What is a *reliable* SATA drive

[youph]

I?m building a web server for a non profit organization that will be running mostly dynamic database driven content on apache 2 w/ php4. I?m pretty confident in my choice of hardware so far except for the hard drives. I will be utilizing RAID 5 for reliability reasons and since SCSI is out of the question (due to price) the logical answer is SATA.

Now, my question is, what SATA (can be SATA or SATA ?II? since this will be running on an nforce4 board) drives are known for reliability. I don?t much care about performance. What drive would be good in a server type environment (running 24/7 never powered down) and under moderate to heavy load? The second criterion is price. I?m looking in the 80-160 GB range since in a 3 drive RAID 5 setup that would leave 160-320 GB of actual storage which is plenty.

The rest of the configuration:
NForce4-Ultra Socket 939 Motherboard (undecided on specific board)
Athlon 64 Dual Core CPU (2 x 2.0 GHz cores)
2 x 1GB PC3200 DIMMS
Antec 550W PS
DVD ROM
OS: Fedora Core 5 for x86-64

 

[Mavrick007]

One of the new Western Digital RE2 drives are meant for RAID environments and network storage, and they come with a 5 year warranty and have proven to give decent performance too. This would be one of the better ones.

 

[imported_Tick]

Soft raid 5, aka on mobo raid 5 is a poor choice for reliability, as you can't migrate to a different controller or bring the controller with you.

 

[alimoalem]

Originally posted by: Mavrick007
One of the new Western Digital RE2 drives are meant for RAID environments and network storage, and they come with a 5 year warranty and have proven to give decent performance too. This would be one of the better ones.

i know this drive is good performance-wise and the 5 year warranty does show reliability. seagate has 5 years too but there is still one issue: no matter how long your warranty lasts, there are still those that fail. i would definitely try making a backup just in case of all the important data. at least but them on dvds

 

[youph]

Originally posted by: Tick
Soft raid 5, aka on mobo raid 5 is a poor choice for reliability, as you can't migrate to a different controller or bring the controller with you.

I will be using the software RAID in linux not on the motherboard.

 

[youph]

Originally posted by: alimoalem

Originally posted by: Mavrick007
One of the new Western Digital RE2 drives are meant for RAID environments and network storage, and they come with a 5 year warranty and have proven to give decent performance too. This would be one of the better ones.

i know this drive is good performance-wise and the 5 year warranty does show reliability. seagate has 5 years too but there is still one issue: no matter how long your warranty lasts, there are still those that fail. i would definitely try making a backup just in case of all the important data. at least but them on dvds

LOL I'm not using RAID for backup purposes

There will be offsite backup in place, RAID is for uptime purposes never backup

Also thanks for the suggestion I will go with the Western Digital drives

 

[Mavrick007]

Originally posted by: youph

Originally posted by: alimoalem

Originally posted by: Mavrick007
One of the new Western Digital RE2 drives are meant for RAID environments and network storage, and they come with a 5 year warranty and have proven to give decent performance too. This would be one of the better ones.

i know this drive is good performance-wise and the 5 year warranty does show reliability. seagate has 5 years too but there is still one issue: no matter how long your warranty lasts, there are still those that fail. i would definitely try making a backup just in case of all the important data. at least but them on dvds

LOL I'm not using RAID for backup purposes

There will be offsite backup in place, RAID is for uptime purposes never backup

Also thanks for the suggestion I will go with the Western Digital drives

There are many that provide 5 year warranties now, but speed and reliability are key points to consider. That's why I'm about to get the RE2 400Gig drives for my next machine. I am running Seagate and WD drives now and they are working well.

 

[cubby1223]

IMO, software raid is never a good idea. It's slow, can be very difficult to work with when a drive goes bad, makes emergency data recovery a lot more difficult, and is not recognized by many tape backup software utilities.

I've seen software raid's just blow up when one drive fails, where it practically takes down the whole system. Yes the data was all there, but it was still a full day downtime rebuilding the server.

If you want raid, get a hardware raid controller, especially considering the amount of money & power you're already looking to put into the system.

