Hi guys, I have 16 x WD NAS Red 4TB Sata 3 and I'd like to do a RAID 5. Which is the best RAID controller for that? Any thoughts? Thanks!
Are you planning on running it in a standard case or do you have a case with hot swap backplanes? I'd also be pretty nervous if you wanted to make this one big array - either go raid 6 or split it into 2-3 arrays with a shared hot spare. Most raid cards have the multi-lane SAS connectors, which you can either break out into 4x SATA/SAS or connect right to a backplane. Some backplanes might also have SAS expanders, which means you might be able to get away with a card having only 2 Multi lane connectors. If the data is really important to you, make sure the system is on a UPS that can take the load long enough for a clean shutdown.
Obviously it all depends upon budget as to what options there are, as 'the best' is going to be *very* expensive. Now, when i was pricing around options for connecting 24-29 drives via SAS in the UK ~6 months ago, it was much cheaper to buy an expander than either a raid card which could do enough drives or a case with an expander backplane. So, looking at 'good enough', d.t. cost (plus already owning one of the cards could swap it in 'if' one failed), i bought a 2nd hand 9260-8i for £125 delivered (+ a new BBU separately) - as they're decent cards & i could find nothing comparable for the money... (if i'd had a larger budget then, whilst still not 'the best', i would have gone for a 9271-8i - & you don't necessarily *need* an 8i card, so could potentially price on a 4i one instead) ...along with a Chenbro CK23601 as an expander (as it better suited my needs both now & if i wanted to slave another one in a 2nd case), but if money's tight then you 'could' read up on the HP 24 port expanders as they're often cheap (less than £100 vs ~£300 new for the Chenbro) on eBay. (whilst old this page would be a good starting place - & the most important thing is the f/w it comes with) This, however, is just what i chose to do based upon my budget & usage needs - & gives an idea of how i would have altered my spending if there'd been a couple of hundred pounds more or less in my budget at the time. Otherwise, it 'should' go without saying that you need to remember that raid is not backup - but as it's not been said yet then just mentioning it so that it's in the thread. [Edit] Just reread what i'd written, & i am using the original 2960-8i, that i bought in 2009, in another machine - so the bit about swapping in was about there being an advantage for me in having two cards that were compatible with one another, rather than suggesting that you *needed* to have a spare to hand.
I'd say go with ZFS(or btrfs if you like experimenting) and RAIDZ2/3, maybe use one hdd as hot spare, RAID5 with 4TB disks (and 16 of them) is just asking for trouble. If you want to stick with hardware raid - at least get a controller supporting raid50/60 (previously mentioned 9260-8i does support it) and use that.
