Onboard RAID controller vs RAID Adapter

[jai_123]

Can some one please guide me on performance, advantage / disadvantage.

1. Creating SSD RAID 1 using an onboard SATA3 ( via C232 / C236 ) controller on latest Motherboard Like Supermicro X11 series.

2. Creating SSD RAID 1 Using a RAID adapter (Zero Memory) on similar motherboard.

I understand all modern boards now support RAID 0,1 and 10. What are the difference in the above two cases.

 

[drtweak]

The difference.

Onboard

Pros: No need to buy extra RAID controllers
Cons: Requires CPU to do the RAID work, RAID is still a software RAID but with Hardware management. If you motherboard takes a dump, upgrade BIOS, reset BIOS, RAID is a pain to get back.

Add-In card:
Pros: CAN BE MOVED TO ANY PC. If that RAID card FAILS, just by the same exact one and it will pick up the RAID, RAID is hardware and managed by RAID card and not CPU

Cons: You have to buy it.

For RAID 1/0 most simple adding SATA controllers can do RAID 1/0. If you start looking for RAID 5/6/10/01/50/60 then you will be spending much more money.

if they are just hard drives and not SSD's a lot of times picking up a Used SATA II RAID card is a good deal. I had a Dell SAS 5 Adapter that i refurbished and used for quite a while. Then recently i picked up a LSI MegaRAID 8888 which holds up to 8 drives VS 4 drives. Works great for me.

 

[jai_123]

Thank you for the prompt responses and suggestions.

In case of HW RAID Controller Card should we choose a card with on-card cache w/ battery back-up ? Or a normal LSI card w/o cache.

I came across "LSI MegaRAID SATA/SAS 9260-4i 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 w/ 512MB onboard memory", it have a DDR II ram. Can we expect am improved performance by using this ?

I will really appreciate your suggestions.

 

[drtweak]

You only need those features if running RAID 5/6 as it helps with write performance and reduceds possibility of corruption.

For RAID 1 and 0 or 10 this is not needed as much as their is almost no overhead to slow down the RAID. It doesn't hurt to have it but unless it is a RAID 5/6 it isn't 100% needed.

 

[popatim]

Raid 0 and 1 run nearly as fast on chipset raid as on a dedicated raid card. There is to little performance gain to buy a raid card solely for the performance.

As drtweak mentioned, you buy a raid card for the extra pro's he mentioned.
So yes, definitely get the battery backup esp if your system is not on a UPS or does not have redundant power supplies. Its there to finish the writes from the raid cards buffer to drive in the event of power loss.