 

[cubby1223]

Also, be extremely careful selecting the motherboard. There is a bug between linux kernel 2.6, nForce4 chipsets, and multi-processor systems (including dual core systems).
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nforce/amd64/1.0-0306/KnownProblems.html

I ran into this bug trying to build a linux based server with the Tyan nForce4 motherboard and an X2 cpu.

 

[SnoMunke]

Software RAID is an EXCELLENT idea since it is NOT controller dependant...however, you do lose some performance. If your controller fails, you can just move the array to another machine, rebuild your array, and keep on chugging. Building/rebuilding a software array can be time consuming though...for example, I had a 6x 250GB RAID 5 array (Windows XP sofware RAID) and it took several hours to build/rebuild the array...

 

[imported_Phil]

Don't use a desktop motherboard for a server. Period.

Get something like an Intel SE7221BK1 (or whatever is current nowadays) - Entry-Level server board, which will be more reliable and more stable than a desktop board, and will let you use the Intel Server Management software to keep an eye on temperatures, voltages, fans, chassis intrusion etc, from within Windows.

Lastly, software RAID is not an "excellent idea". In all seriousness, how long would it take to get a replacement controller? I wouldn't mind betting that it's about the same length of time that you'd need to get another server, set it up, migrate the array...
Also, software RAID is slow. Much slower than a hardware RAID solution, and for a server you really, really should be looking at a SATA RAID controller card if SCSI is out of your budget.

For example:

Intel SE7221BK1
Intel Pentium-4 2.8/3.0 (you really don't need anything more)
512Mb RAM minimum, 1Gb recommended
3x Seagate 80/120Gb SATA drives (160/240Gb when in RAID-5 respectively)
Sony AIT tape backup drive. DO NOT skimp on the backup solution. To do so is a recipe for disaster. A backup system is only as good as the restores it can perform.
Half-decent chassis to mount it all in.

That should be within a modest budget, and will be more reliable than a desktop motherboard-based system.

[Edit] Re-reading your original post, I doubt that you're going to need a dual-core Athlon unless you're running complex SQL queries all day long. Also, most small servers will be absolutely fine with 1Gb, there's really no reason to use 2Gb unless you've defined an explicit reason to do so.

 

[SnoMunke]

Originally posted by: Phil
Don't use a desktop motherboard for a server. Period.

Get something like an Intel SE7221BK1 (or whatever is current nowadays) - Entry-Level server board, which will be more reliable and more stable than a desktop board, and will let you use the Intel Server Management software to keep an eye on temperatures, voltages, fans, chassis intrusion etc, from within Windows.

Lastly, software RAID is not an "excellent idea". In all seriousness, how long would it take to get a replacement controller? I wouldn't mind betting that it's about the same length of time that you'd need to get another server, set it up, migrate the array...
Also, software RAID is slow. Much slower than a hardware RAID solution, and for a server you really, really should be looking at a SATA RAID controller card if SCSI is out of your budget.

For example:

Intel SE7221BK1
Intel Pentium-4 2.8/3.0 (you really don't need anything more)
512Mb RAM minimum, 1Gb recommended
3x Seagate 80/120Gb SATA drives (160/240Gb when in RAID-5 respectively)
Sony AIT tape backup drive. DO NOT skimp on the backup solution. To do so is a recipe for disaster. A backup system is only as good as the restores it can perform.
Half-decent chassis to mount it all in.

That should be within a modest budget, and will be more reliable than a desktop motherboard-based system.

[Edit] Re-reading your original post, I doubt that you're going to need a dual-core Athlon unless you're running complex SQL queries all day long. Also, most small servers will be absolutely fine with 1Gb, there's really no reason to use 2Gb unless you've defined an explicit reason to do so.

Go read some Linux forums... software RAID 5 does quite well...even in large arrays. Windows RAID 5 does well too...

And the beauty of this solution is the array is not hardware-dependant...so if you lose your controller, you don't have to use the exact controller to rebuild your array...

Tape backup? At what cost???????? I see Sony had a nice 40GB tape backup for $353.00...

