Best way to implement my new HighPoint RR4320?

[GrievousAngel]

hello to all,

first i am building a new computer for DAW (very read/write intensive digital audio & video recording / editing) applications and need some new advice as i do not want to make the same errors i may have made earlier.

assuming my mobo / CPU / memory & HDs are adequate.

how should i configure my new High Point RR4320 hardware RAID PCIe 8x card? as you may know it has 2 ports capable of 4 SAS/SATA HDs @ 3Gbs per port.

the more i think the more 'un-clearer' it gets!

i start thinking about the practice of putting the OS on C: and data on D: thingy in terms of the RR4320 port 1 and Port 2?

anyways . . . what are your suggestions based on what i laid out in this thread? i think this could be a very helpful thread to many of us into intensive workstation type appz with heavy I/O!

PART2:

what HDs should i use in this application? (4x) 16Mb cache 3Gb/s 74Gb SAS or SATA HDs in RAID10 (1+0)? SAS 15k or SATA 10k drives? or just go with the cheaper RAID Rated HDs like the WD RE3 Series?

please all suggestions welcome.

thanks,
billy

 

[r_manic]

All I know is that you should never make your OS drive part of a RAID array. That way, in case the array fails, you aren't left with a useless computer.

I think the best setup is:

C: -> OS, apps
D: -> data, collaterals

You only need RAID speed anyway when you're editing music, am I right?

 

[GrievousAngel]

yep that's the might concern, approaching continuous real-time digital recording of say 40+ tracks, smoothly!

thanks,
billy

 

[GrievousAngel]

HighPoint RR4320 specs:

Products -> SAS Series -> RocketRAID 4320


Host Adapter Architecture
Intel IOP348 (1.2GHz)
Up to 256MB DDR-II Memory
PCI-Express x8
2 internal mini-SAS/SATA 3Gb/s Device connectors
Up to 8 SAS/SATA Hard Drives 128 max hard drives via SAS expanders
NCQ (Native Command Queuing)
NVRAM
Battery Backup Unit Ready (BBU-03)
Low Profile
Supported RAID Feature
RAID Levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 50 and JBOD Multiple RAID Support
Online Array Roaming
Automatic RAID Rebuild
Automatic Drive Insertion
Quick Initialization
Online Capacity Expansion / Online RAID Level Migration
Hot Spare - (global)
Configurable stripe size
Staggered Drive Spin-up

Bad Sector Repair and Remapping
BIOS Booting Support
HighPoint RAID Management (HRM) Suite
Web GUI management utility
CLI (Command Line Interface)
Firmware / BIOS Management
Independent RAID Module Onboard
Monitor, Alert & Indicator
SMTP (Email Notification)
(Hard drive activity and failure) LED
SAF-TE chassis environment monitoring
Operating System Support
Microsoft® Windows® 2008/2003/XP/ 2000/x64 Edition/Vista 32 and 64 bit
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Open SuSE, Fedora Core, Debian
FreeBSD
Mac OS X
Linux Open Source Drivers
Native Support in Linux kernel 2.6.25

 

[endorphines]

I don't agree at all with what r_manic said. you don't want your os on the same array as your data, but unless you're running raid 0 for your os, putting it on an array will make it MORE rely able.
i myself have a highpoint card, but it is a rocket raid 2320, a sata only 8 port model. i have my os on a raid 1 array on fast drives so it's got redundancy. and all of my data is stored on another array on the same card made up of 4 1.5 tb drives.
that way if a reinstall is required for any reason, i can do it without touching my data, or is one array craters the other is left intact. i also have backups of course.
having your os on a separate array is also a performance move since while accessing data os functions will be slowed and vice versa.
As for drive choice, any setup with redundance would be good. i'd recomend raid 1 for your os since it won't need extensive capacity, and either raid 5 or raid 10 for your data. RAID rated drives are good, or you could go with raptors if they're in your budget, they've got exceptional MTBF ratings. Also some SSDs have even higher MTBF ratings.
I'd steer clear of sas drives, they're significantly more expensive and you won't see enough of a benefit from it in your implementation for it to be worth the cost.

