Well, i think any hardware raid card come with a cost. Usually >RM1k. That's why I am looking into other solution now.

IBM M5015 can fit into the HP mircoserver?

Mine is 1015, but still not try yet since all HDD is now inside htpc..

as for 5015 should be no problem since same size (pcie low profile)..

This is pix from the net, i believe it's M1015.

is there really a reason to actually use a RAID card? the card is expensive and if it fails you need to get the same card to get your RAID system running again.

It depends on how important your data is. If your data > price of raid card, why not.

The problem is it is usually years before the card spoils, which by then they are usually no longer in production making the retrieval of data much harder. this is the part which I dont understand the logic behind, maybe you could enlighten me on?
It was on that reason I am currently running a mirrored ZFS (I plan to run a 5 disk RAIDZ2 when I run out of space on the current 2x 3TB setup - all using software RAID) coz I can easily transplant zpools/HDDs as required in the future. On the matter of a battery powered RAID, I opted instead for a 600VA UPS with USB communication port. yet to program the USB but with the microserver my calculations show that it should last nearly an hour on a full charge. I specifically chose a UPS with power socket connectors versus IEC 60320 only type connectors so that I can also plug my router in. Since all the computers in my place are all laptops there should be no issue having all the systems running and transferring still until all the laptops and UPS batteries dies.

You are the expert compare to myself. What kind of software raid you going to use for the RAIDZ2? I might go and try out RAID5 on freeNAS. And test it out whether can I tolerate on the writing speed.

I am far from being an "expert" actually. just a home "network admin" lol.
RAIDZ is the RAID implementation of ZFS, i.e. zpool stripe = RAID 0, zpool mirror = RAID 1, RAIDZ = RAID 5 and RAIDZ2 = RAID 6. But all use the implementation of ZFS file system. ZFS was created for the server storage and address existing file systems limitations. You can google the benefits of ZFS on the web, there are plenty. But there is two reasons I chose ZFS
1. Error correction - and the reason I am using ECC RAM. I have had files going corrupt for no reason before on my backup drives even though I dont use the files (storage).
2. Ease of use - since the release of ZFS Native for Ubuntu use of it is nothing more then to "apt-get install" 6MB of files and it runs like a well greased machine. I also find managing the Zpools (which you can think of as RAID groups equivalent) much easier then using/managing mdadm RAID groups.

There is a powerpoint/pdf presentation of the benefits and introduction to ZFS somewhere on the web you can get presented by Sun Microsystems, but for some reason I cant find it now. I will post it if i find it.

I am interested to know what kind of performance you are getting from your H/W RAID card too. Last I tested my system I got ~75MB/s writes for RAID1/ZFS mirror, and ~160MB/s for RAID0/ZFS stripe. These are write speeds, not read. It was on my N40L with 8GB RAM running on two 3TB WD Greens on Ubuntu Server 12.04 on mdadm for RAID and ZFS native 0.6.0

Thinking of building a NAS using mini itx casing. Anyone has done that before? Care to share your experience?

Hi all RAID sifus,
will this RS2WC040
(http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/servers/raid/raid-controller-rs2wc.html) fit into N40L's PCIe 16x slot?

Yeah, I think prices for the WD Red are going upwards...

RAID is not backup. So you still need backup.

Got. Just look at the swing door. They are screwed behind it.

Software RAID under Windows is plenty fast.

There are many types of hardware RAID card and each with different price levels. What do you consider expensive?

The cheap one the ones with Silicon Image chipset. Moderate ones are like the HighPoint RocketRAID. The higher end ones are like HP's P410.

You still have the M1015 to let go?

Anyway, when you update to the hacked BIOS, the SATA slots become hotpluggable.

Yup. Just like Ferrari / Lamborghini cars. High performance and nice to drive. But once you need to repair, it's going to be expensive.

But then again, the RAID cards have higher tolerance to failure.

Performance.

You are right about RAID cards being obsolete. But that would be a lot of years before it becomes obsolete.

BTW, curious on what's your data transfer rate over the network with ZFS?

That's internal. What kind of transfer rate over the network?

You can get some inspirations from the article from MaximumPC using the Fractal Design Array R2 casing.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/...ows_home_server

Yes it will. I believe it's exactly like the M1015 card. You got lobang to get this ah?

