Add-On RAID controller vs. Built-In

3890 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by linderman, Nov 9, 2007

koontzguy

Discussion Starter · Nov 6, 2007

Please forgive me if this is in the wrong thread.

I work for a large, privately owned funeral home and I've finally convinced our owned to upgrade the entire computer system.

To attempt to get the most bang for our buck I'm building all of our workstations and our server in collaboration with a "computer guy" who is a friend of my boss.

We're planning a RAID 10 configuration (I've never set up anything beyond 0) on the server for shared data and a seperate, non-RAID HD for the OS.

The "Computer Guy" is recommending this motherboard which only has 4 SATA hookups instead of the 6 we need. According to the documentation, it supports RAID 10 on the board. However, he wants to use this add-on RAID controller with 256 MB dedicated cache memory. I guess my question is... Will using the add-on RAID controller provide a significant boost in performance over just finding another motherboard that supports RAID 10 on the board and has the number of SATA connections we need?

In case its necessary.. we'll be putting in 4 GBs of RAM and using a Q6700 for the processor.

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linderman

· #2 · Nov 7, 2007

hmmmmm the raid card is the cheapest way out of the set-up

your idea is the next cheapest

Serial attached SCSI (a.k.a. SAS ) set-up is the REAL way to go, but its pricey ??

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Ed Kummel

· #3 · Nov 7, 2007

I guess it all depends on what you want.
Raid 1-0 is a good starter Raid level. Unfortunatly, it really isn't as speedy as say a raid 5...
The raid card with a dedicated memory cache is going to be speedy! Believe me, it makes a difference when you talk about RAID without cache and RAID w/cache. Since you will be doing multiple writes to multiple drives on each write cycle, you want to offload this task. an onboard Cache will do just that.
Ed
web/gadget guru

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kraftwerk

· #4 · Nov 9, 2007

A bit late, but anyway, here goes:

A dedicated RAID controller usually beats an onboard one hands down. Not only is it faster, but the dedicated controllers have heaps more cache available for the RAID in case of a system/hardware glitch, making the prospect of data loss more remote. Go for the additional controller card!

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kraftwerk

· #5 · Nov 9, 2007

Forgot this: RAID 5 anytime - much, much faster for data. The way the cost of HDDs is going, I'd think going for RAID 5 should not be that much more of an outlay.

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linderman

· #6 · Nov 9, 2007

I would stick with the Promise brand raid controller cards that are capable of supporting Raid 5

also; will you be running 64 bit windows or a 32bit version

the PCI-X slot raid cards smoke the PCI slot type ??

Same with the PCI express X 1 slot cards they are pricier, but the bang for the buck is there!

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