T110 PowerEdge server RAID 5 with onboard S100

[mojoman317717]

Have been doing alot of reading (never good) and become very nervous about two issues. 1) Is it true that RAID 5 performance will be crappy because the S100 is a software RAID?? Just FYI, this is a small business (photography studio) network that does not get heavy use. Not being used 24/7, and the data is almost entirely photos. I plan to use four 2tb 7200rpm drives. As a point of reference, the server currently has two 1tb drives in a RAID 1 array giving me 50mbps reads on average. I plan to replace that with the new RAID 5 array. Any thoughts on whether or not I will see a performance gain from the current 50mbps?

Also, could use some advice concerning setting up the new array. I've read that booting in BIOS mode (as opposed to UEFI) may cause some complications with the maximum partition size of the boot partition being limited to 2tb. Any thoughts?

I plan to make an image backup of the current disc array and then restore that to the new RAID 5 array. Will this preserve the current partitions? Or will I need to arrange the new partitions in the RAID software? I very much want to avoid any issue where I will not be able to utilize the full amount of space on the new array.

The current system is set up to boot to BIOS. Is there any great advantage or other reason why I would want to change that arrangement to booting to UEFI?

Need some help please.

 

[sk1939]

1) Not necessarily.
2)Performance degradation could be various things.
3) RAID 1 is generally slow, but that is extremely slow.
4) As far as boot partition, that really only holds true with older boxes, I do not believe newer servers have that issue, especially since that has more to do with file system than anything else. Also, it's a non-issue unless you plug in a 3TB or 4TB drive to begin with.
5) Transferring disk image arrays can get dicey.
6) BIOS or UEFI doesn't really make a difference honestly. UEFI is more user friendly.

 

[mojoman317717]

I will post back my results after the RAID 5 array is installed this weekend.

I have confirmed that partition size is limited to 2tb in BIOS mode with MBR discs, but in UEFI mode with GPT discs the partition size is theoretically infinite.

 

[mojoman317717]

Ok, the RAID 5 Array is up and running. RAID was totally unavailable in UEFI mode, so I set up 2 virtual discs in the BIOS one a mere 100gb for the OS and the other with the remaining space, then converted the large one to a GPT dynamic disc in disc manager after the OS was deployed. Still getting only 50-60mbps on both reads and writes. That seems decent for writes, but slow for reads. Seems like the speed should be better on reads from a 4 disc RAID 5. I'm still tweaking it though.

No thanks to Dell technical for the misinformation that RAID would be available from within UEFI mode. Good thing I had done my homework.

 

[mojoman317717]

Best answer selected by mojoman317717.

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar