Lets start the hardware vs software raid battle with the hardware side. In raidz, zfs uses variablewidth raid stripes so that all writes are fullstripe writes. Zfs is also much faster at raid z that windows is at software raid5. How good is a zfs raid 50 s performance in comparison with. Zfs best practices with hardware raid server fault. This way itll be able to manage its own queues and parallelize the io better. Nov 15, 2019 this raid technology comes in three flavors. Apr 14, 2015 once freenas was installed and setup with the software raid zfs setup, i was seeing again 5060mbs file system. With the advent of hardware raid systems the battle was joined until the hardware array emerged victorious. This essentially a jbod configuration no raid performed by the card, and in this case should perform about the same as the. If you need more disk ports you can always get an hba host bus adapter card. It is used to improve disk io performance and reliability of your server or workstation. Again if your only desire to use zfs is an improvement in data resiliency, and your chosen hardware platform requires a raid card provide a single lun to zfs or multiple luns, but you have zfs stripe across them, then youre doing nothing to improve data resiliency and thus your choice of zfs may not be appropriate. As for the hardware vs software raid question, adaptec raid cards are good at what they do.
If you want to set the controller to ahci, be aware it will affect your windows install. The more interesting option is to use some of my old hardware lying around to put together a storage machine either using a hardware raid controller or sata controller using zfs for raid 10 or whatever the zfs equivalent is. Solved software vs hardware raid data integrity spiceworks. Zfs vs hardware raid vs software raid vs anything else. For this test, i arranged two quite old hp dl380 g2 2x 1. In conclusion, i feel better with not using hardware raid. This design is only possible because zfs integrates file system and device management in such a way that the file systems metadata has enough information about the underlying data. Whether software raid vs hardware raid is the one for you depends on what you need to do and how much you want to pay. Nov 11, 2016 in conclusion, i feel better with not using hardware raid. Differences between hardware raid, hbas, and software raid.
In the case of raid hardware where we dont have the option to expose the disks directly, we prefer to create raid 0 volumes on each disk and give them to zfs. Dec 10, 2018 ive gone completely away from hardware raid. Jul 04, 2019 hardware raid controllers mitigate the write hole problem by using battery backup. While battery power protects against power outage, os or firmware crash is no less damaging. Jul 07, 2009 a redundant array of inexpensive disks raid allows high levels of storage reliability. A hardware raid controller configured for raid 1, presenting a single volume to the os, with zfs only seeing it as a single disk. Hardware raid handles its arrays independently from the host and it still presents the host with a single disk per raid array. I was initially considering a zfs software raid but after reading the minimum requirements it does not sound like zfs will be able to saturate a gigabit line with an amd e450 processor 1.
Zfs changes the computer into a bigger and better raid system than a hardware raid card can provide. Softwarehardware raid 1 as previously mentioned doesnt matter. Nov 04, 2010 the zfs file system allows you to configure different raid levels such as raid 0, 1, 10, 5, 6. Using hardware raid in addition not only does not make things better, it makes things worse with extra unnecessary hardware and software layers between zfs and the drives. Jan 10, 2017 zfs changes the computer into a bigger and better raid system than a hardware raid card can provide. They are functionally identical to normal raid levels, with the only minor differences coming from zfss increased resiliency due to the nature of its architecture. It uses hardware raid controller card that handles the raid tasks transparently to the operating system. A redundant array of inexpensive disks raid allows high levels of storage reliability. Mar 06, 2018 it can either be performed in the host servers cpu software raid, or in an external cpu hardware raid. Thisd then be set up as a network share for a remote jirabitbucket store, and also vm storage for my xen boxes. I still have a few disks still lying around, used to be in a hardware raid set. Software hardware raid 1 as previously mentioned doesnt matter. Oct 10, 2008 zfs equally as mobile between solaris, opensolaris, freebsd, osx, and linux under fuse.