Heh Found it in my distributor's list of products they carry..., price is abt 2x3tb REDs so well ....contemplating..

Ebay would be much cheaper.

well how much performance do you need for a home setting? at least that is what I am assuming you are using it for. The N40L does not have the CPU power to handle heavy SQL/Apache request that would saturate a RAID0, and if it did you are probably better getting a system that has a SATA III connector.
My network transfers is a little unfair to compare cos my router is only 100Mbps. Only planning to upgrade the router later to 1000Mbps. But since the microserver built in NIC is 1000Mbps you can only get ~125MB/s max you can easily saturate with a 2 HDD RAID 0 or 3 HDD RAID 5. I checked those 10Gbps ethernet cards... god they are expensive! Intel E10G42BFSR X520-SR2
so like your ferrari/lambo analog you still cant go fast coz it needs the proper highway to do so

You'd be surprised. Apparently a lot of people run real server environment with the N36L / N40L (with a little more RAM) like running game servers and running 3 or 4 virtual machines at one go. Of course not enterprise level stuff.

Anyway, I myself am looking only 10Gbit speeds (theoretical 1.25 GB/s). In a real world with connection overheads, you'd get about 1 GB/s transfers over 10Gbit connection which is very sufficient for me.

Alamak... Buy lah a Gigabit switch. Very cheap nowadays. 10 times the speed of 100Mbit. Cheapest upgrade and if you transfer and shift a lot of files, you'd be thankful to have Gigabit connection.

Yeah, on paper it's seems easy to saturate Gigabit connection but if you're running software RAID, you need to take into consideration a lot of overheads. That's why I'm curious to know how the ZFS will perform because I hear it's like less than 10MB/s network transfers under RAID 5.

Yes, 10Gbit network cards are expensive. You also need to pair them with 10Gbit switches ! Lagi expensive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16833122405

LOL That's true. But nothing wrong to dream a bit of having fast cars.

Yes, that is why I'm targeting to lay a foundation for a fast "highway" that can I can at least unleash a little bit of speed from the RAID drives. I'm thinking of 3 options;

1. Link Aggregation / bonding- requires 2 or more Gigabit ports with LACP (802.3ad) aware switch. But in reality, max bandwidth is 4Gbit. For example if I want traffic for all 3 PCs connected to the network to have 4Gbit bandwidth, I would need to have all 3 PCs each with quad port network cards. That's 12 connections to the switch.

2. 10GBe Infiniband - relatively the cheapest with 2 PCIe x8 cards but with point-to-point connection only

3. Thunderbolt - Similar to 10GBe Infiniband but very limited availability on newer mobos / notebooks / Macs only

That's why I was initially looking at drives that could at least be up to specs and utilise the highway if I choose to upgrade.

RAID is for redundancy, so it's like sort of backup for me, at least I won't lost my data if 1 of the HDD failed with RAID5.

I am setting up 3x1TB HDD with RAID5 in Win2008. In resyncing state 51% this morning. Should be able to check the performance tonight.

What's your suggested make & model?

Yes. But if during rebuild and resynching, another drive fails, then you loose data.

Looking forward to the results.

I'm using 3Com 8 port Gigabit.

wah u need so much bandwidth... running a hosting service?
The reason I am not getting a new router is because I am actually not running cables to my com but via Wifi only. All the coms in my place is laptops so it is pointless to lay cables all over the house. Plus I like to have as little hardware as possible, i.e. I like all in one systems (ADSL+Router+Wifi). Transfers are going to be much slower, but I prefer that to having to get contractors to pull cables all over the house and be limited to certain areas of the house.

If you dont mind me asking but how are you utilising your microserver for and why the high specs?

This post has been edited by CocoMonGo: Sep 19 2012, 06:00 PM

Ok, that explains. If you're more into WiFi, a good one to get is the Asus RT-N56U which for me also acts as my Unifi router. Fast and stable. I hear the newer N66U is faster but more expensive too.

Nothing serious and not work related. Just for fun storing my movie files and junk. I'm still running a P5Q S775 mobo. My overclocked quad core processor is still plenty fast for normal usage as I don't play games. The trick to making things faster is to get enough memory and to upgrade to a faster hardisk or RAID or upgrade to SSD. No more having to wait long.