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RAID card buying advice

post #1 of 19
Thread Starter 
I'm looking to buy a RAID card for a server I'm refurbishing/inheriting.

It will contain 8x 3.5" SATA II hard drives, so I'm looking for a RAID card that can connect to 8 hard drives.

However, I plan on running unRAID on this server, OR RAID 5 if unRAID falls through, so it would need to support RAID 5 as well.

I'm looking to keep this as absolutely cheap as possible, like under $150. I don't know if that will get me hardware RAID or just the ability to connect 8 hard drives, but either way, it needs to stay under that price.

I'm a little confused on the compatibilities between SAS, SCSI, SATA, all those, so the Newegg searching has been pretty tough so far.

Thanks for your time!
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post #2 of 19
What type of fall back options are you considering if unraid doesn't work out?

The IBM M1015 is popular and reported to work well in unraid, Linux (mdadm) and many ZFS builds. You can usually get them on ebay for $60-80. It has 8 ports and will support drives larger than 2.2TB.

If you are looking for hardware raid you would probably want to consider something else.
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post #3 of 19
Thread Starter 
I'd want to fall back to RAID 5 (if it supports 8 drives) in the event that unRAID doesn't work out. Would a software RAID 5 be compatible with the card you're specifying?
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post #4 of 19
Yeah, UnRAID doesn't require a raid controller, just an HBA to get you the ports. If you want a hardware controller under $150, take a look at the Dell PERC 6/i. One of the most popular basic controllers...Raid 0/1/5/6/10/50/60, 8 drives, 256MB Cache...and can be under $100 on eBay. You should be able to find one and a Battery Backup Unit for under $150.
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post #5 of 19
Thread Starter 
Cool...thanks for the advice! I think I might be able to figure a way out that would work best.

Basically, I need an FTP server to the Unraid data as an absolute last resort, but would much rather have it accessible through an HTTPS web server. Now, unRAID doesn't do this, so would it be possible to run a seperate Linux or Windows Server machine (the one with significant RAM and processing power) that could just see the entirely seperate unRAID computer as a single drive that it uses to index data?

Basically, use one computer as a web server, which stores its data on a separate unRAID server. Is that even possible?
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post #6 of 19
Quote:
Originally Posted by kubed_zero View Post

Cool...thanks for the advice! I think I might be able to figure a way out that would work best.
Basically, I need an FTP server to the Unraid data as an absolute last resort, but would much rather have it accessible through an HTTPS web server. Now, unRAID doesn't do this, so would it be possible to run a seperate Linux or Windows Server machine (the one with significant RAM and processing power) that could just see the entirely seperate unRAID computer as a single drive that it uses to index data?
Basically, use one computer as a web server, which stores its data on a separate unRAID server. Is that even possible?

Should be possible with UNC paths, or mapped drives. I do pretty much that exactly with my SABnzbd, SickBeard, CouchPotato, and Headphones environment. All of these web based apps run on a VM, but their download directories are on my Network Unified Storage server. So they do the work, but the data goes straight to my storage box.

Or if you wanted to really get into it, set up an iSCSI Target on your storage box, then connect to that iSCSI Target from the web server, and the web server will see that iSCSI drive as a local drive.
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RAMHard DriveOptical DriveCooling
Mushkin Enhanced Redline DDR3-1866 16GB (4X4GB) Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe SATA III 60GB Generic DVD-RW Corsair Hydro H60 
OSMonitorMonitorMonitor
Windows Server 2008R2 (setup a workstation) Dell E2011H 20-inch Widescreen Dell E2011H 20-inch Widescreen Dell E2011H 20-inch Widescreen 
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post #7 of 19
Sounds like you can get all of your storage to appear as one pool too:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Configuration_Tutorial#Create_User_Shares
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post #8 of 19
I'd seriously consider the iSCSI path if you have a gigabit network.

There are many ways to implement targets too.
    
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post #9 of 19
Thread Starter 
I'd consider it if it were cheap! Is there any OCN guide or something on the basics? The actual computer that would do the processing has two Intel GbE ports, so that would probably work. Only thing is, I don't fully understand how unRAID could be configured to be the target of an iSCSI path. I guess a lot of this could be answered from some sort of wiki or guide though, couldn't it?
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post #10 of 19
Assuming unraid and your client box supports iSCSI, it would be configured entirely in software both on the server and client end. No additional hardware required. Also you only need one NIC per box to make this work.
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