Questions on RAID setup

[xjoeyx]

Specs:
Case Size: 2U
Motherboard: Asus Z8PE-D12
CPU: 2x Xeon E5506 (2.13 ghz)
Ram: 32GB (4x8gb) DDR3 1333 MHZ ECC Reg
PSU: 600W
OS: Debian

Usage: Personal use really, mainly just a project that will probably just end up running a LAMP server but still aiming for decently high specs so lets just pretend this is to run several game servers or some sort of performance-heavy applications.

Did a bit of research on raid setups and controllers, and I figured RAID 10 should fit me well. I know hard drives are currently inflated in price over the flood but have been coming down lately. What would be an ideal raid card for 4 Hard Drives@ 7200 rpm (may go higher if it's worth it). Was also debating on having an SSD strictly for the OS.

Please advise, thanks.

 

[danraies]

An SSD for the OS plus a RAID is a good choice. If you're spending money on a high-priced RAID card, though, RAID5 is probably a better choice. When you're shopping for RAID cards your first concern should be Linux support.

 

[xjoeyx]

Why would Raid5 be a better choice over Raid 10? Aren't the read speeds (or was it write speeds, i don't remember which) almost 2x faster then Raid 5

 

[danraies]

It is my understanding that theoretically RAID5 is a little faster in write and RAID10 is a little faster in read (it's possible that I have those backwards), but those differences are pretty small with recent hardware and it's about a wash.

When you're dealing with a relatively small array, the advantage of RAID5 is a higher capacity. Four 1TB drives in RAID10 will have a 2TB capacity and four 1TB drives in RAID5 will have a 3TB capacity (assuming no hot spare, which you shouldn't use anyway). Both configurations can withstand a single drive failure. RAID10 can sometimes withstand a second drive failure depending on which drive fails.

There's an arguments for both so it's up to you, but if it were me I would go with RAID5.