will this raid controller work for my needs?

[nkrader]

will this raid controller work for my needs? (300$ budget)

So I'm looking at getting Adaptec asr-51645 for my file server. (nas box)

I will be running wd re4 so SATA 3.0 will be fine
Have room for 16 drives
Starting with 5x 2tb drives in raid 6

Should be a good enough card yes?

seems to support the max speed of the drives I will be using, has 1.2ghz dualcore raidonchip,
and I will be getting the bbu

 

[Jeggs101]

The Adaptec 5 series is getting old. I would look for a newer card at this point.

 

[nkrader]

The Adaptec 5 series is getting old. I would look for a newer card at this point.

Okay let's put it this way, is this a good card for less than 250$?

Also, the only differences I can find between this and newer cards is the faster SATA, which with re4 would yield no benefit as re4 are SATA 3.0 anyways?

I don't need insane speed or anything as this will essentially be a nas box, and I'm spending most of my budget on drives, before this card I was looking at getting a Dell perc 6 card but it didnt have enough Ports, so was looking at asr-31605 but then those sold out, so now looking at this and it is worlds better than those.

I understand that there is alot better out there, but I don't need the latest and greatest, I just need something that will work decently (speed) and work well (reliability),

so i suppose what I'm asking is will this work fine or will I have huge issues?

 

[PigLover]

Why not consider using less expensive (non-enterprise class) drives with a less-expensive HBA (non-raid) and then get your data protection via software raid (ZFS, MDADM, etc)? Unless you are getting a heck-of-a-deal on those RE4s you'll save a LOT of money, probably get better performance than you would with that Adaptec raid, and all around be happier.

 

[nkrader]

Why not consider using less expensive (non-enterprise class) drives with a less-expensive HBA (non-raid) and then get your data protection via software raid (ZFS, MDADM, etc)? Unless you are getting a heck-of-a-deal on those RE4s you'll save a LOT of money

i dont trust raid 5/6 with non enterprise drives, and I want to use those raid for expandability.

also this server runs world community grid 24/7 so having cpu@100% usage without dedicated drive controller would be less than optimal.

probably get better performance than you would with that Adaptec raid, and all around be happier.

again max speed performance is not a focus here, i could care less how fast it is as long as i can stream rips over the network to a few computers at once.

 

[PigLover]

I won't push, but I think you misunderstand the current state of HW vs SW raid and why "enterprise" class drives are preferred. The "trust" issue has to do with an error recovery battle between the drive and the raid controller - something that doesn't exist with ZFS or other software raids. And on any reasonably current generation CPU you won't be anywhere near "100% CPU" doing disk IO and raid functions - that was a problem from 10-year old CPU generations that largely does not exist anymore.

But if you are set on going hardware raid and are going to invest $thousands into buying 16x RE4s then it seems completely silly to cheap out on the raid controller. Buy yourself a good one and be happy.

 

[nkrader]

And on any reasonably current generation CPU you won't be anywhere near "100% CPU" doing disk IO and raid functions - that was a problem from 10-year old CPU generations that largely does not exist anymore.

i think you dont understand.

it will be at 100% as it will be running this 24/7

But if you are set on going hardware raid and are going to invest $thousands into buying 16x RE4s then it seems completely silly to cheap out on the raid controller. Buy yourself a good one and be happy.

most likely wont ever get more than 6-7 of em, just want the option. im getting 5 drives to start then possibly 1 more drive each year after that. so this raid controller will be 30% of the cost of the drives that im buying so not so much "cheap"


but as stated in OP what would buying a newer more expensive controller get me? this controller will already supports the max speed of the drives? faster rebuild(not that worried about)?


sorry if i seem argumentative, i dont try to be i just realize thats how i come off sometimes, im listening to everything everyone says, and thanks for the continuing input

 

[Patrick]

Just wanted to share an experience here. I started building a home server around the time that Bitcoin mining on GPUs was very profitable and I was highly active in Folding@Home (top 20 daily points per day).

After running many systems working on both, and using a ton of power in the process, I ended up separating the compute projects from the storage projects. The simple reason: I did not want the distributed computing efforts to have the opportunity to take down my storage. My initial test systems were plagued with clients crashing and a few instances where the machines locked up. Even with lots of cooling, ECC RDIMMs and server grade hardware, the risks just were not worth it, even with several dedicated RAID cards. I did have an Adaptec 31605 die in one of the systems, even with battery back up, and ended up having to buy another one, awaiting its arrival before I could import the array and access my data again.

On the RAID card, if you are going to have five this year, and one each year thereafter, you are likely going to be on a new RAID controller by year 4 anyway. We are just about to see the release of 5TB drives and 6+ TB drives will be out in year 4.

For ~$250, you "could" get a newer generation LSI 8-port controller fairly easily. Also, remember that on the Adaptec 5-series you are limited to traditional batteries so power loss write cache protection will require refreshing the battery on regular intervals ($110+ each time.)

The budget is not far off of even an Atom D525 system or the like where you could have a dedicated low power machine running ECC memory and software RAID. The benefit is that you will likely have 6x onboard motherboard ports (or more) and can add 8 additional ports now or in two years for <$100.