 

[imported_Goo]

Seagate NL35 250GB or 400GB 16MB SATA.

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
I had a 6x 250GB RAID 5 array (Windows XP sofware RAID) and it took several hours to build/rebuild the array...

The good raid controllers do that on the fly. The downtime during a drive failure is a matter of mere minutes. And if it were set up with hot-swappable scsi drives, you're looking at absolutely no down time during a drive failure.

 

[Wizkid]

I'm using 3ware raid controllers with western digital drives for my budget servers. It works very well and the performance is great!

 

[SnoMunke]

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
I had a 6x 250GB RAID 5 array (Windows XP sofware RAID) and it took several hours to build/rebuild the array...

The good raid controllers do that on the fly. The downtime during a drive failure is a matter of mere minutes. And if it were set up with hot-swappable scsi drives, you're looking at absolutely no down time during a drive failure.

Linux and Windows also rebuild the RAID 5 array "on the fly"...just maybe not as fast as a dedicated controller....

I don't think dedicated RAID controller's rebuid arrays in a matter of minutes....

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
Go read some Linux forums... software RAID 5 does quite well...even in large arrays. Windows RAID 5 does well too...

And the beauty of this solution is the array is not hardware-dependant...so if you lose your controller, you don't have to use the exact controller to rebuild your array...

I agree that it performs adequately. For a real server, software RAID-5 is not a stable, reliable and robust method.
Also, importing a software array is tricky at best, and why bother? A hardware RAID card works better, has decent online monitoring software, and very rarely fail.

Tape backup? At what cost???????? I see Sony had a nice 40GB tape backup for $353.00...

Tape backup is virtually a requirement for any server that cannot afford to lose its data. Yes, they're damned expensive drives, but if you want to have a backup solution, then tape is, 9 times out of 10, the only viable method.

 

[Mavrick007]

Originally posted by: Phil

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
Go read some Linux forums... software RAID 5 does quite well...even in large arrays. Windows RAID 5 does well too...

And the beauty of this solution is the array is not hardware-dependant...so if you lose your controller, you don't have to use the exact controller to rebuild your array...

I agree that it performs adequately. For a real server, software RAID-5 is not a stable, reliable and robust method.
Also, importing a software array is tricky at best, and why bother? A hardware RAID card works better, has decent online monitoring software, and very rarely fail.

Tape backup? At what cost???????? I see Sony had a nice 40GB tape backup for $353.00...

Tape backup is virtually a requirement for any server that cannot afford to lose its data. Yes, they're damned expensive drives, but if you want to have a backup solution, then tape is, 9 times out of 10, the only viable method.

Right, but you have to consider the OPs predicament. This is a non-profit organization which has limited funds, that's why he's using SATA raid and not SCSI. Keep this on topic. $300-400 or more tape backup drives is not a viable option for him.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Mavrick007Right, but you have to consider the OPs predicament. This is a non-profit organization which has limited funds, that's why he's using SATA raid and not SCSI. Keep this on topic. $300-400 or more tape backup drives is not a viable option for him.

Understood, but any server needs a decent backup solution. If he's going to resort to using an external hard disk, then he's asking for trouble. If he's not going to run periodic backups at all, then he's asking for even more trouble. If $300 for a decent tape drive is not viable, then the spec of the server needs to be lowered in order to fit this component in, or he needs to drop to using a single SATA disk and running regular backups. RAID is not a substitute for backups, as I'm sure you know.

Lastly, don't tell me to keep this on topic when I'm offering the advice that I've collected over the years, and seen many a server fail. Advising the OP that he needs a decent backup solution is entirely within the boundaries of this discussion.

 

[SnoMunke]

Originally posted by: Phil

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
Go read some Linux forums... software RAID 5 does quite well...even in large arrays. Windows RAID 5 does well too...

And the beauty of this solution is the array is not hardware-dependant...so if you lose your controller, you don't have to use the exact controller to rebuild your array...

