RAID controller questions

[ipwn3r456]

Hello everyone,

Looking to buy a RAID controller such as the LSI 9260-8i (or similar), I have a few questions.

1. I do know that those cards run really hot, but does the battery unit needs to be cooled as well (might consider getting a battery for the raid controller)?

2. Do RAID controllers work for all computers? I am looking to build a NAS using older hardware, that's probably why I am a bit concerned.

3. is a side case fan enough to cool the RAID controller? I might considering getting a PCIE slot fan for additional air flow for the RAID controller as well.

 

[drtweak]

For the cooling you can do the few different thing like you said. Having a fan that blow right on it is best.

If you plan on doing RAID 5/6 get a BBU. If it is RAID 1 or 0 you don't need it as much (Won't hurt but won't see a hug difference with a BBU like you do with RAID 5/6)

and for the most part they do work in any PC. There are some PC's i have used that do not see them but they are usually OEM pcs like Dells/HPs. Their low end desktops may not see the RAID controllers so that it makes you buy a better PC. if it was a custom built then more than likely you will not have an issue.

I have a LSI 8888elp for my Server. Have a Dual Core 1.8Ghz Celeron, 8GB RAM, Windows 10, and the card is running 8 drives. Kinda wish i had a better CPU as sometimes it does bottle neck when i watch movies off of it directly (Server is plugged into my TV) but other than that is suits me well.

 

[ipwn3r456]

For the cooling you can do the few different thing like you said. Having a fan that blow right on it is best.

If you plan on doing RAID 5/6 get a BBU. If it is RAID 1 or 0 you don't need it as much (Won't hurt but won't see a hug difference with a BBU like you do with RAID 5/6)

and for the most part they do work in any PC. There are some PC's i have used that do not see them but they are usually OEM pcs like Dells/HPs. Their low end desktops may not see the RAID controllers so that it makes you buy a better PC. if it was a custom built then more than likely you will not have an issue.

I have a LSI 8888elp for my Server. Have a Dual Core 1.8Ghz Celeron, 8GB RAM, Windows 10, and the card is running 8 drives. Kinda wish i had a better CPU as sometimes it does bottle neck when i watch movies off of it directly (Server is plugged into my TV) but other than that is suits me well.

Thanks for the response. I am planning to do RAID 5 with 4 drives, with future expansion to 8 drives if I need to. I guess I will just be safe and add more cooling, doesn't see hurt to add more.

Sadly, it's an old Dell XPS 8300 PC that I am planning to modify it as a NAS... I think I am just going to give it a try first, if anything happens, I might as well buy a used motherboard.

I always thought a NAS is more RAM dependent, but I guess there's other tasks that needs to be done. Hopefully a Core i7-2600 isn't too overkill for this, ha.

 

[drtweak]

Yea the i7 is probably over kill lol. Are you going to run like FreeNAS or something?

And yea in that case get a BBU. The BBU does NOT need to be cooled though as it does not get hot.

And how do you plan on fitting that many drives in a XPS case? Or are you putting that board in a new case? and the XPS SHOULD take a RAID card since it is a higher end machine.

 

[ipwn3r456]

Yea the i7 is probably over kill lol. Are you going to run like FreeNAS or something?

And yea in that case get a BBU. The BBU does NOT need to be cooled though as it does not get hot.

And how do you plan on fitting that many drives in a XPS case? Or are you putting that board in a new case? and the XPS SHOULD take a RAID card since it is a higher end machine.

No, I am not going to run FreeNAS, probably something like Windows Server 2012. Besides, running FreeNAS with a LSI RAID controller doesn't seem like the best idea either, lol.

I am definitely getting a BBU for it, that's for sure. That's good to see that BBUs don't need cooling, as batteries tend to get hot (like our smartphones).

Oh, there's no way I can fit 4+ hard drives on the XPS case, I will definitely get a case such as the NZXT Source 220 (eight 3.5" bays). That should be more than enough even if I decides to expand to 8 hard drives... hopefully not more than that lol.

 

[drtweak]

Yea that case would do nicely.

Good thing the XPS is a ATX board so it will fit. You may have to figure out the front IO pinout but usually the tech manuals on Dell show all of that.

Unlike our phones which use the battery ALL THE TIME, the BBU is ONLY used when there is a power loss. It is a Backup Battery Unit. It is not using it all the time so it won't get hot.

I had gotten this case here

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IAELTAI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

along with my Mini ATX Embeded board, LSI 8888elp and a 450 watt PSU and it runs good. My drives run a little hot even though two of the fans in the case blow right on them.

Also make sure to install the LSI Mega Raid storage manager software. It helps a lot with making, deleting, rebuiling RAID ect within windows.

and yea right now my server runs windows 10 but i may change that to server 2016 when it comes out in about 6 months or so. Hate 2012 lol

 

[RealBeast]

I build a lot of arrays for others, but my home setups are a 7 disk RAID 5 (Adaptec 8805 with 7 8TB Hitachi He8 drives) and an 8 disk RAID 5 Adaptec 6805 with Hitachi 3TB standard Enterprise drive setup just to back up key stuff off the He array. I really like the Adaptec controllers, but have used many of the LSI also.

