How much space are you looking at using?
Not sure yet. This is all connected to the 'DVD jukebox' server project I'm doing at home. Basically I want to rip my 700+ DVD's and store them on a server, to have them at my fingertips (on any TV in the house) when I want them. I also rip them as ISO's, and don't compress them any further to DivX or Xvid or so. This means a normal movie usually takes 5 to 8 GB of space. So I will probably start with 4 or 5 TB of diskspace, but it would be sweet if there were an easy way to expand the RAID volume in case I should need extra disk space (which I no doubt will at a certain point in time) and want to add another disk to the array.
Another option is that I would upgrade my 1 TB disks when the 1.5 TB's become available. (already announced by Hitachi) With the Blu Ray movies becoming increasingly popular, I can imagine this need for disk space will only increase in the future...
I've have the luck that I've got reasonable easy access to new hardware, so the chance of me upgrading all my disks at once to reach a higher storage level is not imaginary.
I have no experience whatsoever with SAS. Doesn't that require a special type or (more expensive) drives?
Adaptec and 3ware are indeed brands I've read a lot about. Is it still true that Adaptec is still de facto the standard?
You really do not want hardware RAID. There are several prior threads on this very BBS that go into details.
There's no real performance loss in software RAID on Linux -- usually software RAID gives *better* performance, in addition to keeping your data safer.
I know, I remember those discussions. But going the software RAID route also have a few limitations. For one, I'm limited by the number of sata ports on the motherboard, which is usually six now (sometimes eight, but that's always with an added chip). That's not the main reason I would choose not to use it though. The main reason is as I said that I've got relatively easy access to new hardware. It's not imaginary at all that I would swap motherboards for this server once a year or so. Can I then take this Linux software RAID array with me to the new motherboard?
Every Smart Array controller in the Proliant server line has always supported both of these features, going back to the first card in 1995. So it's not new to RAID controllers, but it wasn't common on the workstation class RAID solutions until later. My ReadyNAS uses a hardware RAID controller, and also offers both of these features when using what they call X-RAID. Theirs is built around always allowing scalability, and picking the right redundancy at the right time. If you start out with one disk and enable X-RAID, it just shares it out normally. Add a second disk, and you now have RAID-1. Add a third, and the array is migrated to RAID-5. And now it looks like the X-RAID2 in the ReadyNAS Pro will go up to RAID-6 if you want it to.
I know. I've probably picked up on the expandable RAID array thing from exactly those ReadyNAS boxes, which made me think there were probably computer hardware RAID cards out there by now which could do the same thing. I just don't know which ones, or how that feature is called on a spec sheet.
These days, I'd probably opt for software RAID, whether Windows or Linux, mainly because if the card fails, you've got to find a compatible one to access your data, whereas with software, you just boot up another PC with the same OS (I do back up my data to an external disk every month or so, however). Software vs. hardware performance is irrelevant these days for most purposes.
Oh? Does this mean the hardware in the PC is irrelevant then? If so, this does make my second point of not using software Linux moot. Maybe software RAID is the way to go then.
The only thing that scares me is that I have almost no experience with Linux up to now, and if something goes wrong, I'd have absolutely no idea how to fix it...
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