Zfs is definitely awesome and has some great technology, but it is a marginal advantage, that comes with caveats, over alternatives. But the real question is whether you should use a hardware raid solution or a software raid solution. The zfs file system allows you to configure different raid levels such as raid 0, 1, 10, 5, 6. Common incarnations of software raid would include the oracle sun zfs, linuxs mdadm, flexraid, drobo beyondraid, lime technologys unraid, windows dynamic disk basedraid functionality, netapps raiddp, and etc.
Windows software raid vs hardware raid ars technica. Zfs equally as mobile between solaris, opensolaris, freebsd, osx, and linux under fuse. Soft possibly the longest running battle in raid circles is which is faster, hardware raid or software raid. This way you can easy replace devices if they are hot swappable, manage new pools and so on. A hardware raid controller configured for two raid 0s. Since these controllers dont do jbod my plan was to break the drives into 2 pairs, 6 on each controller and create the raid 1 pairs on the hardware raid controllers. Research before you make that change, as windows wont be bootable afterwards there are ways around it with certain oss per my colleague but i have not seen it. If you are considering raid 5 youll want to lean more heavily towards zfs software raid vs.
An important piece of that puzzle was eliminating the expensive raid card used in traditional storage and replacing it with high performance, software raid. Back then, the solution was to use a hardware raid card with a builtin processor that handled the raid calculations offline. This is ideal for home users because you can expand as you need. Zfs works around write hole by embracing the complexity. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raid s. Imho, im a big fan of kernel developers non directly related to zfs, so i really prefere mdadm to hardware raid. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a raid controller card inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. But then i dont know xraid which might have the same processing requirements. Raidz storage pool configuration managing zfs file. Zfs software raid part iii this time i wanted to test softare raid10 vs. Hardware raid strongly discouraged ixsystems community. Aug 15, 2006 over at home opensolaris forums zfs discuss robert milkowski has posted some promising test results hard vs. Difference between software raid and hardware raid in high level is presented in this video session.
This essentially a jbod configuration no raid performed by the card, and in this case should perform about the same as the motherboard ports. Hardware raid 1 is more likely to experience readmodifywrite overhead from partial sector writes and hardware raid 56 will almost certainty suffer from partial stripe writes i. Why use an extra dedicated processor when your fileservers have very powerful processors already in them. To understand why using zfs may cost you extra money, we will dig a little bit into zfs. Zfs is scalable, and includes extensive protection against data corruption, support for high storage capacities, efficient data compression, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copyonwrite clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, raidz. Before raid was raid, software disk mirroring raid 1 was a huge profit generator for system vendors, who sold it as an addon to their operating systems. If anything they should be advised to increase ram and be done with it. Zfs boot has been supported for a year or more now. But hardware raid is just software raid on a dedicated controller, so there is nothing inherent one way or the other. Mar 22, 2016 zfs vs hardware raid due to the need of upgrading our storage space and the fact that we have in our machines 2 raid controllers, one for the internal disks and one for the external disks, the possibility to use a software raid instead of a traditional hardware based raid was tested. They are functionally identical to normal raid levels, with the only minor differences coming from zfs s increased resiliency due to the nature of its architecture. I guess, there are even workloadscircumstances which might lead me to deploy a hardware controller zfs needs a certain level of knowledge, cant demand this from every customer.
Other software raid solutions like linux mdadm lets you grow an existing raid array with one disk at a time. A raid can be deployed using both software and hardware. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a special raid controller inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. Raid 1 vs backup and software raid 1 vs hardware raid 1. Its not yet part of the standard freebsd installer sysinstall, but there are several howtos available online including one here in our how to forum for installing manually onto a zfs pool. I used x4100 server with dualported 4gb qlogic hba directly connected to emc clariion cx340 array both links, each link connected to different storage processor. I manage all my bulk storage using zfs similar to storage spaces, and it. Even if you dont go with one of the fancier software controllers like zfs or btrfs id still recommend going with a software raid. Zfs has its own names for its software raid implementations. Zfs is the best parity raid implementation on the planet and when we state the horror numbers for raid 5 we do it assuming zfs so that no one can dispute the numbers and if you run anything besides zfs for parity raid the risks actually.