I agree that it performs adequately. For a real server, software RAID-5 is not a stable, reliable and robust method.
Also, importing a software array is tricky at best, and why bother? A hardware RAID card works better, has decent online monitoring software, and very rarely fail.

Tape backup? At what cost???????? I see Sony had a nice 40GB tape backup for $353.00...

Tape backup is virtually a requirement for any server that cannot afford to lose its data. Yes, they're damned expensive drives, but if you want to have a backup solution, then tape is, 9 times out of 10, the only viable method.

Dude, you flat don't know what you are talking about. Linux software RAID 5 is very reliable, is extremely stable, and robust enough for the OP's needs...

I have imported MANY software arrays and haven't lost one yet...Hardware RAID controllers fail all the time...

Tape backup is not always the best solution... Tape can fail just like a spinning HDD. In addition, tape backups are SLOW and extremely EXPENSIVE. A separate external HDD would do just fine for the OP's needs...

No need to kill a fly with a 30lb. sledgehammer...

 

[Jhhnn]

We really don't know the needs of the client- how much storage will they use? how heavy is the demand on the server? Those parameters shape the whole scenario, from hardware to backup solutions.

While I think that the WD drives should do the job well, RAID5 may not even be necessary- RAID1 might be entirely adequate, depending on their needs. Given today's hardware, it's easy to overbuild for small organizations, particularly in a server, as they often don't "serve" much of anything- they're often just another name for NAS.

While contemplating the hardware, I'd suggest taking a hard look at the psu selection- you don't need anywhere near that much power for the system in question, but you do need top shelf reliability, which might make something like a much lower powered Zippy unit a better choice. They really are professional grade.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: SnoMunkeDude, you flat don't know what you are talking about. Linux software RAID 5 is very reliable, is extremely stable, and robust enough for the OP's needs...

Linux's SW RAID-5 may be the best thing since sliced bread, but it will never be up to the level of a hardware RAID-5 setup. If you insist that it is, then you my friend, are the one who "flat out" doesn't know what he's talking about.

I have imported MANY software arrays and haven't lost one yet...Hardware RAID controllers fail all the time...

I saw one fail in the 18 months that I was with my previous company. They shipped thousands of LSI MegaRAID 320-1/2/x cards, hundreds of Adaptec 2940/29160 cards and a lot of 3Ware and Promise cards in their systems. All but one were still running perfectly when I left in August. Plus, with a hardware RAID card you have the additional benefit of a hardware cache, which makes a serious difference to the performance of the array. Without it, the write speed will be abysmal, and the server will virtually grind to a halt when rebuilding an array that's dropped a disk.

Tape backup is not always the best solution... Tape can fail just like a spinning HDD. In addition, tape backups are SLOW and extremely EXPENSIVE. A separate external HDD would do just fine for the OP's needs...

1. Tapes can fail: It would be extremely foolish of me to state otherwise. However, they're less likely to fail than a hard disk, and you can keep as many days' worth of backups as you like. You'd need either a massive hard disk or a collection of hard disks to achieve the same thing.

2. Tapes are slow: Not really. 300+Mb/minute is to be expected. That's not as fast as a seperate hard disk, granted, but it's not slow.

3. Tapes are expensive: Yes. How much does your data cost?

No need to kill a fly with a 30lb. sledgehammer...

No need to try to kill a fly using a pencil, either.

You also forgot to respond to my point about having usable GAM software for the array. Without it, you can't see the number of SMART errors, soft/hard errors, drive status, etc. All you'd see is the array, and that's a bad thing. You want to know if a drive is starting to degrade. What you don't want is a call at 2am telling you that a drive failed because it wasn't noticed until it actually died.

 

[SnoMunke]

The CPU overhead for rebuilding a small software RAID 5 array is quite low...I've tested it.

No doubt a hardware RAID controller is the way to go if the money is available. However, you are showing alot of n00bish attitude when you won't even consider using a Linux software RAID 5...Linux software RAID 5 has come a long way...and should be considered as a low-cost option to a dedicated RAID controller.

Here...I'll even back my words up...

