Some Help Setting Up a Raid 10 with Multiple Drives

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maximus20895

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Hello,

I am trying to make a RAID 10 that will be used for a server. The goal is to either have 16 X 500GB SSDs or 8 X 1TB SSDs. The problem I am having is find a SATA RAID controller that allows me to connect all of the drives together and act as one RAID. I understand that I might have to buy multiple RAID controllers which is alright. Another thing I was pondering would be to possibly buy some SAS to SATA adapters since to me, it seems that there are far more SAS RAID controllers than SATA. I don't know if this is a possibility, but it was just an idea. I would just like some advice on if this is possible and how would I accomplish this task.

Thank you for your time.
 
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popatim
No, The port typically breaks out to 4 sata drives each, so if you really want 16 drives then you need either a raid card with 4 ports or a single port with an Sas expander which has more ports.
The m1015 supports 32 drives I beleive but only 8 natively. You would connect it to a Sas Expander to gain the extra ports.

Here is a good beginners guide to Sas Expanders even though it focuses on the hp's. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1484614
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drtweak

drtweak

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Ok first off the thing with RAID and SAS RAID is that SAS Controller and SAS Conenctors will work on SATA 100% No Problem! Its just that you can't use SAS on SATA.

Now if you use 8 1TB drives i don't see an issue. A lot of high end controllers come with two Ports (SFF-8087 or SFF-8484 are the two main ones. There is also 2088 and 8470 as well) and each port handles up to 4 Drives. So if you get a Two Port SFF-8087 (The newer one) You can support up to 8 drives SATA or SAS No problem.

Me I'm a Big LSI Fan or the Dell PERC Cards (I have a Dell SAS 5 which only does RAID 1 and 0 and uses a single SFF 8484. Looking to get a Dell PERC H310 which have two 8087, its 6Gbps, does Raid 0 1 5 10 50) Its more of a low end card though actually. There is no Onboard ram so it doesn't support Write Back Cache, but as long as the server is on a UPS then there is no worry of that too much.

There are other choices out there. Its just a matter of what controller you want. There are controllers that support up to 16 drives but thats more drives, more power that is needed, and the price for a 1TB vs a 500GB is VERY minimal. Cheaper all around to go with 8 1TB's
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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IF you want 16 drives though where are a few options

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118135

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103215 - This one is only SATA/SAS 3Gpbs But honestly unless you put SSD's on there Hard drives would never even use all the bandwith. This one though also as a SFF 8088 port which allows you to Connect to a SAS Expander and connect up to a total of 256 hard drives. Had one client buy 3 Dell Power Vaults with 14 4Tb drives each in there (For Security Camera Recording. Was for around 100 cameras at 1080p) and they 3 power vaults were all Daisy Chained together.

Both have 512 Megs of ram. The
 
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maximus20895

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The reason I wanted to go to 16 X 500GB vs 8 X 1 TB is for the speed boos RAID 10 gives you.

I am still confused on how exactly I set this up. If I have 16 drives do I need 16 ports on the RAID controller?

Very new to RAID Controller so any advice is appreciated.

Also, these are all going to be SSDs.
 
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popatim

popatim

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No, The port typically breaks out to 4 sata drives each, so if you really want 16 drives then you need either a raid card with 4 ports or a single port with an Sas expander which has more ports.
The m1015 supports 32 drives I beleive but only 8 natively. You would connect it to a Sas Expander to gain the extra ports.

Here is a good beginners guide to Sas Expanders even though it focuses on the hp's. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1484614
 
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maximus20895

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Thank you. I understand now what you mean about each SAS port allows up to 4 SATA drives.

My question now is about throughput. I am having a hard time finding out if RAID 10 on 16 SSDs will max out a RAID Controllers bandwidth. I just would like to know what is the optimal solution for achieving max performance of my SSDs in a RAID 10 configuration.
 
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TyrOd

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The maximum theoretical sequential bandwidth of any 16 SATA3 devices in RAID10 is 4.8GB/s. If you get at least a pcie 2.0 X4 card, you won't have any problems with maxing out the controller bandwidth.

 
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TyrOd

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Sure, it's the maximum bandwidth of a SAATA3 port(6Gb/s = 600MB/s) X 8 drives.

Of Course if you are going to use 16 drive, then you'll need twice the bandwidth.
 
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