Hardware Raid?

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wh-coach

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I'm looking at standing up another SAN for storage to my VPS nodes.

Up until this point I've used exclusively software RAID and I'm curious what other people's opinions are. If you're going to buy a RAID card, do you get two (i.e. in case the card is no longer made by the time it dies and you can't source a second?)... Would you just stick with software RAID and leave it at that? Other?
 
I'm assuming that you are not renting your servers as you are purchasing your raid cards.

If you own your own hardware, then you have three options.

1) Purchase good brand RAID cards, these (or newer compatible cards) will be available for a long period of time, and often give better performance, albeit at a greater financial cost.

2) Purchase cheaper cards, and some spares, in case they fail. Although this could be more expensive in the long run if they do fail, as downtime is always more expensive than hardware terms of reputation.

3) Ideally you should get the better hardware cards and carry spares.
 
wh-coach said:
I'm looking at standing up another SAN for storage to my VPS nodes.

Up until this point I've used exclusively software RAID and I'm curious what other people's opinions are. If you're going to buy a RAID card, do you get two (i.e. in case the card is no longer made by the time it dies and you can't source a second?)... Would you just stick with software RAID and leave it at that? Other?
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I am not a fan of software RAID, don't get me wrong it's ideal for a home server, But I prefer Hardware RAID it's faster admit more expensive, We primarily use Dell Servers which supply with Perc RAID cards
 
For a SAN, I would probably go Hardware RAID. Get a good quality card, and keep spares on hand.

If you are doing local storage for your VPS Nodes, software raid has always been adequate for me. RAID1 (across 4 drives) for /boot, and RAID10 for your hypervisor and LVM.
 
We don't use software raid, but have heard some stories that it's hard to recover with software raid. Especially for SAN, I highly recommend hardware raid with BBU.
 
Hardware raid should always be used in a large storage environment. Software raid can be a nightmare.
 
Hardware raid should always be used in a large storage environment. Software raid can be a nightmare.
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Care to elaborate on that a little? what is so nightmarish about software raid?
 
In our experience, for RAID-1 there is not a big difference between software or hardware based RAID. One advantage of hardware RAID is that you can have a BBU and enable write caching for better performance. Also, for more advanced RAID setups like RAID-10 or RAID-5 you may see better results with hardware RAID. But keep in mind that hardware RAID does not automatically translate to better performance. A fast SSD array on a cheap RAID controller may actually perform worse than software RAID in some cases.
 
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I recommend to use Hardware RAID if your data is really important to you, as software RAID can produce a disastrous situation & I have experienced that.
 
RAID hardware is mostly recommended to website having major traffic and data. This is to balance website traffic and number of operations.
 
Hi,

I would not suggest having software RAID for large disk, especially if they are larger than 2 TB. Hardware RAID is the most preferred choice when it comes to large disks. If you are planning on having large data, go for hardware RAID instead of software RAID.
 
It is better to use software RAID than a hardware RAID with a cheap RAID controller.

Good RAID controller with cache memory and BBU is a good option.
 
Andrius said:
It is better to use software RAID than a hardware RAID with a cheap RAID controller.

Good RAID controller with cache memory and BBU is a good option.
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Since everyone else seems to agree that hardware RAID is the better option, would you share with us why you believe software RAID is the better option for you?
 
Andrius said:
It is better to use software RAID than a hardware RAID with a cheap RAID controller.

Good RAID controller with cache memory and BBU is a good option.
Click to expand...

This is true where you are dealing with low end hardware RAID.

High end Hardware RAID is opted for largely because it posses a power-loss protected DRAM cache. This DRAM cache offers very low latency for random write access in the form of sequential writing.

Now this is the component that lowend Hardware RAID controllers are weak at. Some low-end RAID controllers do not have a cache and also sometimes disable the DRAM cache making them much slower.
 
Hello,

Even considering that, to me HW raid will always wins against SW raid because SW raid eats system ressources to write data where HW raid handles it.
 
PeteCCS said:
Hello,

Even considering that, to me HW raid will always wins against SW raid because SW raid eats system ressources to write data where HW raid handles it.
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Well, sometimes no. Sometimes software RAID providers more reliability and better I/O than RAID with cheap RAID controller.

Also I remember situation, when integrated LSI RAID controller dropped SSD hard drives from array. The issue was solved when started to use SW RAID.
 
Andrius said:
Well, sometimes no. Sometimes software RAID providers more reliability and better I/O than RAID with cheap RAID controller.
Click to expand...

Well, sometimes you have to put some dollars on the table if you want something efficient nothing new here. So if you prefer save some money yes go for SW raid.

Andrius said:
Also I remember situation, when integrated LSI RAID controller dropped SSD hard drives from array. The issue was solved when started to use SW RAID.
Click to expand...

Concerning SSD drives yes I agree it needs more care than sata drives in a HW raid.
 
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