Hello Everyone!
I wish I had found this forum a few days ago, lots of great information in here regarding bigger storage installs.
Here is the short version of my question:
I am building out a 16 drive file server mix of using either a combination of on board sata3 & LSI SAS2008 card OR one of the HP SAS Expanders. I'm worried that the HP card might be slower for 6Gb/s drives then the onboard sata III option.
Is that something I should be concerned about?
Here is the longer version:
I am in the process of upgrading my 8 x 1Tb (mostly WD Green SATA II Drives) file server into something a bit bigger since I'm running out of space. I currently manage things through Ubuntu server with mdadm etc etc. Pretty standard and besides the space issue it works ok.
I found the Noreco RPC-4220 which is a big step up as far as HD space goes, since I'm maxed out currently at 8.
I'm in the process of ordering 8 x 2Tb Hitatchi SATA III Drives , mixing between Amazon and Newegg over the span of 2 weeks or so to ensure I don't get one big batch of drives. Is this a large concern? Or should I just order them all at once?
I would like to use all 16 of my drives (8 new 8 old) in the new 4220 and I would like to take advantage of the speed boost of SATA III as well.
I found the excellent reference here: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10 which lead me to beleieve two things.
Future expansion would require more LSI SAS2008 cards in the other 16x PCIe slots.
Since reading this forum I see another option would be to pick up a one of the HP SAS expander cards seen on this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1484614 for the same cost as two of the LSI's and be covered for 24 devices.
Is the bandwidth accross the PCI bus an issue if you were running 24 drives accross it in a raidz2 setup? (I know I am not in that sittuation yet, but want to future proof a bit).
This will mostly be a fileserver (i was looking into FreeNAS with raidz2, but further testing will need to be done to see if that setup will work for me) to share large media files (4Gb-50Gb files to an XBMC head). I do run a subsonic server streaming media server (which is transcoding music/movies for me) as well as some transcoding of my media files mostly handbrake/h264 transcoding, so I'd like to keep the processor/ram specs beefy if possible.
Any advise is appreciated, I've gotten most of the items on order, but wouldn't mind switching things around a bit if it will be better for me in the long run, I'm wondering if I should switch to the HP card, or stick with the LSI?
Thanks!
I wish I had found this forum a few days ago, lots of great information in here regarding bigger storage installs.
Here is the short version of my question:
I am building out a 16 drive file server mix of using either a combination of on board sata3 & LSI SAS2008 card OR one of the HP SAS Expanders. I'm worried that the HP card might be slower for 6Gb/s drives then the onboard sata III option.
Is that something I should be concerned about?
Here is the longer version:
I am in the process of upgrading my 8 x 1Tb (mostly WD Green SATA II Drives) file server into something a bit bigger since I'm running out of space. I currently manage things through Ubuntu server with mdadm etc etc. Pretty standard and besides the space issue it works ok.
I found the Noreco RPC-4220 which is a big step up as far as HD space goes, since I'm maxed out currently at 8.
I'm in the process of ordering 8 x 2Tb Hitatchi SATA III Drives , mixing between Amazon and Newegg over the span of 2 weeks or so to ensure I don't get one big batch of drives. Is this a large concern? Or should I just order them all at once?
I would like to use all 16 of my drives (8 new 8 old) in the new 4220 and I would like to take advantage of the speed boost of SATA III as well.
I found the excellent reference here: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10 which lead me to beleieve two things.
- The Onboard SATA III connections give more throughput then a controller card because of the bandwidth between the northbridge vs the PCIe channels and the processor. Is this a serious concern? I'm thinking not so much, or else why would they have cards with the ability to handle many (24) drives if it would completely saturate the pcie lanes?
- The LSI SAS2008 is just about the best bet as far as compatability and performance go.
- 1x LSI SAS2008 card
- A motherboard with 8x 6Gb/s sata connections and 3 x 16x PCIe 2.0 slots. The intent being to fill the 8 onboard sata ports with the newer Hitatchi 6G/s drives using SAS reverse breakout cables, and use the LSI card to control the older 3Gb/s drives. This is essentially a high powered gamer motherboard, which makes me nervous sticking in a server, I'd rather get a less flashy, more stable server type MB, but finding one with 8 sata 6Gb/s ports was not an option.
Future expansion would require more LSI SAS2008 cards in the other 16x PCIe slots.
Since reading this forum I see another option would be to pick up a one of the HP SAS expander cards seen on this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1484614 for the same cost as two of the LSI's and be covered for 24 devices.
Is the bandwidth accross the PCI bus an issue if you were running 24 drives accross it in a raidz2 setup? (I know I am not in that sittuation yet, but want to future proof a bit).
This will mostly be a fileserver (i was looking into FreeNAS with raidz2, but further testing will need to be done to see if that setup will work for me) to share large media files (4Gb-50Gb files to an XBMC head). I do run a subsonic server streaming media server (which is transcoding music/movies for me) as well as some transcoding of my media files mostly handbrake/h264 transcoding, so I'd like to keep the processor/ram specs beefy if possible.
Any advise is appreciated, I've gotten most of the items on order, but wouldn't mind switching things around a bit if it will be better for me in the long run, I'm wondering if I should switch to the HP card, or stick with the LSI?
Thanks!