RAID controller with RAID 1+0 for workstations/desktops
 

Hello Gurus,

I have a question concerning RAID controllers for workstations/desktops. Does anybody knows any good SATA RAID controller with stripping - RAID 1+0 ? I`m thinking about PCI-e card.

In my server - HP-Proliant, its possible to configure RAID 1+0 with only 2 drives using SAS interface. Is it also possible to do this using SATA interface using some PCI-e controller ?



thanks for help in advance

Dlugasx

Pretty sure HP offers some. For the most part, look at the enterprise level cards. See ones that are fully supported by Red Hat.

If by RAID 1+0 you mean a RAID 1 array stripped across another, that's RAID 10. Most modern hardware RAID controllers, and many fakeraid for that matter, will do RAID 10. There are several decent brands to choose from (3Ware, LSI/MegaRAID, Adaptec, Areca).

You can do RAID 1 or RAID 0 with 2 drives but not both.

RAID 1 mirrors the contents of one drive or array to another (minimum 2 devices).
RAID 0 stripes the contents across multiple drives or arrays (minimum 2 devices).

The absolute minimum number of drives for what you want is 3 (2 for the mirror, and a third for the stripe, though I'd recommend 4 (2 each).

Whenever you use RAID 0 you ar actually reducing the fault tolerance of the array in favour of speed increase that is often only marginal.

If you are running Linux, why not use software raid unless the server will be under heavy load?