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RAID to the AID (part 1)
Author: sCrIpTmUnKeE19 May
For the past while I’ve been itching to build a storage array and/or a NAS. The reason for the need & desire for a storage solution is that between my wife and myself, we have hundreds of gigs of photos, home movie, music & ripped movies spread across 3 computers, multiple backups and some of stuff stored on DVD-Rs. Basically our current data storage & backup solution is CRAP!
So, I’ve tossed back & forth the idea of getting one of the off the shelf NAS devices by Thecus, Netgear, LaCie or Buffalo. I am mostly considering one of the Thecus devices. I believe they are running Linux, which I really like. Plus they provide a long laundry list of features amoung their devices. I have been looking at one of the N4100 serious or the N5200. The N4100s supports 4 SATA drives and the N5200 holds 5. Either would work. They all support RAID 0, 1, 5 and JBOD. The networking options are pretty nice to.
The other option I have kicked around was using an existing machine, loading it with SATA disks and then using FreeNAS or rolling my own solution with Linux to manage the data store. Doing it this way adds some limitation. One limit is the bus speed. In my existing system I only have standard PCI slots. Then in my box of extra motherboards, processors & parts I am still limited by only having PCI slots. It would be nice to have a system with PCI-X for PCI-Express slots, but to go out and upgrade a full system to gain that level of bus speed is not economical.
The next limit I have is cold hard cash!
OK, I am not truly limited on the financial side, but I do prefer to be on the cheap side. I don’t like to spend too much on items that I know I can get similar functionality from a less expensive items. The cost of a “true” hardware RAID card is way out of my mental budget. I can’t see paying over $200 for a damn expansion card. That means I am looking at RAID enabled cards that are providing software RAID, a.k.a. Fake RAID. The software RAID provided on the expansion cards can be a step above the “fake” RAID provided on most modern motherboards. That doesn’t sit all that well in the pit of my stomach. Not after recently talking with a co-worker that lost a lot of personal data because the RAID on his motherboard failed & corrupted his hard drives. He was running a 1+0 RAID across 4 drives. He should have been pretty safe against failure, but he wasn’t. I am looking at running RAID for the reliability factor. After that story I am over all worried. Myself, I would not run anything but RAID 5.
So knowing that I am not going to put out the cash for a full hardware RAID card & I am still not sure if I am going to do an external NAS system. I am left at looking at rolling my own solution using the software RAID provided by a sub 200 dollar SATA RAID card or buying any cheap SATA card that provides 4 to 8 ports and using the RAID capabilities built into the Linux kernel. This final solution doesn’t scare me too much. I am pretty damn sure that the reliability of the Linux kernel’s RAID is good. I would bet most of the software RAID cards are running embedded Linux anyways and using the RAID stack within the card.
So now the research and testing starts. I have purchased 4 1 terabyte SATA II hard drives. I still need a SATA controller to drive the hard drives and a raid cage to hold the hard drives. I am currently scowering newegg.com, Tiger Direct and other sites for highly rated SATA controllers that work well with Linux. Once I buy the controller and start my testing I will post the next piece of RAID to the AID.
-Ken
- Filed under: Storage, Technology
6 Responses for "RAID to the AID (part 1)"
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Hey, great post, really well written. You should post more about this.
I would avoid the fake RAID route as well. I started out using it >5 years ago and although I never had any problems with a RAID-1 implementation, when I wanted to move the disks from system A to system B they weren’t portable, so you’re kind of back to the same problem with using a hardware RAID.
Also for an intranet application at home, a system with a modest CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 4 SATAs in either a RAID-5 or RAID-6 should be more than adequate using the software RAID that comes with a typical linux distro. I’ve setup several of these, usually as a RAID-1+0, mainly because I just like that configuration, using 4 1TB drives. ~2TB of space is plenty for our current home server needs now. I usually have to revisit this issue and upgrade the diskspace every 18-24 months.
Using lvcreate, pvcreate, mdadm, etc. are pretty straight forward commands and there is a lot of good info out there that should help make this pretty quick work.
Just my $0.02.
slmingol,
Thanks for your insight. I still haven’t moved forward on this project. But once I do I will post about it. And for sure, once the RAID array or whatever drive configuration I setup, I am for sure going to put LVM on top of the disk array so I can better manage the available space.
It was weird to hear you had issues moving your RAID array. If it was a linux kernel raid, it should have been system portable. But if it was the “fake” raid on the motherboard, then I could see the RAID array not being portable.
Thanks again,
Ken
I too had too much data spread across too many computers not being backed up, and ended up going with a ReadyNAS NV+. The size of a small toaster, its low profile and reasonably quiet fan make it easy to leave running in any room. I plug it into a wireless router with an Ethernet cable, and then the drive is easily available to all devices on my network. I’ve used it to backup Linux, Mac OS X and Windows laptops with minimal fuss.
The unit holds up to four drives. I have 4 1-TB drives in mine, giving me ~3TB of storage. I started with only 2 500MB drives, but using their X-RAID technology upgraded to larger drives without losing data and the volume automatically expanded. Not a quick operation, but it worked.
I was worried when NetGear bought out the original company making the device, but they have continued to support and upgrade it. I move a lot and carry the drive with me, so its compact size is one of the biggest selling features, along with its continued reliability.
(The biggest oddity I’ve run into is that the drives themselves get stuck in the unit. Searching online you find that the fix is to use a paperclick to flip a switch inside and pop the stuck drives out. Odd and cheap seeming, but otherwise things have worked great.)
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