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The Storage King

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jay_l_a   11-03-2009 at 01:42:58 AM

Sorry for the cross-post - initially had this in the homebuild section:

 

I've built many machines in the past. But I'm building a machine for a friend, and his needs are somewhat different than the gaming rigs I normally build.
He is going to be mostly using the machine for photo editing. Lots of Photos. Terabytes of Photos.

 

So I've put together a public wish list below, but I have a few questions, mostly RAID related.

 

I want to use RAID 5 to give him some redundancy. I'm aiming to use 7 1.5TB drives (I may change motherboard to one with 10 SATA connectors, and use 9 1.5TB drives).

 

Will RAID 5 work with this many drives?
Is the onboard RAID controller worth using, or would I be better with a discrete card?

 

Any other general suggestions or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
J

 


http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/ [...] r=12282692

 


Message edited by jay_l_a on 11-03-2009 at 01:51:04 AM
------------------------------ GA-X38-DS4 (BIOS F3)||E8400 C2D (3.6GHz)||2x 1Gb Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 4-4-4-12||320Gb WD Caviar||2x 750Gb WD Caviar||Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750W||2x HD4870 512Mb(Crossfire)||HT Omega Striker 7.1
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jay_l_a   11-03-2009 at 01:46:33 AM

The plan is to go with 9x1.5 TB drives, hopefully yielding about 12TB with RAID 5

------------------------------ GA-X38-DS4 (BIOS F3)||E8400 C2D (3.6GHz)||2x 1Gb Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 4-4-4-12||320Gb WD Caviar||2x 750Gb WD Caviar||Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750W||2x HD4870 512Mb(Crossfire)||HT Omega Striker 7.1
 Reply to jay_l_a
Sonic-Boom   11-03-2009 at 02:22:03 AM

I found this thread in the New Systems Build and it includes an endless supply of RAID goodness, jesus they know alot about RAID
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] kill-build

Reply to Sonic-Boom
Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   11-03-2009 at 03:52:28 AM

jay_l_a, if the machine will be dedicated to storing data, and not used as workstation or other purposes, it might be good to look at better alternatives than Windows.

For example, FreeNAS is an easy way to escape the Windows environment, as Windows offers only basic RAID technology. Going for a non-Windows solution would also save the cost of any RAID controller; software RAID can be superior depending on configuration.

With this many disks in RAID5, having a good filesystem is very important. NTFS only has light-journaling (meta-data only journaling) which means that if you have a crash or power failure its possible to have filesystem corruption because of a 'journal overrun' - this affects mainly complex RAID setups with write-back enabled. Windows-based RAIDs also appear to break very easily, requiring proper system administration to restore and 'glue' the broken RAID together again.

In short, if you want to know more about non-windows fileservers/NAS i can help you. If the solution needs to be Windows based this limits your options signiciantly. Only Intel ICHxR drivers should be used for RAID5 whenever onboard RAID is to be used; and even then will you be at risk and have poor write speeds unless you activate the 'write caching' option in these drivers; which is dangerous and can lead to filesystem corruption.

Also note that RAID can never replace a backup; though some filesystems have backups integrated into their design by usign incremental snapshots. Such filesystems are ZFS, also available in FreeNAS and other advanced operating systems.

Hope any of this helps.

------------------------------ ...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
Reply to sub mesa
jay_l_a   11-03-2009 at 09:48:59 PM

sub mesa, thank you for sharing your knowledge.
The machine will be used as a workstation, but the friend in questions has very high storage needs. He already has about 7-8 terabytes of images that he wants in one central location, rather than the assorted external (slow) USB enclosures that he currently has. This really describes the overall goal.
Regarding your point about Windows based RAID not being very robust, do you know if this has changed in Windows 7?
I think the workstation in question will be Windows 7, but I see your point about limiting the options. Perhaps an alternative would be a Windows 7 workstation, and a large external enclosure/NAS, running something other than W7. This is where I am going to need advice/recommendations as this starts getting out of the realm of my knowledge.
Any further help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
J

------------------------------ GA-X38-DS4 (BIOS F3)||E8400 C2D (3.6GHz)||2x 1Gb Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 4-4-4-12||320Gb WD Caviar||2x 750Gb WD Caviar||Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750W||2x HD4870 512Mb(Crossfire)||HT Omega Striker 7.1
 Reply to jay_l_a
Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   11-04-2009 at 06:02:49 AM

Ofcourse, keep the workstation Windows i'm not suggesting he migrate to Linux or anything. But nothing prevents him from using a separate system dedicated to storage (NAS) and accessing it from his Windows 7 workstation; using SMB/CIFS or Windows Filesharing he would just have a X: drive letter which behaves more or less as a local drive; but could be running any filesystem as Windows doesn't have knowledge about the actual filesystem the NAS is using.

A good starter would be FreeNAS; its easy to setup, its easy to configure, doesn't require much technical knowledge or non-Windows knowledge and is a great way to get started.

Basically you need:
- windows 7 workstation
- gigabit networking with gigabit switch (use a switch with MTU 9k also known as Jumbo Frames for additional speed)
- NAS system running FreeNAS

The NAS itself could be a simple self-built system. I've posted a rather long reply with more information about such a project over here, maybe its useful:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/foru [...] l#t1781243

------------------------------ ...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
Reply to sub mesa
jay_l_a   11-04-2009 at 05:46:22 PM

Again, thanks for the info.

Something I am confused about: We may be talking about slightly different things. You mention that windows only offers basic RAID functionality. Are you talking about software RAID? The motherboard I am planning to use has a RAID controller, so in this configuration, I'd be using hardware RAID, correct?

I'm not averse to using a NAS, but a single box solution would probably make my friend much happier. Would adding a RAID controller card make any difference? If I set the RAID up in BIOS/ at the hardware level, the OS would see this as one giant drive, correct?

Thanks again.
J

------------------------------ GA-X38-DS4 (BIOS F3)||E8400 C2D (3.6GHz)||2x 1Gb Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 4-4-4-12||320Gb WD Caviar||2x 750Gb WD Caviar||Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750W||2x HD4870 512Mb(Crossfire)||HT Omega Striker 7.1
 Reply to jay_l_a
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