I do not run battery backup at home since they are just for movies and music, nothing mission critical. All rigs are on APC UPS's with shutdown software.

I run Windows 7 on one and server 2012 on the other, both use cheap ASUS boards with onboard graphics as I need the two PCIe slots for the controller and the Intel 10Gbe NIC that connects them.

I've done a number of FreeNAS boxes, but best to go with the IBM m1015 HBA in that case, you do not want RAID controllers when using FreeNAS.

I have not had any issues with heat, since the cases are all full tower to accommodate the number of drives.

Most of my builds use older Z68 or Z77 motherboards, whatever I can find cheap with a very low end CPU and 4-8GB memory that is often scavenged from old units that I "dispose of" for clients.

The less you can spend on the general parts, the more you have for drives, which is usually the goal.

Best prices on enterprise drives that I use regularly is provantage.com.

 

[ipwn3r456]

Yea that case would do nicely.

Good thing the XPS is a ATX board so it will fit. You may have to figure out the front IO pinout but usually the tech manuals on Dell show all of that.

Unlike our phones which use the battery ALL THE TIME, the BBU is ONLY used when there is a power loss. It is a Backup Battery Unit. It is not using it all the time so it won't get hot.

I had gotten this case here

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IAELTAI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

along with my Mini ATX Embeded board, LSI 8888elp and a 450 watt PSU and it runs good. My drives run a little hot even though two of the fans in the case blow right on them.

Also make sure to install the LSI Mega Raid storage manager software. It helps a lot with making, deleting, rebuiling RAID ect within windows.

and yea right now my server runs windows 10 but i may change that to server 2016 when it comes out in about 6 months or so. Hate 2012 lol

Yeah, I am aware of the front IO ports, I will definitely check the pinouts when I get my new case.

I will definitely install the manager software, thanks for the tips.

Is there anything wrong with Windows Server 2012? I am not very familiar with Window Server OSes, since I am still trying to learn lol. I might go with Windows Server 2016 if it's not good.

I think I might go with the LSI 9265-8i for $20 more instead of the 9260-8i, not that sure if the dual core and 1GB of RAM will help however.

 

[ipwn3r456]

I build a lot of arrays for others, but my home setups are a 7 disk RAID 5 (Adaptec 8805 with 7 8TB Hitachi He8 drives) and an 8 disk RAID 5 Adaptec 6805 with Hitachi 3TB standard Enterprise drive setup just to back up key stuff off the He array. I really like the Adaptec controllers, but have used many of the LSI also.

I do not run battery backup at home since they are just for movies and music, nothing mission critical. All rigs are on APC UPS's with shutdown software.

I run Windows 7 on one and server 2012 on the other, both use cheap ASUS boards with onboard graphics as I need the two PCIe slots for the controller and the Intel 10Gbe NIC that connects them.

I've done a number of FreeNAS boxes, but best to go with the IBM m1015 HBA in that case, you do not want RAID controllers when using FreeNAS.

I have not had any issues with heat, since the cases are all full tower to accommodate the number of drives.

Most of my builds use older Z68 or Z77 motherboards, whatever I can find cheap with a very low end CPU and 4-8GB memory that is often scavenged from old units that I "dispose of" for clients.

The less you can spend on the general parts, the more you have for drives, which is usually the goal.

Best prices on enterprise drives that I use regularly is provantage.com.

I totally forgot about UPS's, should probably invest in one as well.

That's some nice NAS configs you got there. I've heard about Adaptec cards as well, how do you compare it to LSI raid controllers such as the 9260-8i?

I probably won't go with FreeNAS, since I only have 8GB of RAM on that desktop. ZFS tends to eat alot of RAM, and it's probably bad when I want to expand to a 10TB+ array.

 

[drtweak]

Yea that case would do nicely.

Good thing the XPS is a ATX board so it will fit. You may have to figure out the front IO pinout but usually the tech manuals on Dell show all of that.

Unlike our phones which use the battery ALL THE TIME, the BBU is ONLY used when there is a power loss. It is a Backup Battery Unit. It is not using it all the time so it won't get hot.

I had gotten this case here

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IAELTAI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

along with my Mini ATX Embeded board, LSI 8888elp and a 450 watt PSU and it runs good. My drives run a little hot even though two of the fans in the case blow right on them.

Also make sure to install the LSI Mega Raid storage manager software. It helps a lot with making, deleting, rebuiling RAID ect within windows.

and yea right now my server runs windows 10 but i may change that to server 2016 when it comes out in about 6 months or so. Hate 2012 lol

Yeah, I am aware of the front IO ports, I will definitely check the pinouts when I get my new case.

I will definitely install the manager software, thanks for the tips.

