Solved Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?
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Hi,
Thanks for your support, secondly check this link.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-r230/pd?oc=pe_r230_1346_a&model_id=poweredge-r230
Notice under Tech Specs it states:
RAID Controllers
S130, H330, H730, H830What does this mean, are all those are bundled with the server ? seems very from the truth.
Or it does only support those types of RAID adapters, and does the server comes with only of the RAID adapters ?
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@msff-amman-Itofficer said in Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?:
RAID Controllers
S130, H330, H730, H830What does this mean, are all those are bundled with the server ? seems very from the truth.
That is the list from which you can pick when purchasing. Take note that the S130 is NOT a RAID controller, it is FakeRAID and should never be used in a production environment.
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There is someone on SW just yesterday who used a Dell PERC S100 "RAID controller" and their system went down because of it. They can't boot like they could with an actual RAID controller.
The H330 is probably okay, but the H730 is likely where you will want to be. What is the setup of RAID that you intend to use?
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@msff-amman-Itofficer said in Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?:
Or it does only support those types of RAID adapters, and does the server comes with only of the RAID adapters ?
RAID hardware does not require support from the server. RAID cards are just PCIe cards, so you can use them from any vendor. You can use HPE SmartArray cards, LSI MegaRAID, or really anything.
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@scottalanmiller said in Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?:
Interesting information in all of your posts, and Noted I wont use the fake RAID and had my eye on either the ;
H330, H730
Depending on the price, I know H730 will be superior cause of cache.Umm It will be RAID 10 hyper visor that will have couple of VMs for Linux + MySQL web application
Also since I am doing this, one idea popped in my head, which is theoretically OpenZFS and BTRFS do not require raid cards, the free aspect of this solution got me excited.
Is BTRFS on 4 drives RAID 10 gives the same safety as of RAID controller ? Performance can suffer I am realistic.This 2015 link have some info, but dont know if it is still valid:
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@msff-amman-Itofficer said in Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?:
Is BTRFS on 4 drives RAID 10 gives the same safety as of RAID controller ? Performance can suffer I am realistic.
Performance SHOULD be faster, not slower. Hardware RAID is where performance suffers normally.
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/hardware-and-software-raid/
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2016/12/the-software-raid-inflection-point/
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BtrFS RAID is extremely new, why are you looking at that instead of tried and true MD RAID which you would expect to use on KVM or Xen systems?
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LVM does not provide RAID. LVM rides on top of RAID (or vice versa) and recently they have integrated MD management into LVM so that it can appear that you have RAID inside of it, but it is still MD handling the RAID. On Linux you have MD, ZFS and BtrFS RAID options. But ZFS is not available on the better platforms and is extremely new on Linux in an enterprise way, so probably not best unless really needed and is dramatically overhyped in general and isn't designed to be fast. BtrFS is super new and fine as a general filesystem but advanced features on it are pretty experimental. MD is what we've used for decades.
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What hypervisor are you considering? VMware ESXi cannot use software RAID. Hyper-V can but nothing enterprise or production ready.
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KVM
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Got it, I just saw BTRFS in Centos installation option and been playing with it but in my lab and not production.
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@scottalanmiller said in Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?:
MD RAID
People rave about the new features of BTRFS so I thought can I do it for a new production server in 2017, perhaps I thought by now we will have more people tested it.
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With KVM you'll want either MD RAID for software RAID or a good hardware RAID card. Those are really the two choices.
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Got it, many thanks.
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@msff-amman-Itofficer said in Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?:
@scottalanmiller said in Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?:
MD RAID
People rave about the new features of BTRFS so I thought can I do it for a new production server in 2017, perhaps I thought by now we will have more people tested it.
Yeah, people get excited about really inappropriate things. Make sure you read this...
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@scottalanmiller said in Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?:
With KVM you'll want either MD RAID for software RAID or a good hardware RAID card. Those are really the two choices.
No, the correct answer is that unless you are already intimately familiar with software RAID and your company will be able to easily replace you with someone else that can handle software RAID, you do not use software RAID.
It is nice and shiny and bullet proof, to those that know it. Generally there are zero viable use cases in the SMB market for it. The fact that you even asked the question means buy a hardware RAID card.
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Jared is correct, this is an "if you have to ask" scenario. Software RAID requires extra knowledge and support capabilities and an IT staff that all understand how to react to it. You lose capabilities like blind swapping that are really important for SMBs to be able to change out staff and use consultants.
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@scottalanmiller said in Help me with this Server Purchase (beginner in server hardware) regarding RAID ?:
like bland swapping
hahahahaha
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The selection of a RAID controller is one the most important parts when configuring a server. In no way a software RAID will be as fast as a hardware RAID and its model is greatly dependent on the amount of disks you will be using. It would be much easier to provide provide you with a specific model if you would provide us with the amount of disks(type) you are planing to use.