Whereas 4 years ago when I started STH I was completely into RAID cards, software RAID is taking over the market in a major way. The whole move towards software RAID and software defined storage has had a significant market impact.

 

[DBayPlaya2k3]

This card should be fine for your needs if speed is not your main concern.

I had an adaptec 5805 for 3 -4 years in my last file server that ran (windows 2008 then 2008R2) and never had an issue except for not using drives with TLER.

I would say one thing that you may want to consider however is maybe getting a few slightly cheaper but still RAID capable hard drives:

For Instance WD Red 2 or 3 TB would fit your requirement of being RAID Ready, Fast, plus they would save you money on cost and power.


I currently run 9 3TB WD Red Drives on a real raid controller (LsI 9265-8I with SAS Expander) and have no issue with the drives dropping out of raids or anything like that.

If you look around the 3TB models can be had as low as $125.00.


Another choice is the Seagate NAS HDD ST3000VN000 . I dont have any experience with it personally but they are meant for NAS setups and have 3 years warranty as well.


So in essence your controller should work fine but you can still have raid capable drives for slightly less money than RE4.

Just a side note I use RE4's at work and I have had one fail SMART Test out of the 5 I had in production so nothing is full proof.

 

[apnar]

it will be at 100% as it will be running this 24/7

What exactly are you trying to say with 100%? Do you simply mean it will be powered on all the time? Are you concerned about the power usage of software RAID vs. hardware?

I'll go ahead and agree with PigLover here, from everything you've said it sounds like you'd be better served using (more) cheaper drives, a HBA instead of RAID controller, and something like ZFS. Your data will actually be safer in a setup like that than one with a RAID card, it'll be a good bit cheaper, easier to get spares should something fail, and your performance may even be better.

 

[nkrader]

What exactly are you trying to say with 100%?

I mean that there will be a process running that keeps the CPU usage at 100% all the time

I did not want the distributed computing efforts to have the opportunity to take down my storage. My initial test systems were plagued with clients crashing and a few instances where the machines locked up.

I don't have enough disposable income to do both types of rigs all of my computers do crunching regardless,
And I currently have one of these rigs running single drive nas (single 1tb green), has been on and crunching and serving data for 3 weeks now with no problems so I doubt I will have problems with it, also ive already got the main hardware for this build and compared to an atom rig there would be no point at running a 12 core rig just file server, would waste so much power.. so im sticking with crunching for now, later on I may just be file server

We are just about to see the release of 5TB drives and 6+ TB drives will be out in year 4.

But, big picture, how much less will it cost to fill up with 2tb drives at that point?
Not to mention, just starting a new array with bigger drives

Also, 5x 2tb drives are out of my budget normally, was looking at getting 1tb drives until I realized it's getting close to tax return season lol.. So I most likely won't be able to afford the 4tb disks when 6/8 tb drives are released.

For ~$250, you "could" get a newer generation LSI 8-port controller fairly easily. Also, remember that on the Adaptec 5-series you are limited to traditional batteries so power loss write cache protection will require refreshing the battery on regular intervals ($110+ each time.)

Let me ask this question again as no one has answered it yet, what would the newer card do that this one can't? This one already maxes out the speed of the re4 (which I'm not really that worried about) but other than time to rebuild array? What? From what I see this card has almost the same stats as most current generation cards apart from SATA 6.0 (which is irrelevant)

I had an adaptec 5805 for 3 -4 years in my last file server that ran (windows 2008 then 2008R2) and never had an issue except for not using drives with TLER.

i just would rather spend a little more money upfront and not even have to have a chance at this problem, that and the longer warranty (red=3year re4=5year), i could go wd BLACK but those are only slightly less $ than re4

Just a side note I use RE4's at work and I have had one fail SMART Test out of the 5 I had in production so nothing is full proof.

yep, mechanical drive is still mechanical drive, i understand that there is nothing magical about them that make them much better, just reasons stated above that make me want to spend the little bit more than WDblack

But thanks guys I got my answer from a few of you, this card will work fine
Cheers, and thanks for the help

 

[nkrader]

My big goal in this build is to get all the Bays "hot" and such
and i guess i should state that I only have 1 open pci express slot

 

[nkrader]

so,

if i wanted to run low power mobo/cpu, and keep enterprise server grade hardware, its looking like atom rigs wouldnt work for me, looking it seems that supermicro m-atx board plus e3-1265l xeon would be my best bet?

my issue is needing to be able to install my dual intel nic card and still having room for hba card (id like to have all the drives tie into the hba card itself and only have 2 drives plugged into mobo)..

also this server does a slight bit more than "normal nas" being that it
-torrent
-dlna server servilo (otf transecode 1080p content to ps3)
-and hosts all the rest of the network data


the more I read this thread the more I want to build a low power NONCRUNCHING dedicated file host.

It seems like after looking around for a but that the only part about doing this that would be cheaper is the harddrives, hba seems more expensive than mentioned raid controller, low power rig would cost around twice as much as I spent on the hardware for the dual 6 core..

Being that I only spent less than 200$ on Mobo CPUs and ram for current setup..

I think doing raid controller and re4 would cost me less at this point