I am trying to consolidate content from a number of Buffalo and Drobo NAS units into a single Windows 2008 Server as direct attached storage (there is currently about 11 TB of content and it is growing on a regular basis). I would like to use 8 ea 2 TB drives in a desktop tower case with either RAID 5 or RAID 6. One of the key goals here is to keep cost to a minimum, and I would like to reduce the management complexity to a single machine instead of NAS. Does anyone have experience with using a low-end RAID controller in a similar capacity, or see problems with this approach?
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1) This is kind of true. RAID doesn't maintain file systems. It only maintains the way bits get written to the drives. The file system is further up the chain. But you're mostly correct in that if the controller itself died, you'd need a similar (but not necessarily identical) controller to rebuild the array.
2) Typically its just another HDD, of greater than or equal capacity, but I have seen instances where the controller was more picky. If you're running RAID1 on a 3-5 year old array and a disk dies, you are going to want to replace both disks anyway, simply because the odds of the second older disk failing are much much greater.
3) Get a NAS device. A ReadyNAS, a Drobo, something. Not for nothing, but if you are just getting into it and you need to ask these types of questions, you're better off sticking with something that's going to do the heavy lifting for you. Keep your focus on your work, not on the technology, leave that to the nerds like me and others.
4) See above, I have deployed ReadyNASes and I know many people who have and love Drobos. There are other options as well, I wouldn't be afraid of anything from QNap, Thecus, Buffalo, Synology, Promise, Lacie, or even Cisco/Linksys, Western Digital, or Seagate. They all have their merits and weaknesses, but all would most likely do the job you're looking to accomplish.
5) There are plenty. You just have to look around. Newegg, as much as I hate shilling for them, has a ridiculous selection, it can take a while to sort through.
Pick your capacity, pick how much growth you might need, and pick what interface you want, then start looking around. I'm a fan of ReadyNAS and Thecus over most others, but do some research and pick the one that's right for you. Its your data, do you really want to trust it to the opinions of some random nerds (or trolls) on the internet? :)
Is it possible to clone the individual disks of a hardware RAID to get a copy of the contained array?
yes, it is possible to copy individual disks. Regardless if they are part of a RAID array or not. Just power the computer with the drives in it down, move the un-powered drive to another computer * and copy it.
There are many methods to do the last. Some of them are:
- Full disk image (e.g. with Norton Ghost)
- Full disk image (e.g. with Acronis)
- A simple
dd
,cat
orcp
of the whole drive (any unix like OS, either installed or from a LiveCD/LiveUSB.
Any of those will do as long as the disk you are copying is not in use.
You can even read from the disk and store the copy somewhere on the network (e.g. use cat piled though netcat).
I have an Adaptec RAID controller. I put it offline, attached the raid members HDDs to a regular SATA port and tried to clone the disks to some other disks using G4L (http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/) using the RAW mode. It looked like the clone process did work (amount
According to your link g41 supports raw copies of whole disks. That should have worked.
of data copied), but after I used the cloned disks on the Adaptec RAID controller, it did not find any arrays (but did detect the disks).
Dis you copy to identical disks? (Read: Did you copy to disks with the precise same size? Copying from 2TB to 2TB (with the second 2TB being a few KB smaller) might cause lots of problems if there is data in the last sector of the disk.
Vice versa: larger disk might also cause problems for the same reason.
So I wonder if it is even possible to clone the disk or if there is some data that has to be copied in another way?
A 1:1 raw copy to a identical disk should work.
it is a weird way to copy data though. Normally you would just create a second RAID array (or wipe and restore the original RAID) and restore the data from backups.
This leads me to the idea that you have "problem X" and that you are trying to solve that by "method Y". That might work but adding why you want to do this strange thing might help a lot.
*: The reason to use another computer is that the RAID card might detect that a drive has been removed and drop it from the array. Thus power it down, remove the drive, copy the drive and place it back before powering on the RAID card.
(Unplugging the RAID card might also work).
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When building my own equipment, I am a huge fan of 3ware RAID controllers. This is because they come with an excellent warranty, are cross-platform compatible, and have the best track record of keeping your data intact. Unfortunately, they are the most expensive.
When purchasing equipment premade, I use Dell. Dell configures all of their equipment with SPARC controllers, which are decent and can fit within a lower budget. I am not sure if you can directly order SPARC controllers or if you have to be an OEM.
The type of card you buy is really going to ultimately depend on your computer build. Tower server vs. rackmount server. 1U vs 2U. Hotswappable or not. If you are not really sure what you are doing, I would consider taking a look over at www.siliconmechanics.com and custom building your server via their web tool. Depending on what you want to do, their website will let you configure different builds with various RAID controllers from different manufacturers.
Edit - here is a Xeon server which should be a good starting point for deciding on your RAID controller. (Select the PCI expansion drop downs for the RAID controller options). http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i22738/dual-xeon-server.php
Something to consider, regardless of RAID controller: I would use Western Digital drives over Seagate right now, as the past year has been full of issues with Seagates drives regarding RAID operations. Also, make sure you order "enterprise" drives, not "desktop".