 

[GrievousAngel]

I don't agree at all with what r_manic said. you don't want your os on the same array as your data, but unless you're running raid 0 for your os, putting it on an array will make it MORE rely able.
i myself have a highpoint card, but it is a rocket raid 2320, a sata only 8 port model. i have my os on a raid 1 array on fast drives so it's got redundancy. and all of my data is stored on another array on the same card made up of 4 1.5 tb drives.
that way if a reinstall is required for any reason, i can do it without touching my data, or is one array craters the other is left intact. i also have backups of course.
having your os on a separate array is also a performance move since while accessing data os functions will be slowed and vice versa.
As for drive choice, any setup with redundance would be good. i'd recomend raid 1 for your os since it won't need extensive capacity, and either raid 5 or raid 10 for your data. RAID rated drives are good, or you could go with raptors if they're in your budget, they've got exceptional MTBF ratings. Also some SSDs have even higher MTBF ratings.
I'd steer clear of sas drives, they're significantly more expensive and you won't see enough of a benefit from it in your implementation for it to be worth the cost.

hello,

i actually had the RR2320 and then decided to go with the 4320 (which may be a waste of $$ but exchanged via New Egg).

that sounds like my original plans anyway. why did you chose RAID1 for the OS (are the appz w/ the OS)? how many HD are required for RAID1 (2 min)? should i use a cheaper 7200 SATA 3GBs there?

what if i can find a SSD of say 80Gb for my OS in the same price range as the RAID1 HD cost? BTW: when you say OS are INCLUDING all appz, i.e. everything except data? should a 80Gb SSD be large enough for OS/appz as i do not carry a large amount of appz? how large is Windows7?

RAID10 for the Data (port 2 on the RR) > makes good sense to me.

IF i use a SSD for the OS disk, should i put the SSD on the RR Port 1 as a JBOD ( i am assuming the RR can support SATA SSD HDs)?

which SSD do you perfer?

thanks for the info.

later,
Billy

 

[endorphines]

hello,

i actually had the RR2320 and then decided to go with the 4320 (which may be a waste of $$ but exchanged via New Egg).

that sounds like my original plans anyway. why did you chose RAID1 for the OS (are the appz w/ the OS)? how many HD are required for RAID1 (2 min)? should i use a cheaper 7200 SATA 3GBs there?

what if i can find a SSD of say 80Gb for my OS in the same price range as the RAID1 HD cost? BTW: when you say OS are INCLUDING all appz, i.e. everything except data? should a 80Gb SSD be large enough for OS/appz as i do not carry a large amount of appz? how large is Windows7?

RAID10 for the Data (port 2 on the RR) > makes good sense to me.

IF i use a SSD for the OS disk, should i put the SSD on the RR Port 1 as a JBOD ( i am assuming the RR can support SATA SSD HDs)?

which SSD do you perfer?

thanks for the info.

later,
Billy

my case is too small for 6 3.5 in hard drives. so i'm actually using 2 250gb laptop drives in raid 1 for my os. which means windows takes a long time to start. but i have all of my applications installed on my faster raid 5 array so they load fast. if you can find two decently cheap SSDs to put in raid 1 you'd have the exact opposite of me, but the same reliability. your applications and windows 7 should all fit, so long as your data goes on the raid 5 array.
If you're not worried about instant recovery you could just do a full scheduled backup from a single non raided ssd to your raid 5 array so that you'd replace the drive if it was dead and re-install then recover.

 

[peggy]

hello to all,

first i am building a new computer for DAW (very read/write intensive digital audio & video recording / editing) applications and need some new advice as i do not want to make the same errors i may have made earlier.

assuming my mobo / CPU / memory & HDs are adequate.

how should i configure my new High Point RR4320 hardware RAID PCIe 8x card? as you may know it has 2 ports capable of 4 SAS/SATA HDs @ 3Gbs per port.

the more i think the more 'un-clearer' it gets!

i start thinking about the practice of putting the OS on C: and data on D: thingy in terms of the RR4320 port 1 and Port 2?

anyways . . . what are your suggestions based on what i laid out in this thread? i think this could be a very helpful thread to many of us into intensive workstation type appz with heavy I/O!

PART2:

what HDs should i use in this application? (4x) 16Mb cache 3Gb/s 74Gb SAS or SATA HDs in RAID10 (1+0)? SAS 15k or SATA 10k drives? or just go with the cheaper RAID Rated HDs like the WD RE3 Series?

please all suggestions welcome.

thanks,
billy

PART1:
Of course you can set OS on C: port1 and data on D: port2, but you need to go into RR4320 bios to set up booting device.
PART2:
I suggest you to configure, OS use SAS 15k drivers to build RAID10 , data use WD RE3 Series drivers to build RAID5 is the best configure.