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Building a 10 TB Array For Around $1,000
As storage hardware costs continue to plummet, the folks over at Tom's Hardware have decided to throw together their version of the "Über RAID Array." While the array still doesn't stack up against SSDs for access time, a large array is capable of higher throughput via striping. Unfortunately, the amount of work required to assemble a setup like this seems to make it too much trouble for anything but a fun experiment. "Most people probably don't want to install more than a few hard drives into their PC, as it requires a massive case with sufficient ventilation as well as a solid power supply. We don't consider this project to be something enthusiasts should necessarily reproduce. Instead, we set out to analyze what level of storage performance you'd get if you were to spend the same money as on an enthusiast processor, such as a $1,000 Core i7-975 Extreme. For the same cost, you could assemble 12 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 hard drives. Of course, you still need a suitable multi-port controller, which is why we selected Areca's ARC-1680iX-20."
One: The title is a borderline lie. Yes, you can buy 12x 1TB drives for about a grand. But if I'm going to build an array and bench mark it and constantly compare it to buying a Core i7-975 Extreme, the drives alone don't do me any good! (And I love how you continually reiterate with statements like "The Idea: Massive Hard Drive Storage Within a $1,000 Budget")
Two: Said controller does not exist. They listed the controller as ARC-1680ix-20. Areca makes no such controller. They make an 8, 12, 16, 24 but no 20 unless they've got some advanced product unlisted anywhere.
Three: Said controller is going to easily run you another grand. And I'm certain most controllers that accomplish what you're asking are pretty damned expensive and they will have a bigger impact than the drives on your results.
Four: You don't compare this hardware setup with any other setup. Build the "Uber RAID Array" you claim. Uber compared to what, precisely? How does a cheap Adaptac compare? Are you sure there's not a better controller for less money?
All you showed was that we increase our throughput and reduce our access times with RAID 0 & 5 compared to a single drive. So? Isn't that what's supposed to happen? Oh, and you split it across seven pages like Tom's Hardware loves to do. And I can't click print to read the article uninterrupted anymore without logging in. And those Kontera ads that pop up whenever I accidentally cross them with my mouse to click your next page links, god I love those with all my heart.
So feel free to correct me but we are left with a marketing advertisement for an Areca product that doesn't even exist and a notice that storage just keeps getting cheaper. Did I miss anything?
My work here is dung.
That'll buy the disks. But nothing else. "Hey, look at my 10TB array. It's sitting there on the table in those cardboard boxes."
Another thing with RAID arrays that have quiete a few drives is, you have no method of correcting a flipped bit. You need at least RAID6 to correct these errors. With such vast amounts of data, a flipped bit isn't that unlikely.
Ok, so let's say you built one of these monsters. Or you rolled your own with linux and a bunch of drives.... How would a home user, back this up? They've got every picture/movie/mp3/resume/recipe etc.. that they've ever owned on it.
Anybody got any reasonable ideas?
but you won't have anything to connect them to, as the controller itself is another $1100.
You don't need that. Get a port with enoigh SATA ports on PCI-E and add more ports per cheap PCI-E controller. Then use Linux software RAID. I did this for several research data servers and this is quite enough to saturate GbE unless you have a lot of small accesses.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
From the .COM bust, I have two leftover Netapp filers, with a dozen or so shelves, about 2T of storage. Each unit was about $250,000 new. A half million dollars worth of gear. Sitting in my shed. It's not worth the cost of shipping to even give the unit away any more. I guess it'll probably just go to the recycling depot. It seems a bit sad for such a cool piece of hardware.
On the cheerier side, it is nice to enjoy the benefits of the new densities; I have two 1T external drives, I bought for $100 each, mirrored for redundancy, that sit in the corner of my desk, silently, drawing next to no power. (Of course the NetApp would have better throughput in a major server environment, but for most practical purposes, a small RAID of modern 1T drives is just fine.)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Seriously this is not news. it's an advertisement to sell gear that doesn't exsist.
Exactly.... you can even set it up to automatically identify which HD has failed (with like 2 or 3 drive parity), hot swap out the hard drive (or add more) and have it resort the array without a reboot. This article is st00pid. Also, the guy who says you need an 1100 dollar controller is st00pid.
GbE is 1,000 megabits/s in theory. That's no more than 125 megabytes/s. With four Intel X25-E drives you'll hit 226 MB/s random read and 127 MB/s random write throughput.
I'm fairly certain you can settle for the four on-board SATA ports for that. And those four drives combined will more or less eat a few thousand IO/s as horderves.
The price dropped from thousands of dollars to hundreds, and took me a full workday to get set up.
How much do they pay you? With benefits, you could easily cost your employer $500-$1000/day.
Lessons learned:
9. Software raid is much easier to remotely admin online while using SSH and linux command line. Hardware raid often requires downtime and reboots.
10. Your hardware RAID card manufacturer may go out of business, replacements may be unavailable, etc. Linux software raid is available until approximately the end of time, much lower risk.
11. The more drives you have, the more you'll appreciate installing them all in drive caddy/shelf things. With internal drives you'll have to disconnect all the cables, haul the box out, unscrew it, open it, then unscrew all the drives, downtime measured in hours. With some spare drive caddies, you can hit the power, pull the old caddy, slide in the new caddy with the new drive, hit the power, downtime measured in seconds to minutes. Also I prefer installing new drives into caddies at my comfy workbench rather than crawling around the server case on the floor.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
9. Software raid is much easier to remotely admin online while using SSH and linux command line. Hardware raid often requires downtime and reboots.
I would imagine it's also easier to move a software array from one system to another. If your specialty RAID card dies, at a minimum you'll have to find another card to replace it with, and at worst the configuration is stored in the controller instead of on the disks, making the RAID worthless.