Multiple RAID Cards?

F

freddiepm61

Gawd
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Oct 19, 2004
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Hi,

I am building a large media server with far too many hds to be run off a consumer mobo.

It is a core 2 duo system, with an 80gb system hd, and twelve 1tb hds in raid 1
so in the end 6tb for media storage.

As twelve/sixteen port sata raid cards are £700, and four port are about £50,
Is it possible to have three four port pci raid cards connected to the drives all doing raid 1.

If so, what would be the best way to set this up? Install vista on the 80gb, then install the raid?
Or do it in windows install with f6 etc?

Thank you so much for any help,

F
 
If you are asking if multiple cards can manage the same array, the answer is no. If you are asking if it is possible to have multiple cards in the same computer managing their own arrays, the answer is yes.

If you are not booting off of RAID then you can install the driver later.
 
Thankyou! Second question, is will that decrease performance (will be having two to three users
Streaming video and music).
Secondly, one of the drives fails, I put in a new one, then what happens? Does it automatically
Copy across the new data? Also, would the new one just have to be a 1tb, or would it have to be
Same model?
Thanks very much
F
 
Having multiple raid cards will increase performance, not decrease it. however I am concerned that you are talking about 4 port raid cards of 50 pounds (I don't have the pound currency sign on my keyboard). The expensive cards are expensive because they contain a coprocessor, not solely because of the number of SATA connections. A 50 pound card card will NOT be a coprocessor card, and thus it will be slow.

As for the "what happens" to some extent that depends on the RAID card but in essence it has to rebuild the raid, which in Raid 1 means copying the files from the good drive to the new drive. USUALLY the drive is picked up as there but you still have to tell the controller to do the rebuild. There is software in the BIOS for doing that and there is software at the OS level for doing that.

As for same model, no, same size should be fine. I am guessing that operations will slow to the speed of the slowest drive if there is a mismatch.
 
Heres what I would do:

get two Supermicro SAT2-MV8 8 port sata controllers...these are not raid cards.
Set up the raid in Vista's Device Manager...since its raid1 and your not booting from it you dont need a hardware raid controller.
This is arounnd $200 and will support 16 drives.
 
jcolby said:
If you are asking if multiple cards can manage the same array, the answer is no. If you are asking if it is possible to have multiple cards in the same computer managing their own arrays, the answer is yes.

If you are not booting off of RAID then you can install the driver later.
Click to expand...
Not true. Some RAID cards will allow you to span an array across multiple cards.
 
I have two RocketRaid 2220 cards sharing the same array.

Like mentioned above, my next setup will be powered by the Supermicro SAT2-MV8 8 via Linux mdadm raid 5.
 
i have a 2220 rocketraid also and i only have 1 but it has a cable connector that will allow 2 card for 16ports to have the same array
 
some backplanes have a secondary set of ports so you can connect two controllers

if one controller dies it just failsover to the other one.
 
Blue Fox said:
Not true. Some RAID cards will allow you to span an array across multiple cards.
Click to expand...

I believe this is the case with Adaptec Unified Serial RAID cards (3x00, 5x00) cards...I plan to get a basic four-port card in conjunction with my current 16-port with a Norco RPC-4020 for 20 drives. One day. :D
 
I'm not sure if those cards would get performance that higher-end, more expensive cards would get...if all you want is a storage server without too much regard for raw performance but you also want redundancy, I suppose the card you selected should be fine. IIRC, Ockie bought one of those "lower-series" cards that Adaptec classifies as "entry-level" (not 3x00 or 5x00 series). It was a 16-port card for one of his builds and was dissatisfied with its performance (it was also PCI-X).
 
Syntax Error said:
I'm not sure if those cards would get performance that higher-end, more expensive cards would get...if all you want is a storage server without too much regard for raw performance but you also want redundancy, I suppose the card you selected should be fine. IIRC, Ockie bought one of those "lower-series" cards that Adaptec classifies as "entry-level" (not 3x00 or 5x00 series). It was a 16-port card for one of his builds and was dissatisfied with its performance (it was also PCI-X).
Click to expand...

Yea those lower end Adaptec suck ... I had a 21610SA and it just became a headache.

If your not calculating parity and not booting from the array just go with a OS RAID or software raid card and save your money for better/larger drives
 
finally, it says that the pci-x also supports pci 32/64 bit, will that mean that it will fit in the pci slot of my asus p5q?

many thanks

f
 
Maybe; some cards can do that and others can't, but you'd get even crappier performance out of that card if you were to put it in a standard PCI slot, and that's only assuming if that card can pump out more than 133MB/s anyways.
 
Adaptec, even their high end 5 series, does not support spanning arrays across multiple controllers. An array has to be completely self-contained on a single card. You can have multiple controllers on a single board, but the arrays cant span across controllers.

With the Highpoint cards, there's a proprietary connector that connects between multiple cards - I'm not sure what information goes through that connector, but I'm assuming its just raid metadata or something as the cable looks pretty thin.

I believe Areca cards support array spanning across multiple controllers, but I have no experience with Areca cards.

And, if you are using some form of software RAID with JBOD, then you don't need specific hardware support for controller spanning as the software will take care of that.
 
The bottom line is that in consumer grade stuff, the SATA drive connects to an SATA port on a specific controller. It MIGHT be possible (though unlikely) to "span" a raid 1 by having one drive on one controller and the other drive on another controller, but as soon as you are talking about RAID 5 or above the controllers have to calculate and write parity, control all drives in the array so that they all seek to the same place etc.

So in my estimation, "spanning" an array across controllers is pretty much a no-go in our world.
 
thanks for all the replies!

1). i dont think that performance is such an issue, as this will only be streaming/watching sd content and a bit of music, and rarely all at once, the usual will probs just be a movie on one screen, and maybe some music on a laptop/wireless, and the os is on a non raided drive, with the raid one drives not being constantly written to, i.e. for a couple of weeks they wil be having cd and dvd ripped to them, but then apart from that, they will just sit doing streaming.

2). does it matter having multiple raid arrays? as there will be twelve raided hard drives, three raid cards, does it matter having three raid arrays in one pc? again bear in mind that they will not be constantly writing to each other, as they will just be sitting doing streaming...

thanks again guys

f
 
Blue Fox said:
Areca doesn't support controller spanning.
Click to expand...

Yes they do


  • Intel Dual Core 800/1200 MHz IOP348 I/O processor for RAID core and SAS microcode
    256MB on-board DDR2-533 SDRAM with ECC protection (ARC-1680LP/1680i/1680x)
    512MB on-board DDR2-533 SDRAM with ECC protection (ARC-/1680ix-8)
    One 240-pin DDR2-533 DIMM socket with default 512MB of SDRAM with ECC protection, upgrade to 4GB (ARC-1680ix-12/16/24)
    Support write-through or write-back cache
    Support 4 to 24 internal and 4 to 8 external SAS ports
    Multi-adapter support for large storage requirements BIOS boot support for greater fault tolerance
    BIOS PnP (plug and play) and BBS (BIOS boot specification) support
    Support extreme performance RAID 6 function
    NVRAM for RAID configuration & transaction log
    Redundant flash image for adapter availability
    Battery Backup Module ready (Option)
    RoHS Compliant
Click to expand...

Multi Adapter support means you can span across cards
 
When I had my 1280ML and 1130ML in the same system, I never had the option for it. The SATA ones list it as well...you sure they don't mean support for multiple independent cards? The manual has no mention of controller spanning.
 
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