Suggestions for a 10-20TB linux compatible storage array ?

[Christopher Browne]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 4:22 PM, William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 03:56:16PM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 03:35:13PM -0500, William Park wrote:
>> > 1.  <http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=14_207&item_id=040360>
>> >     8-bay USB3 external from Mediasonic.
>>
>> No not that one.  That one does NOT have a RAID controller and instead
>> it presents you with 8 seperate disks and then your OS has to do all
>> the setup and maintainance of raid.  Huge hassle.  Also means all the
>> extra reads/writes for parity data has to go over the connection too,
>> making it much slower.
>>
>> You want the H8R2 model not the H82.
>
> I picked non-RAID model, because I've heard that builtin controller is
> crappy.  I guess you can try their hardware raid, and then opt for
> software raid if not satisfied.
>
> I generally don't like hardware raid because you're now locked to that
> card/version/firmware.  Of course, you'd replace disks more often than
> card itself, unless there is fire, lightning (happened to me), flood,
> etc.

Yep, neither option fills me with "warm fuzzies."

I'd prefer, if using "budget hardware," to use software RAID, because
RAID controllers tend to require specific-to-that-hardware tooling to
do anything to the RAID array.  It's a TERRIBLE thing if the RAID
controller fails and you can't access data on the disks without getting
a replacement of the same model number (potentially tied to version
+ firmware version, as William suggests).

On the other hand, it's also terrible if using software RAID with JBOD
forces enormously more traffic across a not-quite-fast-enough-bus.

There are two poisons here - you've got to pick one of them :-(.
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