Pure software RAID implements the various RAID levels in the kernel disk (block device) code. Pure-software RAID offers the cheapest possible solution: not only are expensive disk controller cards or hot-swap chassis not required, but software RAID works with cheaper IDE disks as well as SCSI disks. With today's fast CPU's, software RAID performance can hold its own against hardware RAID in all but the most heavily loaded and largest systems. The current Linux Software RAID is becoming increasingly fast, feature-rich and reliable, making many of the lower-end hardware solutions uninteresting. Expensive, high-end hardware may still offer advantages, but the nature of those advantages are not entirely clear.

http://linas.org/linux/raid.html

GAM software for the array?

How about mdadmin...

You can run mdadm as a daemon by using the follow-monitor mode. If needed, that will make mdadm send email alerts to the system administrator when arrays encounter errors or fail. Also, follow mode can be used to trigger contingency commands if a disk fails, like giving a second chance to a failed disk by removing and reinserting it, so a non-fatal failure could be automatically solved.

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.5

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
The CPU overhead for rebuilding a small software RAID 5 array is quite low...I've tested it.

No doubt a hardware RAID controller is the way to go if the money is available. However, you are showing alot of n00bish attitude when you won't even consider using a Linux software RAID 5...Linux software RAID 5 has come a long way...and should be considered as a low-cost option to a dedicated RAID controller.

I've no doubt that software RAID-5 is maturing rapidly with Linux, but I still have my doubts that it's a match for a dedicated hardware RAID-5 card, with onboard cache and the software support. If anything, a hardware RAID card makes moving an existing array to another machine easy, as you only need to swap the card and the disks, and it's running.
I'm somewhat offended that you consider my views to be "noobish" on the matter, as I've worked with enterprise-class servers for some time now, and only a few of them have had software RAID; you won't find many servers in datacenters using software RAID, as the manufacturers and clients don't trust it over a hardware solution.

Here...I'll even back my words up...

Pure software RAID implements the various RAID levels in the kernel disk (block device) code. Pure-software RAID offers the cheapest possible solution: not only are expensive disk controller cards or hot-swap chassis not required, but software RAID works with cheaper IDE disks as well as SCSI disks. With today's fast CPU's, software RAID performance can hold its own against hardware RAID in all but the most heavily loaded and largest systems. The current Linux Software RAID is becoming increasingly fast, feature-rich and reliable, making many of the lower-end hardware solutions uninteresting. Expensive, high-end hardware may still offer advantages, but the nature of those advantages are not entirely clear.

http://linas.org/linux/raid.html

GAM software for the array?

How about mdadmin...

You can run mdadm as a daemon by using the follow-monitor mode. If needed, that will make mdadm send email alerts to the system administrator when arrays encounter errors or fail. Also, follow mode can be used to trigger contingency commands if a disk fails, like giving a second chance to a failed disk by removing and reinserting it, so a non-fatal failure could be automatically solved.

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.5

I have to admit that I didn't know GAM software for Linux software RAID existed, and on that point I'm corrected.
I still maintain however, that either the cash should be stumped up for a hardware card simply because of a desire to see a server running at the best that it can, as well as a decent backup system be used. If necessary, drop the drive specs back to RAID-1 and have an AIT tape backup unit, because I've seen so many companies loose large amounts of data because their "backup" system failed abysmally, or failed to back anything up apart from user's documents. In the event of downtime, you want the server back up and running ASAP; you don't want to have to reload everything (OS, software, drivers etc) for servers and clients alike and then have to manually insert the data into the systems. Certainly, tape backup falls down on this count because of the need to reinstall the server OS before the restore can be started, but given that you can take the tapes off-site or place them in a fire-proof safe, IMHO a tape backup is a better solution than hard disk backups or even DVDs.

Still, we agree to disagree I guess

 

[Czar]

Do raid 1, dont need more really
Buy a mobile usb hd for remote backups, scripts to do the backup.

Since its a webserver only you dont need to backup the os except maybe every other month or so. Or even if you can turn the server off once a week or so, use ghost to take backup of everything, more time goes into taking backups but recovery would be easy.