSI9270-8i or LSI9271-8i for non ZFS
LSI9207-8i or LSI9217-8i either in IT mode for ZFS

ZFS doesn't work well on a RAID controller, so you can't really have both (without ZFS having to go through extra layers)
 

dealcorn

New Member
Oct 12, 2011
24
0
1
I share you interest in something like RAID6 on 3 TB WD Reds for redundant storage with ok home performance. I am waiting to see what Briarwood look like next quarter. It is a Xeon branded Atom 32 nm Bonnell dual core with hardware support for RAID parity checking and many PCIe lanes. It should be a frugal one trick poney and that trick is RAID parity checking. Imagine performance like a dedicated hardware assisted RAID card with the cheapest SAS adapter in IT mode. If the drivers are sorted out the hardware assist for parity checking should even work with ZFS. It caught my eye.
 
Last edited:

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
I share you interest in something like RAID6 on 3 TB WD Reds for redundant storage with ok home performance. I am waiting to see what Briarwood look like next quarter. It is a Xeon branded Atom 32 nm Bonnell dual core with hardware support for RAID parity checking and many PCIe lanes. It should be a frugal one trick poney and that trick is RAID parity checking. Imagine performance like a dedicated hardware assisted RAID card with the cheapest SAS adapter in IT mode. If the drivers are sorted out the hardware assist for parity checking should even work with ZFS. It caught my eye.
I'm actually quite excited by this also. Will be interesting to see how the market reacts to this. The only negative is that you get stuck at 8GB RAM so not ideal for large drives these days and ZFS.
 

mobilenvidia

Moderator
Sep 25, 2011
1,956
212
63
New Zealand
A CPU can do parity more easily than a ROC, it's just a XOR operation, all CPUs can do this.
Shoving data about between cache, drive and system is where HW controllers excel at, this saves the CPU doing it.
But adds a layer(s) between the drive and the OS which ZFS doesn't like/

8GB and then also drive/parity caching, doesn't leave much room for anything.