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We wanted to build an array with at least a 10 TB capacity, and with 12 drives, we were able to reach a total gross capacity of 12 TB. We decided to run both RAID 0 for maximum performance and RAID 5 to balance performance with data protection. While a RAID 0 configuration distributes data evenly across all drives using so-called stripe sets, RAID 5 adds parity information on one of the drives. Parity is also distributed across the drives to avoid one drive becoming a parity bottleneck.
RAID 0
In RAID 0, the total capacity equals the capacity of one Spinpoint F1 drive times the number of drives. Each drive has a net capacity of 1,000 GB, if one kilobyte equals 1,000 bytes, or 931.32 GB if one kilobyte is defined as 1,024 bytes. The latter is the way Windows handles storage capacity. Twelve times this capacity results in 11,175.87 GB.
RAID 5
RAID 5 requires at least three hard drives, and it provides the total capacity of all array member drives minus one drive. This type of array will maintain data integrity in case one drive fails. If you want an array to remain operational with two failed drives, then you need to run RAID 6. For our test array, the total RAID 5 capacity was 10,244.54 GB.
Controller: Areca ARC-1680iX-20
We chose a 16-port combined SAS/SATA controller from Areca, the 20-port ARC-1680iX. The full-sized card is based on a x8 PCI Express interface and includes an Intel IOP348 processor at 1,200 MHz, which provides a good basis for serious XOR acceleration and RAID 5 performance. The card comes with a DDR2 DIMM socket and can hold anything between 512 MB and 4 GB; we used the default 512 MB module. Be sure to purchase ECC memory if you decide to install a larger cache capacity. Areca is among the few controller vendors to support RAID 6.
This card comes with a network port, which exclusively serves as a enabler of out-of-band management. Hence it’s possible to configure the card via the built-in Web server independent from the host PC’s operating system. The 20 SAS ports are available through multi-lane connectors (4 internal, 1 external), which is why we used 4-to-1 SAS fanout cables to attach the Samsung drives. As you might recall, SAS is fully SATA-compatible thanks to STP, the SATA Tunneling Protocol.
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somehow i wouldnt trust 12 samsung hdd's in a raid array...
pointless seeing as the controller alone costs $1,199.99
Can't trust a huge array without the expensive controller though.
this is nothing else than tehnological perversion
12 GB!?! That's awesome! That's more than my 8GB memory!
12GB! FTW!
12GB of important data + raid0 + hard drive failure =
thats about what a monster gaming computer costs but then again most gamers (well at least me) dont have a lot of money to spend around 2500 for hard drives and controller. imagine the monster fps rates youd get im truly jealous of whatever computer that would go into.
thats about what a monster gaming computer costs but then again most gamers (well at least me) dont have a lot of money to spend around 2500 for hard drives and controller. imagine the monster fps rates youd get im truly jealous of whatever computer that would go into.
why would the fps go up with that array?
Yeah, but can it run Crysis?
But seriously, this is just an interesting look at what you can do if you have gobs of money laying around. While 99% of us don't, it's still cool to see what it does. Consider it them doing something ridiculous for you so you don't even have the temptation of being the only person to have done it.
Can't trust a huge array without the expensive controller though.
Incorrect
What you should have said is "Can't trust a huge array without redundancy (depending on if up-time is importance) and sufficient backups (depending on importance of data).
Holy crap, failure is a sure thing with 12 cheap-o Samsung Spinpoints in a RAID-0.
BTW from my last server array (minimal use - storage mostly) using 3x1tb WD GP's (16mb cache versions) in RAID5 (freenas software) - looking at my S.M.A.R.T status of all the drives showed me that 2 of the 3 hdd's developed bad sectors (or re-allocated sectors) - any could have been fatal etc - all this from minimal load and what not!
With a array like that i wouldnt even go with raid5 with those HDD's - too much data all on one array to risk - id prefer smaller arrays (from experience)
Now another interesting test would be to take the same drives, skip the expensive controller and use OpenSolaris and ZFS with its RAIDZ2 configuration (equals RAID 6) and see what performance you could get using "normal" SATA-ports.
Holy crap, failure is a sure thing with 12 cheap-o Samsung Spinpoints in a RAID-0.
We call them sam-dungs at my work
Atleast they didnt use 12 seagate hdd's with "SD15" or slightly older firmware - we call them sea-fate's
The title was a little misleading. It's not like I have a $1k+ controller card in my back pocket, and I'm sure most other people don't either.
It would be sweet for a media server though, then I wouldn't have 4 drives in my PC. And it could heat my room in the winter.
somehow i wouldnt trust 12 samsung hdd's in a raid array...
I wouldn't be too worried really. So long it isn't seagate drives, it'll probably keep working.
I've got an array with 16x250gb samsungs, and another with 12x250gb samsungs here at work (regular desktop sata drives), and so far only one drive's failed - and as you can tell by the size, they're not new.
In contrast, I've had 7 1TB seagate hotswap server drives fail between january 19th this year and wednesday this week.
thats about what a monster gaming computer costs but then again most gamers (well at least me) dont have a lot of money to spend around 2500 for hard drives and controller. imagine the monster fps rates youd get im truly jealous of whatever computer that would go into.
Not sure what you're trying to say, but despite not improving fps, faster drives still make a huge impact. Sure it's irrelevant if the game stutters, but waiting for the load screen to go away in wow or any other game is almost just as frustrating. I'm using a raid 0 with two 500gb wd's as system, and I still find it rather slow. In fact the 5x500gb I used as storage earlier felt slow as well. Harddrives just never are fast enough, no matter the speed.
I wouldn't be too worried really. So long it isn't seagate drives, it'll probably keep working.I've got an array with 16x250gb samsungs, and another with 12x250gb samsungs here at work (regular desktop sata drives), and so far only one drive's failed - and as you can tell by the size, they're not new.In contrast, I've had 7 1TB seagate hotswap server drives fail between january 19th this year and wednesday this week.
Hence the name "sea-fate"
I know it seems the RAID5 array with 12 disks is reliable, but it's less reliable than a single disk. I'll explain: Say this array has been running for about 4 years as storage = minimal use, no intensive or long read/write operations. You're happy that no drive has failed yet and you're confident at the array's reliability since is RAID5. What you don't know is that if a drive fails and you attempt a rebuild there is a huge chance that another will fail since a rebuild of a 1TB drive is a lengthy IO operation and these drives are getting old. 12 drives is probably past the point where an array is less reliable than a single stand-alone drive.
I don't see what the problem is with samsung and reliability. I have 3 80GB that are about 5 years old and all of them still work. For what its worth I also have a 750GB sammy that is still working after 1 and a half years. Just like motherboards I think hdd reliability comes down to luck.