RAID or JBOD? (Safety Back-Up, Thunderbolt 3, 10TB Enterprise Drives)

FrenchQuarter · Jul 10, 2017

Hello,
I've done a lot of research, but technology and disk size keeps changing. Here's my question(s):

Thanks to the help at Tom's Hardware, a number of years ago, I got a Thunderbolt 2, 5-bay enclosure (DATOPTIC), and am running RAID 5 + 1 Hotspare with 4TB Enterprise Drives (HGST/WD). (Meaning I have 16TB of storage and 1 disk as instant backup in case of failure.)

I'm ready to upgrade to Thunderbolt 3 and 10TB Enterprise Drives!

I'm running the latest MacOS, on a fast MacBook Pro Retina, with 16GB RAM.

I'm looking at the Areca 12-Bay TB3 Enclosure. Is this good equipment? Any better?
https://www.amazon.com/Areca-ARC-8050T3-12-12-Bays-Thunderbolt-Storage/dp/B0723B81GN https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Areca/ARC8050T312/

I haven't decided on the brand or model of 10TB Enterprise Drives (Seagate, HGST, etc.), so any opinions on Enterprise Drives are welcomed.

My questions/concerns are:

GOAL: I'm looking to have a single, large unit that holds all my data, safely, long-term, and with an immediate on-site backup (within the same enclosure/unit). If one or more drives fail, I'm still protected, and just need to put in fresh drives and re-build/re-copy. (I'll also use an off-site backup plan, but these can be slow and unreliable because of the large amounts of data, 40TB or more, so for this thread, I'm focusing on immediate on-site use and backup/protection.)

(1) Should I go with RAID or JBOD (JBOD x 2, copied with Carbon Copy Cloner)?

(2) If I go with RAID, should I do:
RAID 6 + 2 Hotspares x 2 (Such as 1 set of drives working, and 1 set of drives backup using CCC)
or RAID 1 or RAID 10,
or a different RAID?

(3) I am reading, RAID is becoming less reliable, even extinct soon (especially RAID 5 and 6), because drives are becoming so large (10TB+) that you're bound to hit an URE (unrecoverable read error) during a RAID-rebuild, meaning you lose EVERYTHING (unless you have a complete and separate copy somewhere else).

http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/

(4) If I go with JBOD, I will automatically make my own backup. I'll buy x 2 drives and use Carbon Copy Cloner every day. (Meaning, in a 12-bay enclosure, I'll have 6 drives I work from, and 6 drives used as backup, and I backup everyday.)

JBOD means if the enclosure fails, I can easily put the drives into a new enclosure.

(But if I'm doing JBOD x 2, should I just do RAID 1 or RAID 10? How easy is a failed drive in RAID 1 or RAID 10 to replace?)

(5) Read/Write performance/degradation isn't too much of an issue, as speeds are very fast today, and I'm just writing/copying normal data, but not running a Star Wars-intensive film studio. So R/W speed is not my concern. Uptime is not a concern. It can be down for a day or two to rebuild.

(6) Safety of my data for the long-term is my real concern. I can lose time, but I can't lose data.

(7) If a drive fails, I need to be able to switch it out easily, without mucking up the system, and especially switch it out without having even more drives fail.

(8) On my own, I've narrowed my choice down to:
JBOD (JBOD x 2, copied with Carbon Copy Cloner)
or
RAID 1 or RAID 10 (not sure which is better)

What do you think? Do you have better suggestions?

(9) Opinion on Thunderbolt 3 Enclosures? (I want 8 bays or more.) Go with Areca?

(10) Opinion on Enterprise Drives? (Mainly looking at high-end quality, and around 10TB.)

(11) When I can afford it, I will back it all up with a separate SECOND enclosure, used strictly as backup, probably running JBOD and Carbon Copy Cloner.

I'm looking for expert advice before I embark for this huge setup, to make sure I get the right equipment, and make the right choices between JBOD, RAID, etc.

Thank you!

FireWire2 · Jul 12, 2017

What is your OS? If you are running Windows or Linux, that is much easier and has a lower cost.
Here is what I suggest for Mac OS

1 ~ 8) If your data is VERY important, then have two sets of storage: RAID5 for Backup and one RAID6 operational. With this set up you can have a single chassis with 12x, 16x or 24x drive Thunderbolt 2 or 3. so far the only company that offers such RAID is DATOptic.

The tray-less bay is a prefer way to hot swap a bad drive. Of course conventional tray is OK too, but every time to replace a drive you must have a screw driver.