Is there anything wrong with Windows Server 2012? I am not very familiar with Window Server OSes, since I am still trying to learn lol. I might go with Windows Server 2016 if it's not good.

I think I might go with the LSI 9265-8i for $20 more instead of the 9260-8i, not that sure if the dual core and 1GB of RAM will help however.

I just don't like 2012 because it is based off windows 8 and is exactly like being on windows 8. Windows 2016 is based off windows 10. I like 2008 R2 the most as of now but since i love windows 10 so much i know i'll like it alot. There are still a lot of features that I wont use that were new with 2012. I have tired the technical preview of 2016 and its nice

and getting the 9265 would be better. Double the RAM and the Dual Core chip will help with a RAID 5/6 a lot. More so the ram as having 1GB of Buffer would make accessing the smaller files a lot faster (Files over 1GB in size won't benifit from it as much as it will load up the RAM buffer too fast)

 

[RealBeast]

The LSI9260-8i and 9265-8i are fairly comparable to the Adaptec 6805 and 8805 in my experience, all of them do a nice job.

Whatever you buy if you can buy it as a kit, including the fan out cables you can usually save some money. Alone the cables are not cheap.

Be aware that at least with the Adaptec 6805, while you can expand it by adding drives (the build time is quite long) I found an issue a number of years ago that Adaptec was not aware of and not sure they ever addressed. While running Windows you cannot expand from below to above 10TB, so say if you have an 8TB array and want to go to 12TB, you need to back everything up and build a new array and reload the data. It took me a while to figure that one out. Once you are over the 10TB limit, then expanding was no longer an issue.

 

[ipwn3r456]

I just don't like 2012 because it is based off windows 8 and is exactly like being on windows 8. Windows 2016 is based off windows 10. I like 2008 R2 the most as of now but since i love windows 10 so much i know i'll like it alot. There are still a lot of features that I wont use that were new with 2012. I have tired the technical preview of 2016 and its nice

and getting the 9265 would be better. Double the RAM and the Dual Core chip will help with a RAID 5/6 a lot. More so the ram as having 1GB of Buffer would make accessing the smaller files a lot faster (Files over 1GB in size won't benifit from it as much as it will load up the RAM buffer too fast)

Ah, I heard you. I don't really like Windows 8 either, but since it's a Server OS I thought it won't matter much anyway, lol.

Yeah, I might as well get the 9265, since I am planning to do RAID 5 with 4 drives for now. Thanks for the tips so far.

 

[ipwn3r456]

The LSI9260-8i and 9265-8i are fairly comparable to the Adaptec 6805 and 8805 in my experience, all of them do a nice job.

Whatever you buy if you can buy it as a kit, including the fan out cables you can usually save some money. Alone the cables are not cheap.

Be aware that at least with the Adaptec 6805, while you can expand it by adding drives (the build time is quite long) I found an issue a number of years ago that Adaptec was not aware of and not sure they ever addressed. While running Windows you cannot expand from below to above 10TB, so say if you have an 8TB array and want to go to 12TB, you need to back everything up and build a new array and reload the data. It took me a while to figure that one out. Once you are over the 10TB limit, then expanding was no longer an issue.

I don't know if it's possible to buy as a kit, since I will be buying a used LSI 9260-8i or 9265-8i.

That's an interesting observation for your Adaptec cards. For now, I think I will stick with LSI cards.

 

[FireWire2]

Hello everyone,

Looking to buy a RAID controller such as the LSI 9260-8i (or similar), I have a few questions.

1. I do know that those cards run really hot, but does the battery unit needs to be cooled as well (might consider getting a battery for the raid controller)?

2. Do RAID controllers work for all computers? I am looking to build a NAS using older hardware, that's probably why I am a bit concerned.

3. is a side case fan enough to cool the RAID controller? I might considering getting a PCIE slot fan for additional air flow for the RAID controller as well.

Using LSI 9260-8i for a NAS is over-kill, this controller and tranfer 700~800MB/s where GbE only 100MB/s max ( if your network can get that)

You are thinking of expanding your NAS in the future - keep in mind you can ONLY add another volume not expanding the existing volume (you can do that but it's much complicated)

For NAS, it runs 24/7 so you need to think about power consumption - a less than 30W Mobo it recommends, most of these are ATOM Mobo

I have build a 40TB FreeNAS, which still running since 2010 a client, of course there are 2 or three hdd had been replace.

I highly recommend to use SPM394 - it need about 5W to run 😀
http://www.datoptic.com/ec/esata-hardware-raid-controller-spm394.html
https://www.amazon.com/Port-Multiplier-SATA-hardware-controller/dp/B004JPHAF0

You can use this raid controller in ANY OS: Linux, Mac, NAS4Free, FreeNAS, Openfiler. Samba, EasyNAS, Windows... It does not required ANY driver or software to be install

But do take my word, look at the review from actual users

If you need my link for the 40TB NAS, let me know - It should be in this forum