15 replies to this topic

[Lazzarus2nd]

Alrighty storage experts,

I have cast my eyes over the RocketRAID 2300 http://www.highpoint-tech.com/

Now is this a 'removable' type card (i.e. with its own 'cpu') so I can take it form one machine if it fails, and chuck it into another. Will it also take some load off the CPU?

They retail for around $240 - I always thought that RIAD cards were around the 500 dollar mark...

I guess what it boils down to is this a better option than onboard RAID?

[iamthemaxx]

Yes, yes, yes.

The last one depends on what OS you are using. From what zebs has been showing us, Open Solaris + ZFS is better than RAID if you want to take that path.

[Lazzarus2nd]

Cheers for that maxxie - Its a fairly cheap card for its type. Hmm I could try another operating system, however I am a Gamer at heart so in many aspects I am stuck with Windows. I find that hard enough sometimes. :D I might have a peruse of zebra's ideas, sounds interesting to say the least.

[iamthemaxx]

Hmm I could try another operating system, however I am a Gamer at heart so in many aspects I am stuck with Windows. I find that hard enough sometimes. :D

Yep, that is my issue as well.


But I am researching things for my file server.

[lew~]

Hmm I could try another operating system, however I am a Gamer at heart so in many aspects I am stuck with Windows. I find that hard enough sometimes. :D

Yep, that is my issue as well.


But I am researching things for my file server.

Yeah it's a real shame, I'm in the same boat. I'll probably end up building a file server running OpenSolaris with ZFS and have a Windows based gaming PC.

But then if you want to leech/share at LANs you have to take 2 PCs :(

I agree with maxx though, a dedicated RAID card is better then onboard RAID. I can't say whether that card in particular is good, although I'm sure you can find reviews.

[Sparky]

Last time I checked Highpoints os support was limited and I could not find anyone useing the particular card I was after under solaris 10. Open solaris has better hardware support but I don't think its quite ready yet, things like screen savers not working and the like give me the impression it is unfinished. I still have to properly try out the new 2008.11 release though The release candidate ran very poorly. Having said that the live version of 2008.11 final seamed to run well, I'll probably install that and try it out.

[Lazzarus2nd]

Ahh cheers for the info - I am running Vista Ultimate so OS support should be fine. Might just chuck one in the download rig/file storage and see how it goes.

[stadl]

1. Yes it's a removable card, and you should be able to move it between machines. 2. No it doesn't have a CPU - it has an XOR accellerator (you need to go to the RR3000 series to get a true processor on board - hint without a memory spec it's not going to have a true CPU/IOP) 3. Yes it will reduce some load if you wish to do RAID 5. (for RAID 0/1 it's likely to be similar to a good on-board RAID controller. For RAID 5, best result is that write speeds under RAID 5 would have the same system CPU load as RAID0/1, where as an onboard RAID controller or software RAID doesn't handle the RAID 5 parity calculations as easily, and there is a larger system CPU load) 4. It is a better option than on-board RAID, but it's not as good as a true hardware RAID controller, but it costs half as much!.

[SyKRyD]

you might find this benchmark useful in seeing the performance differences - particularly between host/standalone cards


original article

[B82R3S]

if you are going to make a server just use software raid like mdadm or that ZFS thing. Im still ancient using good old mdadm raid5 but its sweeeeet :D if zeb pops in explain how much zfs whoops mdadm raid5?

[zebra]

if you are going to make a server just use software raid like mdadm or that ZFS thing. Im still ancient using good old mdadm raid5 but its sweeeeet :D

if zeb pops in explain how much zfs whoops mdadm raid5?

Oh hello.

So, here is the thing about mdadm RAID5. It's still RAID5, with all the floors, problems and lack of complete integrity that is unfortunately intrinsic to RAID5. [RAID Write holes, Extents mis detection and silent data corruption]. I watch mdadm horror stories daily, both in the little world and in the enterprise.

http://forums.atomic...view=getnewpost

Anyway, whilst mdadm certainly has it's merit, things have come a long way since then, in the form of tech such as ZFS.

1. Totally CPU scalable. You can offload cycles to your fast multicore CPU's and let it to all the complex work of dedicated hardware RAID controllers
2. No data corruption, no RAID write holes - no concerns about corrupting data thanks to on the fly SHA1/256 bit checksum's of every CoW block
3. It's shamefully easy to make arrays smart, tough, high performance and scale-able

Plug three disks in to any old SATA controller. Doesn't matter where. Doesn't care who:

zpool create coolPool raidz1 disk1 disk2 disk3

Done. You've got a single parity failure protected device there, that, with 1TB Sammy Spinpoint's will effortlessly sustain 280MB/sec R/W off kernel time.

z

[Sparky]

I can verify what zebra is saying, My RaidZ array of 4 * 750gb Samsung drives (essentially the same drive as the 1tb model - only 4 of them) performs at 398.2MB/s And that was on a older solaris with a older version of ZFS and its had a cpu upgrade as well (3200+ upto 4000+ sc). I wonder what its doing now? I just wish I could pump that across the network.

[B82R3S]

expanding of zfs raid arrays is what would kill me as i usually cant afford to buy the full amount of disks for the server from day 1 :( lol

Edited by B82R3S, 22 December 2008 - 02:15 AM.

[zebra]

expanding of zfs raid arrays is what would kill me as i usually cant afford to buy the full amount of disks for the server from day 1 :( lol

Neither could I, which is why they've implemented zpool expansion "hot" on the fly in OpenSolaris b105 SXCE!

z

[B82R3S]

Neither could I, which is why they've implemented zpool expansion "hot" on the fly in OpenSolaris b105 SXCE!

z

when is the next release going to happen?

Also what does SXCE stand for lol i did a bit of googling but couldnt find anything aha =( i sux

[Lazzarus2nd]

ooeek, tad bit of information overload, but knowledge is never spurned, so thank you. This is all just for a home setup so im not sure such a complex or fast system is needed, its mostly just to store my photos and music - but im going to give zfs a go - never to late to learn something new.

Cheers guys and thanks Zeb, for once again baffling me with knowledge and making google my friend once again. :D

you might find this benchmark useful in seeing the performance differences - particularly between host/standalone cards


original article

Cheers for this - just what I was looking for!

Edited by Lazzarus2nd, 23 December 2008 - 12:41 AM.