Which Raid 6 Card?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
5

5teve

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
106
35
28
49
Perth, Australia
Hi Guys

I have been running an old perc5i with an 8 disk raid 5 array (of 500gb hitachi drives) for the last 6 years performance as a workstation / small business file server has been adequate (atto bench32 shows results of

Anyhow.. the system (amd x6, desktop mboard etc) has ran for 6 years 24/7 and gets used for about 10 - 12 hours a day - I even treat it to a reboot occasionally - It was originally running vista and is now on windows 7 64bit - basically its getting long in the tooth and before any major failure happens (its all backed up to a freesnas box but I cant afford the downtime) a new system will be built

So... new build is likely to be as follows (if I can find the stock in Aus)

8x 2tb Hitachi Ultrastars 7k3000 (on clearout)
Asrock c226ws m'board
intel xeon e3-1241v3
16gb ecc 1600 ram
2x 240gb SSD in raid 1 for boot (or raid 0 if its safe for SSD's?)
mid range AMD card (maybe an R7 260x)
Corsair c400 or similar

Now the tricky bit and where i need your expertise.. I need a raid controller that will do raid 6, I am looking at something like an lsi 9261, but cannot establish if its raid 6 out of the box or needs keys.

Can you advise a reasonable cost 8 port card OEM or original that is supplied with BBU or supercap / flash that will do raid 6 out of the box or is flashable to do raid 6 OR a legal key can be purchase cheaply...

Thanks

Steve
 
R

Rhinox

Member
May 27, 2013
144
26
18
I can recommend IBM M5016 (aka LSI-9266): 2x SFF8087 (8x sata/sas), comes with raid5/6 support (no extra key needed), and super-capacitor is a standart part of package. I got new one for ~250€ year ago and have been using it since then in my ESXi-box without any problem. I'm flashing it with original LSI firmware, and using LSI-tools for management.

There are only a few things someone might complain about: it comes without low-profile bracket, and without SFF8087<->sas/sata cables. And it has vertical conectors, so I had to bend cables to right angle to fit it in my 2U-case (I do not use riser-card).
 
5

5teve

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
106
35
28
49
Perth, Australia
Hi Rhinox

Thank you for your reply. Thats exactly what I was looking for. There are such an overwhelming amount of choices, and some sem to have raid 6, others its an option..

Space is not going to be an issue inside something like a corsair c400 case or similar, so connector positions and half height brackets are not a problem. The main issue seems to be to find them in Australia, as I don't think any are listed on Ebay. I may have a look through the for sale ads here too..

I assume that windows 7/8 drivers are available? (its primarily a workstation / file server combined)

Thanks again

Steve
 
5

5teve

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
106
35
28
49
Perth, Australia
Thanks guys

The m5016 seems to be hard to find on this side of the water, what are your thoughts on the 5015 or the perc 700 series?

Steve
 
R

Rhinox

Member
May 27, 2013
144
26
18
M5015 does not support raid6 out of the box. You need "advanced feature key". And one more thing: I remember it has very long boot-up time (if not cross-flashed to LSI). Otherwise it is quite good controller, just a little older than M5016.

To summarise differencies, M5015 uses battery (M5016: capacitor), has single-core cpu (M5016: dual-core), 512MB/ddr2/800 cache (M5016: 1GB/DDR3/1333).
 
  • Like
Reactions: 5teve
5

5teve

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
106
35
28
49
Perth, Australia
Well... I seem completely unable to track down a 5016 for some reason.. so are there any alternates? (HP? Dell Perc 700 etc) that would give reasonable cost / performance and include BBU / cache and Raid 6.. oh and work with a c226 chipset board (asrock)

Thanks

Steve
 
5

5teve

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
106
35
28
49
Perth, Australia
Thanks Justin... Will look into the Perc's as I already run a Perc5i cross flashed to LSI something...

Also looking the the HP 'P' cards.. as they seem plentiful, but i know they can be hit or miss with compatibility.

Steve
 
R

Rhinox

Member
May 27, 2013
144
26
18
5

5teve

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
106
35
28
49
Perth, Australia
Maybe its just for the box :)

Does seem incredibly cheap.. i'll check them out.. the use of the word 'genuine' always worries me tho!

Steve
 
R

Rhinox

Member
May 27, 2013
144
26
18
I took risks. Either I just purchased the most expensive carton-box in the world, or the cheapest M5016 I have ever seen. I hope PayPal helps me to get my money back if all I'll find inside is low-profile bracket! In the worst case I'm gonna loose ~60 bucks. Well, we'll find later. I'll let you know when it arrives...
 
M

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
52
48
Probably won't be surprised if you get a battery cable or extender card !
 
james23

james23

Active Member
Nov 18, 2014
441
122
43
52
Hey, as a side note, you may want to look into potential USB 3 / asrock / windows 7 (or win8) driver issues. I just recently bought the asrock C216 WS (different socket and chipset than your c226) but many of the reviews had users complaining about major issues with using the USB 3 ports *on my board* (c216, not c226 like you are looking at) due to driver issues that even 1 year later asrock has not addressed. I can say that i really dont have any USB 3 devices at this time, but have noticed some weird issues on my setup with the asrock provided usb3 drivers and using the specific usb3 ports.

Aside from this issue, ive been happy with my purchase, normally i ONLY get supermicro motherboards, but in this case i was in a rush and there were only 2 x options that fit my PCIe slot needs, the c216 and the SM X9SAE-V (i needed LGA 1155, and i needed 2x well spaced pcie3 slots for my 2x gpus and an additional x8 pcie for my adaptec 5805 card).
 
R

Rhinox

Member
May 27, 2013
144
26
18
mrkrad said:
Probably won't be surprised if you get a battery cable or extender card !
Click to expand...
Well, trust me or not, but what I received for my ~60€ was really brand new, still sealed, IBM M5016 raid-controller!

I checked it in my workstation, and it really works. Cache-board is there, but battery/supercap is missing. I expected that, because battery-kit and flash-power module are listed as separate replaceable components on IBM-web. Anyway still very good deal for that price!
;-)
 
T_Minus

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
7,641
2,058
113
Rhinox said:
Well, trust me or not, but what I received for my ~60€ was really brand new, still sealed, IBM M5016 raid-controller!

I checked it in my workstation, and it really works. Cache-board is there, but battery/supercap is missing. I expected that, because battery-kit and flash-power module are listed as separate replaceable components on IBM-web. Anyway still very good deal for that price!
;-)
Click to expand...
Wow, that's awesome. That is a GREAT price.
It's always nice to get surprised on eBay transactions sometimes :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom