Ive been hoping other people would post with some experience, because im in the middle of a decision and am leaning toward software but just basically fear the unknown. After many years of running software raid setups in linux ive never run into a bug that caused data loss. Difference between hardware raid and software raid. Software raid works relying on the operating system. A hp server that i work on had two disks in a raid 1 array, one of my colleagues added an extra disk and made it a raid 5, the hardware raid device moved the data around as appropriate while the machine was running and the disk space was expanded without any downtime. Hardware raid vs os raid solutions experts exchange. Nov 16, 2007 another limitation of linux software raid is expanding raid groups. I do agree though, that hardware raid is the best choice. Consumer nas all use software raid and hence completely ignore them. The only point in using raid, is to handle a drive failure, without causing downtime. The different ways that mirroring, striping and parity are used defines the different raid levels.
Hardware raid if provided by the enclosure as opposed to an adapter in your server can vary by vendor. The hardware is typically expensive, and adds a substantial amount to the cost of the whole system. After format and label the disk, still not able to detect u the unix and linux forums. When storage drives are connected directly to the motherboard without a raid controller, raid configuration is managed by utility software in the operating system, and thus referred to as a software raid setup. Therefore both are susceptible to bugs in software.
But then i dont know x raid which might have the same processing requirements. A brief history of raid raid has been around since 1970s 1989 berkeley paper was a taxonomy 1989 witnessed the first raid 5 in software 1990s saw many hardware raid 3, 5s lsi, 3ware, maxstrat, highpoint, intel. A redundant array of inexpensive disks raid allows high levels of storage reliability. One of the first questions we felt needed to be answered was what exactly hardware raid cards do. Hardware raid presents logical disks that are already configured to the system or the san, mirrored and ready to go. If anything they should be advised to increase ram and be done with it. What is the difference between a software and hardware raid. Hardware raid vs software raid, is hardware raid portable. Configuration is still required, but that configuration takes place outside the system. Here are some tips on raid levels and some feedback on the software vs. Additionally, hardware assisted software raid usually comes with a variety of drivers for the most popular operating systems, and therefore, is more os independent than pure software raid. Raid 1e requires min of 3 disk, and raid 10 requires a min of 4 disk. Jul 07, 2009 a redundant array of inexpensive disks raid allows high levels of storage reliability.
Having given both a fair go in various flavors over the years, i have come to generally prefer one over the other, and for my own reasons. As computer hardware become cheaper and cheaper, many users begin to use raid and larger hard disks. May 30, 2015 i did a lot of reading on this and kind of conclude software and the fake hardware aka bios raid on my chipset are not really useful. To the people who want to use raid, youd better make it clear that what raid is and what the kinds of raid are, what the different features of raid are, then you could choose the proper raid to use. Tips on striping, mirroring, and striping with parity by scott lowe mcse in data centers on may 24, 2005, 12. Raid 1 vs backup and software raid 1 vs hardware raid 1 h. Ive ordered an areca 1280ml 24 port sata controller. But with budget favoring the software raid, those wanting optimum performance and efficiency of raid will have to go with the hardware raid. Jun, 2016 comparing hardware raid vs software raid setups deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard in a server or pc, and the management of those drives. As the software for monitoring is standardized, you can use the same ways to monitor the health and performance of all your servers. On the flip side, the cheap software raid can impair the host computer. I do agree though, that hardware raid is the best choice on business class windows servers or even important. Hardware raid also makes no guarantees about data durability. However, ive been seeing lots of threads all over the place and have simply wondered, what are the known advantages of using onboard raid compared to a dedicated hardware raid card.
Zfs is software management of disks, including raid. Hotswap support is spotty not all software raid implementations support hot swapping. Oct 30, 2015 while the intel raid controller blows the software raid out of the water on sequential reads, surprisingly the windows software raid was better in nearly every other respect. Software raid is a type of raid implementation that utilizes operating systembased capabilities to construct and deliver raid services. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a special raid controller inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie. It is generally fine, however, to use windows software raid on simple storage.