As a storage consultant I have see RAID 6 as big as 96TB in service for years. The important thing is schedule check volume to map out the bad sectors, which 99% of user miss out this operation

9) This depends on your computer. if you have Mac system then use TB2, unless you have a new MBP with TB3 then goes for TB3. I used lots of DATOptic and Areca RAID product. but i prefer DATOptic since I can get support easier compare to TW company. I would suggest call them both to see who better at answer your questions

10) You do not need enterprise HDD for your need

11) You get a low cost driver-less raid like this to do back up http://www.datoptic.com/ec/esata-usb3-0-hardware-raid-support-mac-windows-freebsd-linux.html

seagate_surfer · Jul 12, 2017

Sounds like you've done a pretty good amount of homework on your stuff. You've nailed the important 3-2-1 backup strategy, you understand that RAID is NOT a backup (we cannot stress this enough), and you're looking for drives that have high capabilities and run heavy workloads instead of just sticking standard desktop drives in the system and having them be overwhelmed, and you're trying to maximize the security if you do decide to go RAID. Yes, you're right that RAID is not perfect. One of the biggest benefit to RAID is preventing downtime. It makes it so that when a drive potentially dies, you can swap a drive/drives out without having to take the system offline in order to solve the issue. In enterprise environments, that is not only huge but integral because lost time equals lost dollars. With JBOD, yes your data still would be safe with a strong backup strategy, but downtime would still be an issue.

There's definitely pluses and minuses to different types of RAID. RAID 6 and RAID 10 would both be strong solutions for your situation, but probably RAID 6 is going to be just a little bit better. This is because, in RAID 10, yes you can technically have 2 drives fail simultaneously and be OK, but the caveat being that they have to be the "right" 2 drives. If both of the drives that are mirroring are lost, then all the data is potentially lost. RAID 6, on the other hand, can withstand the loss of ANY 2 disks.

As far as the drive types, one good solid option would be NAS-rated drives (Seagate current model: IronWolf). They are rated for 24x7 use. A standard IronWolf is rated for 180TB of data per year and the IronWolf Pro is rated for 300TB per year. These drives also come with data Rescue Services for $5 a year for standard IronWolf and free for 2 years for the IronWolf Pro. The IronWolf is engineered for a balanced read/write workload, multi-user technology, cloud storage solutions, and NAS environments. The firmware on these drives is designed to account for and protect against issues with vibration. Multiple hard drives in enclosures can really beat up on each-other just from the sheer force of all the rotating parts (especially in capacities like 8-10 TB), and so drives that have RV sensors like IronWolf and firmware to handle these vibration concerns is very important for both the longevity and performance of a system like this.

marko55 · Jul 13, 2017

Having both your production and backup arrays in the same chassis certainly brings a little risk in itself. A bad firmware or environmental issue could kill both in one swoop. For your on site, another option would be to go with a QNAP setup. You could use Thunderbold to direct connect to this (https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/model.php?II=268&ref=product_overview) and then put another basic network-attached QNAP somewhere in the building. The nice thing about having two QNAPs is there's multiple ways to back up between the QNAPs with the QNAP backup app. You can do scheduled or real-time replication. These NASs also do WAY more than just storage.

Just load whatever you get out with good quality NAS or enterprise drives for sure! Higher URE the better and the cost between 10^14 drives and 10^15 drives isn't that huge.

In your main array I agree with RAID-6. Even with large 8-10TB drives. You have a backup anyway. Just note that a rebuild of that array could take a week, literally, with 8-10TB drives (depends a lot on the RAID controller too) if you're using it while its rebuilding.

- Yeah, RAID 10 rebuild times are much quicker but you sacrifice a ton (50%) of space to RAID and like Seagate-guy said its almost no more redundant than a RAID-6 with as many disks as you're using in the array.
- RAID-1 is just gonna burn a ton of disk space and drive bays and you'd have to manage a bunch of arrays.
- 2 x hot spares is certainly an option but personally I'd just go with one and if a rebuild ever kicked off I'd watch it in case another drive dumps out and physical swap it out. I like to think those odds are low (when using quality HDDs) and with a backup of my data I don't sweat it too much.

As for drives, I swear by Seagate Enterprise HDDs in rackmount servers I build but for a desktop NAS that's next to you all day I'd avoid them over 4TB. They're infamous for an annoying humming/buzzing at idle. Ironically they're perfectly tolerable when working but there's something up with idle noise, and I've seen it on average with about 1/5 drives with 6TB (v4) and 8TB (v5) drives.

