el-John-o
Dabbler
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2013
- Messages
- 15
Hey all,
So I have an Intel/IBM Hardware RAID controller that is 4 port and matches up with a 4 port hot swap bay on my IBM eServe. The RAID controller only supports up to 1TB drives. There are no firmware updates to increase that capacity.
It is a SATA 1.5gbps PCI-X (NOT to be confused with PCI Express!) card. The motherboard has an Intel hardware RAID controller on it as well, but it only has two channels and two ports. It supports 2TB drives.
So I have three options;
1) Ditch the Intel/IBM RAID controller and replace it with a cheap software 'RAID' controller that works in PCI-X (whether my hardware RAID or a new controller, it would be in JBOD mode and letting FreeNAS handle the RAID). Then, install 4 2TB drives in the hot swap bays.
2) Install 2 2TB drives on the motherboard, and 2 1TB drives plugged into the hardware RAID controller.
3) Keep the hardware RAID controller and install 4 1TB drives. This is probably adequate for me, in RAIDZ that's almost 3TB of usable data. But it has the obvious disadvantage of not being scalable in the future, 2TB drives are a much better value as they aren't much more expensive than 1TB drives.
So, with performance and such in mind, what do you think the best solution will be? Would I take a hit moving off of hardware controllers? Right now I only have two drives on the motherboard (also an Intel hardware controller, it's own CPU and memory, etc.), and I'm saturating GbE. I'd hate to give that up and I think I'd rather to the 2x2TB and 2x1TB solution than take a serious performance hit. But I wanted to know if you all thought a cheap controller (A PCI-X hardware controller is out of my price range) would still allow me to see the performance levels I'm seeing? PCI-X also doesn't have a lot of bandwidth, so I kind of wonder if moving ANY drives over to the controller might slow me down...
So I have an Intel/IBM Hardware RAID controller that is 4 port and matches up with a 4 port hot swap bay on my IBM eServe. The RAID controller only supports up to 1TB drives. There are no firmware updates to increase that capacity.
It is a SATA 1.5gbps PCI-X (NOT to be confused with PCI Express!) card. The motherboard has an Intel hardware RAID controller on it as well, but it only has two channels and two ports. It supports 2TB drives.
So I have three options;
1) Ditch the Intel/IBM RAID controller and replace it with a cheap software 'RAID' controller that works in PCI-X (whether my hardware RAID or a new controller, it would be in JBOD mode and letting FreeNAS handle the RAID). Then, install 4 2TB drives in the hot swap bays.
2) Install 2 2TB drives on the motherboard, and 2 1TB drives plugged into the hardware RAID controller.
3) Keep the hardware RAID controller and install 4 1TB drives. This is probably adequate for me, in RAIDZ that's almost 3TB of usable data. But it has the obvious disadvantage of not being scalable in the future, 2TB drives are a much better value as they aren't much more expensive than 1TB drives.
So, with performance and such in mind, what do you think the best solution will be? Would I take a hit moving off of hardware controllers? Right now I only have two drives on the motherboard (also an Intel hardware controller, it's own CPU and memory, etc.), and I'm saturating GbE. I'd hate to give that up and I think I'd rather to the 2x2TB and 2x1TB solution than take a serious performance hit. But I wanted to know if you all thought a cheap controller (A PCI-X hardware controller is out of my price range) would still allow me to see the performance levels I'm seeing? PCI-X also doesn't have a lot of bandwidth, so I kind of wonder if moving ANY drives over to the controller might slow me down...
