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SMB, question about adding RAID to a whitebox for File Serving.

Tags:
  • NAS / RAID
  • SMB
  • Storage
Last response: in Storage
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November 26, 2007 9:02:25 PM

I run a SMB and am running out of space on my servers, and due to being in construction my budget is not as big as would be. I am looking at a white box acting as a small win2k3 server as the place to throw in some storage. After doing some research, it looks as though 4 x 150GB Raptor drives on top of a Promise TX4310 PCI running in RAID 5 would be the best bang for under $1k. I would love to have a very quick file server (no database or web, just straight file access .CAD etc) Questions I have then are..

1) Raptor 150GB's don't show as compatible, yet the 74 and the 350's do. Am I taking a chance going with Promise controller and compatibility??

2) 4 raptors in raid 5, all of this on a PCI bus, am I overshooting the capabilities of the bus?

3) The white box is a simple AMD Sempron 2ghz with 2GB ram. It does have a gigabit ethernet setup however. Will I be bringing this system to its knees with a raid 5 and 4 raptors?

4) I can get 4 Hitachi 500gb drives for a lot cheaper, run those in raid 5 and have 1.5TB of storage as opposed to 450GB at the cost of losing performance. Promise mentions a max 1TB..is that for the whole RAID set, or per drive attached?

Thank you for any direction.

More about : smb question adding raid whitebox file serving

November 27, 2007 2:01:35 AM

1) More than likely that 150's will be ok

2) Possibly, that is the main reason for PCI-X and alot are also using PCI-e now... is there any chance that your current machine has PCI-e?

3) On a seperate RAID card like this you will not have an issue, processing will be done onboard and will more than likely not cost you an CPU time at all.

4) actually found this on the data sheet "Storage capacity up to 4TB (4x500gb hard drives in 2x controller system) So you would be fine with that limitation. Let it be known though that anything over 2TB partition will not be recognised with "normal" master record. You would need to convert to GUID table, which is supported in 2k3

Personally id go for WD or Seagate 500gb drives they are best $/Gb value atm and cheaper for not much performance lost, and in sequential read/writes with large files (CAD drawings) the bigger WD or seagates will be faster than the Raptors. I would also look at getting a PCI-e RAID card if you have a PCI-e port as these will be quicker and will also allow you to grab an 8port card for scalibility in the future. I currently own an Adaptec 3805 which is awesome, a little expensive but awesome.

Hope i helped.
November 27, 2007 3:22:44 PM

chookman, thank you for the detailed response! Unfortunately the board is a little bit older and thus, no PCI-e slots available. 4x WD Sata in RAID 5 seems like the ideal cost / need at the moment. thanks!
November 27, 2007 8:21:34 PM

No probs ;) 
BTW that is a nice RAID card you picked for price/performance/what you need. I dont think i said that
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