4 ms·

I would go as far as to say "hardware raid" these days is limiting, expensive, and less performant that can be achieved with software RAID.

AviationAtom 4y ago
I think the worst point is vendor lock-in. If your controller fails, and a replacement isn't available, then you may be dead in the water. That kind of goes against the very point of RAID.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  But this is why businesses spend so much on their RAID controllers. To make sure they're in warranty and that kind of thing doesn't happen. Incidentally its also pretty great because no business buys them second hand without warranty. So they're usually available for half nothing. I don't use raid cards right now but I do use fibre channel which is also dirt cheap second hand
  - AdrianB1 4y ago
    3 weeks ago I had a controller failure in a manufacturing plant in Latin America. The contract with the manufacturer was to provide a replacement on site in 4 hours. Guess what, 8 hours later the technician with the replacement controller was still on the way. With TrueNAS I can move my drives to any other computer with the right interface and they will just work. I did this in the past 10 years of using TrueNAS.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      I can imagine but companies want to offload responsibility. If the manufacturer is late they can blame them, after all your IT manager paid for 4hr support so they've covered their ass. If your TrueNAS fails at work, it's your ass on the line :P I totally agree these special drive formats are really annoying. In this case I'd probably keep a spare on hand myself.
  - simonjgreen 4y ago
    Spending lots of money on hardware support doesn't guarantee it won't fail, or even that you will get replacements fast, it just guarantees that a contract exists saying something. As an architect we should engineer our solutions to cater for hardware failure. I call this sort of thing a technical guarantee rather than a commercial guarantee
Anthony-G 4y ago
I’m in the process of setting up a home server after buying a pair of matching 3TB Western Digital “Red” disks. I plan on installing them in a HPE ProLiant MicroServer G7 Server / HP Micro G7 N40L that I was gifted a couple of years ago. Even though it comes with a hardware RAID, I was considering setting up RAID 1 using Linux software RAID. However, according to the Linux Raid Wiki¹, Hardware RAID 1 is better than Software RAID 1. > This is in fact one of the very few places where Hardware RAID solutions can have an edge over Software solutions - if you use a hardware RAID card, the extra write copies of the data will not have to go over the PCI bus, since it is the RAID controller that will generate the extra copy. I was intending to use these disks for local backup and for storing rips of my extensive CD and DVD collection. As sibling comments mention, the possibility of the hardware controller failing is a worry, so I’d need to have a backup strategy for the backup disks. Since it’s going to be a home server, down-time wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t have much experience with either hardware or software RAID so I’d welcome any advice. ¹ https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Overview#What_is_RAID.3F https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Overview#What_is_RAID...
- zepearl 4y ago
  > according to the Linux Raid Wiki¹, Hardware RAID 1 is better than Software RAID 1. Don't take that too much into consideration - the article was last updated in 2007 ( https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Overview&action=history https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Overview&action... ) so it lacks some details (the same can be said as well for many ZFS-related infos that you might find) => nowadays doublechecking articles related to raid and ZFS is a must. In my case I bought some HBA (Host Bus Adapter) cards (e.g. LSI SAS 9211-8i), set their BIOS to not do anything special with the HDDs connected to it (to be able to use them as well with other controllers) and used mdadm (earlier) or ZFS (now) to create my RAIDs => it works well, i get max throughput of ~200MiB per disk, I have all fancy features of ZFS without the problem of proprietary stuff related to the controller card :)
  - Anthony-G 4y ago
    Thanks for the tips and feedback. I’ll stick with Software RAID. I wasn’t sure that the system would have enough resources to support ZFS but I think I’ll try it out before I commit large amounts of data to it.

AviationAtom 4y ago

I think the worst point is vendor lock-in. If your controller fails, and a replacement isn't available, then you may be dead in the water. That kind of goes against the very point of RAID.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
But this is why businesses spend so much on their RAID controllers. To make sure they're in warranty and that kind of thing doesn't happen. Incidentally its also pretty great because no business buys them second hand without warranty. So they're usually available for half nothing. I don't use raid cards right now but I do use fibre channel which is also dirt cheap second hand
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  3 weeks ago I had a controller failure in a manufacturing plant in Latin America. The contract with the manufacturer was to provide a replacement on site in 4 hours. Guess what, 8 hours later the technician with the replacement controller was still on the way. With TrueNAS I can move my drives to any other computer with the right interface and they will just work. I did this in the past 10 years of using TrueNAS.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    I can imagine but companies want to offload responsibility. If the manufacturer is late they can blame them, after all your IT manager paid for 4hr support so they've covered their ass. If your TrueNAS fails at work, it's your ass on the line :P I totally agree these special drive formats are really annoying. In this case I'd probably keep a spare on hand myself.
- simonjgreen 4y ago
  Spending lots of money on hardware support doesn't guarantee it won't fail, or even that you will get replacements fast, it just guarantees that a contract exists saying something. As an architect we should engineer our solutions to cater for hardware failure. I call this sort of thing a technical guarantee rather than a commercial guarantee

Anthony-G 4y ago

I’m in the process of setting up a home server after buying a pair of matching 3TB Western Digital “Red” disks. I plan on installing them in a HPE ProLiant MicroServer G7 Server / HP Micro G7 N40L that I was gifted a couple of years ago. Even though it comes with a hardware RAID, I was considering setting up RAID 1 using Linux software RAID. However, according to the Linux Raid Wiki¹, Hardware RAID 1 is better than Software RAID 1. > This is in fact one of the very few places where Hardware RAID solutions can have an edge over Software solutions - if you use a hardware RAID card, the extra write copies of the data will not have to go over the PCI bus, since it is the RAID controller that will generate the extra copy. I was intending to use these disks for local backup and for storing rips of my extensive CD and DVD collection. As sibling comments mention, the possibility of the hardware controller failing is a worry, so I’d need to have a backup strategy for the backup disks. Since it’s going to be a home server, down-time wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t have much experience with either hardware or software RAID so I’d welcome any advice. ¹ https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Overview#What_is_RAID.3F https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Overview#What_is_RAID...

zepearl 4y ago
> according to the Linux Raid Wiki¹, Hardware RAID 1 is better than Software RAID 1. Don't take that too much into consideration - the article was last updated in 2007 ( https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Overview&action=history https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Overview&action... ) so it lacks some details (the same can be said as well for many ZFS-related infos that you might find) => nowadays doublechecking articles related to raid and ZFS is a must. In my case I bought some HBA (Host Bus Adapter) cards (e.g. LSI SAS 9211-8i), set their BIOS to not do anything special with the HDDs connected to it (to be able to use them as well with other controllers) and used mdadm (earlier) or ZFS (now) to create my RAIDs => it works well, i get max throughput of ~200MiB per disk, I have all fancy features of ZFS without the problem of proprietary stuff related to the controller card :)
- Anthony-G 4y ago
  Thanks for the tips and feedback. I’ll stick with Software RAID. I wasn’t sure that the system would have enough resources to support ZFS but I think I’ll try it out before I commit large amounts of data to it.