(4) 600 GB 10k SAS in RAID 5 or (4) 1 TB 7200 SATA in RAID 10?

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noobtastic88

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Jun 23, 2015
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All,

Trying to decide if a 4-drive configuration with 600 GB 10k SAS in RAID 5 or 1 TB SATA 7200 in RAID 10 would be better.

Cost isn't a critical factor, but I'm more wondering in terms of reliability and performance.
I've been told to avoid RAID 5 as much as possible - I'd like to net about ~2 TB of space on the array.

Any thoughts? Thanks -
 
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Eximo
If cost isn't a factor and performance is paramount, then you might look into some enterprise SSDs. Expensive, but no better way to get I/O.

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thisguy365

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Dec 17, 2012
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The 4 10k SAS drives in RAID 5 would give you better performance as long as the RAID is not degraded and you are using a good controller. RAID 10 is much more reliable and does not take a huge performance hit when you lose a drive. If cost is less important 10K SAS drives in RAID 10 would be best combo of performance and reliability.
If you are going RAID 5 Use a decent RAID controller, nothing software based. and Hot Spares are a must. If you lose a drive you want to rebuild it quickly.

What the volume is going to be used for is also a factor.
 
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13thmonkey

13thmonkey

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Jan 10, 2006
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OK lets rephrase the question, is the performance really needed, modern spinning drives give good performance, are we talking about 10 people trying to access the same disks or are we just talking about a few uninterrupted streaming sessions. In terms of reliability two disks in raid1 are better than 4 disks in raid 5, as there are fewer disks to fail.

Is the reliability really need at this level, i.e. no interruption or would a simple daily/12hrly/hrly backup actually achieve the same result and be better, access off one disk and backup on another.

Potentially a better option if downtime is acceptable, but with minimal data loss.
 
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thisguy365

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Dec 17, 2012
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Given that op does not detail the use of the of the volume or the specifics of hos server configuration(in particular the RAID controller). It is hard to make a good recomendation.

Specifically a RAID 5 with 10KSAS drive vs RAID 10 with 7200 SATA drives.

The 10k drives in RAID 5 will give far better read performance and similar write performance as long a good RAID controller is used(LSI9260 or similar/better)

The RAID 10 with SATA drives offers decent performance and realistically similar reliability.

Being the RAID 10 is 2 RAID 0s mirrored. You can lose 1 drive(which will kill 1 RAID0) and a second if it is the same RAID0, with out a noticeably performance hit. Loosing a 2nd drive in the other RAID0 will likely result in fatal data loss or a difficult recovery.

The RAID 5 is fault tolerant to 1 Drive, although you will take a performance hit until the RAID is rebuilt as the controller will have to calculate parity to maintain data. Loosing a second drive means a fatal loss. Professionally i do not deploy RAID5s with out a hot spare, (except in backup appliances) and much prefer RAID1 and only do RAID 10's when the greater performance is needed(large Exchange or SQL servers).

 
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