RAID-5 mobo suggestions?

[hambone79]

My old P3 file server running on Ubuntu finally decided to give out last night. It appears that part of the root parition became corrupt which wiped out part of /etc and the mdadm.conf file along with it. Because of this, my RAID 1 configuration got all screwed up.

The good news is that I was able to boot from a Knoppix CD and copy all the data over to a USB hard drive. The bad news is that I don't have a file server any more, so I've started looking at buying parts to build a bigger/faster file server. I'm not really concerned about CPU speed, memory, or graphics capability because this guy will be strictly for network storage. I want build something in a RAID5 configuration, but I want to do it cheap. I'm currently looking for a motherboard that offers on-board hardware RAID 5. Anyone know of a good motherboard like this?

[handy]

Are you operating on a multi-NIC gigabit speed LAN?

If not, why would you want RAID.

It is the fastest way to spread corruption on your drives.

Unless you have a huge network bandwidth, RAID is nothing but trouble.

Some people even think that RAID is a backup solution!!!

[Delever]

We recently looked into RAID 5, and found that it is mostly useful if you have MORE than 3 drives in array. Just have that in mind.

EDIT: also, most motherboards do not actually have "hardware" raid, it is still software.

[hambone79]

Are you operating on a multi-NIC gigabit speed LAN?

If not, why would you want RAID.

It is the fastest way to spread corruption on your drives.

Unless you have a huge network bandwidth, RAID is nothing but trouble.

Some people even think that RAID is a backup solution!!!

I'm not looking at RAID-5 for speed. I'm looking at it because I want a large fault tolerant file server.


We recently looked into RAID 5, and found that it is mostly useful if you have MORE than 3 drives in array. Just have that in mind.

EDIT: also, most motherboards do not actually have "hardware" raid, it is still software.

I don't mind if it is software or hardware based. I just want it to be transparent to the OS.

[Delever]

I don't mind if it is software or hardware based. I just want it to be transparent to the OS.

Yeah - what I am saying, many of them REQUIRE you to have drivers loaded to use it.

[handy]

I'm not looking at RAID-5 for speed. I'm looking at it because I want a large fault tolerant file server.

So, I take it you will have some form of external backup?



I don't mind if it is software or hardware based. I just want it to be transparent to the OS.

Have you had a look at FreeNAS?

I use it (in a non-RAID form) it is very easy to set up, observe & maintain. Once installed you use a client to access the brilliant browser based control panel.

FreeNAS handles soft & hard RAID, the FreeBSD handbook has all of the hardware supported.

Great all round documentation too.