Its odd the Seagate guy would recommend regular IronWolfs when you're looking at chassis that hold more than 8 drives as the IronWolfs are designed for NASs up to 8 drives. The IronWolf Pros look real nice and as far as I can tell from the specs they're basically an enterprise drive with a red sticker on them that says "IronWolf..." That said, I'm hoping they've fixed the idle buzzing cause I have a quote out to a customer for a desktop NAS system filled with them.

Large bulk storage is going in the direction of object storage vs block storage with RAID. Basically like how cloud storage providers do it. Just slap in a ton of mix/matched drives and when data is written there's an application that distributes multiple copies of the data across multiple drives in the system. If a drive dies nobody cares as there's 2 other copies of the data somewhere. You just go swap it out. There's no rebuild time. You also get deduplication & compression. Its what things like hyper-converged infrastructure is doing in the data center, and its awesome. Its just not mainstream at the consumer level. So for now, RAID RAID RAID.

seagate_surfer · Jul 13, 2017

marko55 :

Having both your production and backup arrays in the same chassis certainly brings a little risk in itself. A bad firmware or environmental issue could kill both in one swoop. For your on site, another option would be to go with a QNAP setup. You could use Thunderbold to direct connect to this (https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/model.php?II=268&ref=product_overview) and then put another basic network-attached QNAP somewhere in the building. The nice thing about having two QNAPs is there's multiple ways to back up between the QNAPs with the QNAP backup app. You can do scheduled or real-time replication. These NASs also do WAY more than just storage.

Just load whatever you get out with good quality NAS or enterprise drives for sure! Higher URE the better and the cost between 10^14 drives and 10^15 drives isn't that huge.

In your main array I agree with RAID-6. Even with large 8-10TB drives. You have a backup anyway. Just note that a rebuild of that array could take a week, literally, with 8-10TB drives (depends a lot on the RAID controller too) if you're using it while its rebuilding.

- Yeah, RAID 10 rebuild times are much quicker but you sacrifice a ton (50%) of space to RAID and like Seagate-guy said its almost no more redundant than a RAID-6 with as many disks as you're using in the array.
- RAID-1 is just gonna burn a ton of disk space and drive bays and you'd have to manage a bunch of arrays.
- 2 x hot spares is certainly an option but personally I'd just go with one and if a rebuild ever kicked off I'd watch it in case another drive dumps out and physical swap it out. I like to think those odds are low (when using quality HDDs) and with a backup of my data I don't sweat it too much.

As for drives, I swear by Seagate Enterprise HDDs in rackmount servers I build but for a desktop NAS that's next to you all day I'd avoid them over 4TB. They're infamous for an annoying humming/buzzing at idle. Ironically they're perfectly tolerable when working but there's something up with idle noise, and I've seen it on average with about 1/5 drives with 6TB (v4) and 8TB (v5) drives.

Its odd the Seagate guy would recommend regular IronWolfs when you're looking at chassis that hold more than 8 drives as the IronWolfs are designed for NASs up to 8 drives. The IronWolf Pros look real nice and as far as I can tell from the specs they're basically an enterprise drive with a red sticker on them that says "IronWolf..." That said, I'm hoping they've fixed the idle buzzing cause I have a quote out to a customer for a desktop NAS system filled with them.

Large bulk storage is going in the direction of object storage vs block storage with RAID. Basically like how cloud storage providers do it. Just slap in a ton of mix/matched drives and when data is written there's an application that distributes multiple copies of the data across multiple drives in the system. If a drive dies nobody cares as there's 2 other copies of the data somewhere. You just go swap it out. There's no rebuild time. You also get deduplication & compression. Its what things like hyper-converged infrastructure is doing in the data center, and its awesome. Its just not mainstream at the consumer level. So for now, RAID RAID RAID.

Thank you for using Seagate drives. We did provide information to the OP regarding both standard IronWolf and IronWolf Pro, because while the enclosure may have 12 bays, they don't mention how many drives they are going to be going for at any given time, and they also did ask if there is a better solution than the particular 12-bay enclosure they're looking into, so it's not set in stone that this is the one they're going for. We provided information on both the standard and Pro drives so that the user could then determine which fits their needs if that is the direction they do decide to go in the end.

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RAID or JBOD? (Safety Back-Up, Thunderbolt 3, 10TB Enterprise Drives)

FrenchQuarter

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FireWire2

FireWire2

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seagate_surfer

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marko55

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seagate_surfer

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