However raid 5 might need a lot of proccessing power. With software raid your data can be split across different enclosures for complete redundancy one can completely stop working and your data is still ok. With cheaper hardware raid you can also lose data if theres a power outage. Raid 5 with hot spare disks, raid 1 or 10 should be more tolerant. If you need more disk ports you can always get an hba host bus adapter card. You can easily move disks from a failed enclosure to a new one, and all your data is preserved. Jul 18, 2011 the features these so called enterprise drives or raid drives have are only meaningful for hardware raid. A raid can be deployed using both software and hardware. Software vs hardware raid here in rhomelab, ive come to realize that there are a lot of stronglyopinionated people out there on the hardware software raid topic. Obviously, hardware raid is pricier compared to software raid, due to the extra hardware that you need to purchase. Whether software raid vs hardware raid is the one for you depends on what you need to do and how much you want to pay. For software raid i used the linux kernel software raid functionality of a system running 64bit fedora 9. May 24, 2005 scott lowe responds to a techrepublic discussion and one members raid dilemma. Explanation about raid, hardware raid and software raid.
If you can handle your system being down, for a drive replacement, and worst case, a reinstall, then you dont need raid. Windows software raid vs hardware raid ars technica. It seems that no matter if you use a hardware or a software raid controller, you should expect to lose performance when youre duplicating every write, which makes sense. It is used to improve disk io performance and reliability of your server or workstation. Dec 25, 2006 software raid is generally slower and less reliable than a hardware solution. Windows raid vs intel rst vs raidz vs hardware raid. The software raid works on partition level and it can sometime increase complexity if you mix different partitions and hardware raid. Dedicated hardware controller doing the processing vs.
Dec 21, 2005 for hardware raid, that cpu can be in a disk array or in a raid controller. Given that you can safely move the entire enclosure from one server to another with the raid intact but youd have to make sure your new server knew to use it e. Imho, im a big fan of kernel developers non directly related to zfs, so i really prefere mdadm to hardware raid. Software raid is part of os, so no need to spend extract money.
Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raid s. Software raid can have trouble with dissimilar drives. What is the difference between hardware raid and software raid. But the real question is whether you should use a hardware raid solution or a software raid solution. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a special raid controller inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. I know what advantages there are for buying into and setting up a hardware based storage array using raid technology. I personally avoid marvell integrated raid like the plague due to extremely poor performance worse by far than windows raid, but some of their actual hardware solutions are alright. A brief history of raid raid has been around since 1970s 1989 berkeley paper was a taxonomy 1989 witnessed the first raid5 in software 1990s saw many hardware raid3, 5s lsi, 3ware, maxstrat, highpoint, intel 1990s also saw the introduction of raidframe mdraid came along in 2001. Hardware redundant array of inexpensive disks raid and software raid are two main ways for setting up raid system. The raid implementation in winxp in my opinion is flawed to the point of making it unusable. Even if you dont go with one of the fancier software controllers like zfs or btrfs id still recommend going with a software raid. It combines multiple inexpensive, small disk drives into an array of disks in order to provide redundancy, lower latency maximizing the chanc.
Benefits and drawbacks of hybrid, hardware assisted software raid. The w7 software raid doesnt seem to notify the user when a disk fails. So upgrades and handling failures becomes trivial since the software controller can come with you to the new hardware. Feb 28, 2018 raid redundant array of independent disks is one of the popular data storage virtualization technology. Plan to use software raid veritas volume mgr on c1t2d0 disk. Im about to start a new server build for home media storage.
As far as fault tolerance goes, ill respectfully disagree. Reasons for using software raid versus a hardware raid setup. While you might think the computer you are using is the most important part of your everyday and professional workflows, there is something even more important. It just has a boot helper to go along with it in the bios. That is to say, it is hardware independent without needs to be tied to hardware vendors. Under software raid, that configuration is performed in the. Jul 06, 2011 reasons for using software raid versus a hardware raid setup. Processing is required to carry out those actions, and that can take place on the host servers os or in the storage array or controller. I would generally agree with a preference for hardware vs. Owc is both a reseller and developer, supporting all things mac for more than 25 years and larry is here to explain the difference between a software raid and a hardware raid, and how to. Software raid, as you might already know, is usually builtin on your os and unlike a hardware raid, you will need to spend a little extra on a controller card. Mac for more than 25 years and larry is here to explain the difference between a software raid and a hardware raid. Regarding raid1e and 10 the main difference between 1e and 10 is that 1e uses an odd number of disk for providing protection, where as 10 uses an even number of disk. Again, for the average joe and mary website or server this is far beyond their reality.