As i had nothing to loose, i scrapped that setup and went back to my original hardware plan and remounted etc and was then seeing 95105mbs at the file system seeing about 510% cpu usage during readwrite. However raid 5 might need a lot of proccessing power. Hardware raid raid 10 as i am currently fiddling around with oracle solaris and the related technologies, i wanted to see how the zfs file system compares to a hardware raid controller. Zfs vs hardware raid system, part ii this post will focus on other differences between a zfs based software raid and a hardware raid system that could be important for the usage as gridpp storage backend. Using zfs with the disks directly will allow it to obtain the sector size information reported by the disks to avoid readmodifywrite on. Hardware raid and software raid are both important storage tools that we use with our systems. Comparing hardware raid vs software raid setups deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard in a server or pc, and the management of those drives. A new raid variant would have the iops of raid 5, and an even greater dynamism in the stripe layout than raid z. The mission of zfs was to simplify storage and to construct an enterprise level of quality from volume components by building smarter software indeed that notion is at the heart of the 7000 series. Once freenas was installed and setup with the software raidzfs setup, i was seeing again 5060mbs file system.
Please note that i tested hw raid on a 3510 fc array not on some junky pci raid card. Apr 05, 2019 favoring hardware raid over software raid comes from a time when hardware was just not powerful enough to handle software raid processing, along with all the other tasks that it was being used for. Favoring hardware raid over software raid comes from a time when hardware was just not powerful enough to handle software raid processing, along with all the other tasks that it was being used for. This article outlines what every relevant raid level does, and what its equivalent would be inside zfs. The features these so called enterprise drives or raid drives have are only meaningful for hardware raid. Damn mainboard died on me and now i cant find the right controller for the disks anymore so the new mainboard and 4500gb is currently running software raid5. On native platforms not linux solaris is faster that ntfs. Zfs is also much faster at raidz that windows is at software raid5. The same is with raid10 zfs software raid10 was faster than hardware raid10. Zfs is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by sun microsystems. In a later post, the differences in the readwrite rates will be tested more intensively.
In this post, i want to test the raid 10 performance of zfs against the performance with the hp raid controller also in a raid 10 configuration over 4 disks. Consumer nas all use software raid and hence completely ignore them. Aug 28, 2017 hardware raid and software raid are both important storage tools that we use with our systems. You have a lowly d525 at your disposal, which is a decent enough little cpu for serving media etc, but its not going to win you any medals performing lots of xor calcs, so offloading that to a hardware solution such as an adaptec card is prolly a good idea. Hardware raid controllers mitigate the write hole problem by using battery backup.
That is what the thread was about, mainly, will raid 1 benefit enough to justify the extra risk and investment for a hw controller. Just a note, lsi 2208 is a highend hardware raid controller. Software raid is a type of raid implementation that utilizes operating systembased capabilities to construct and deliver raid services. Zfs has a selfhealing mechanism which only works if redundancy is performed by zfs. These tests show that software raid5 in zfs can not only be as fast as hardware raid5 it can even be faster. Raid 1 vs backup and software raid 1 vs hardware raid 1 h. Using techniques such as disk striping raid level 0, disk mirroring raid level 1, and disk striping with parity raid level 5, raid is capable of achieving redundancy, lower latency, increased bandwidth, and maximized ability to recover from hard disk crashes. Zfs has two tools zpool and zfs to manage devices, raid, pools and filesystems from the operating system level. Today we dive into what the differences are and whe we choose them. Jul 21, 2010 youre right that zfs could just use raid 5, but that would lose other benefits of raid z such as resilver time proportional to the amount of data storee. A brief history of raid raid has been around since 1970s 1989 berkeley paper was a taxonomy 1989 witnessed the first raid5 in software 1990s saw many hardware raid3, 5s lsi, 3ware, maxstrat, highpoint, intel 1990s also saw the introduction of raidframe mdraid came along in 2001. Windows software raid vs hardware raid 10 posts arlesterc. This is also true for many hardwarebased raid solutions.
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