Which SAS/RAID controller will give best performance

[LJC1973]

Hi All,

I've got a Z820 which I'm going to put to work as a home server (PLEX/Security Cameras/FTP etc.)

I was using a HP Microserver Gen 8 but the application (blue iris) loads it quite heavily and I can't lever any CUDA encoding. That's all a bit off topic but anywho.

I've got an HP P420 Controller in the Micro Server with the 2 Gb write back cache, would this be a better solution than the onboard LSI Controller? 

I've utilised the 3 x 5.25 bays for 4 x 3.5+2x2.5 drive bays so I'll be connecting 8 drives.

Many Thanks

Lee

[DGroves]

computer speed is only going to be as fast as the slowest link keep that in mind, you may find that more ram or tuning which app loads on which cpu core gives a better return. same for cpu changing out the current cpu for a faster one or more cores may also provide benefits

a Plex server is not a high demanding application on memory or cpu unless you are doing transcoding then CPU/core count and cpu speed become very important

Disk I/O is the same unless you plan on having 5 or more uses at the same time doing video playback at various resolutions

the onboard LSI chip on the z820 is not suited for raid 5/6 as it lacks onboard ram and a battery backed cache it's only useful for raid 0/1/10

next the p420 card is a older generation card and while it can do raid 5 it's not considered a mid or high end card by today's standards

you might want to consider the adaptec ASR-71605 which sells for around 75.00 on ebay including the cache/batt backup module this card is much faster than the z820 onboard chip or the p420 and has 16 SAS/SATA ports on the card and can support both JBOD and Raid setups at the same time 

[LJC1973]

Hi, Thanks for the response.

System Config is below.

Dual E5-2690 with 64GB Ram each.

Quadro K5000

HP NC365T quad port Gbit NIC

2 x 500Gb Samsung 860 Evo (Raid 0 on Intel AHCI ports) - Running Server 2012 R2 Standard (Likely to switch this to Raid 1)

I've got 8 x HGST 6Tb Helium drives and these are the ones I'm considering a controller for. I agree the P420 isn't the pinnacle of controllers currently, it runs incredibly hot although from the note on the 71605 that's looking for a large amount of airflow as well.

The biggest workload is the security system, 8 cameras can cause me a lot of random non sequential writes (in the event that multiple cameras trigger simultaneously)

Plex isn't heavy use agreed, until it starts doing a media scan and the memory leak that's never been resolved kicks you in the ass, although on Windows this is less of an issue than it is on Freenas (11.3 appears to have fixed it.....maybe)

I'll price up the 71605 and associated replacement cabling, and have a think.

Has anyone got a picture of the Z820 Drive Cage backplane? Is it Mini-SAS or individual SAS/SATA??

Thanks

Lee

[DGroves]

your current configuration of raid 0 on the z820 sata ports is pointless as one of your evo SSD's will saturate the bus

sata is limited via hardware to around 520MBs which as i said above a single evo is able to do adding a second drive in raid 0 will not really  increase the speed in your case however on a ASR-71605 raid 0 will see a speed increase, but it's usually only for sequential reads which in your (and most other cases) case is not  a major data usage

[SDH]

Take a look at my post down a bit in THIS  thread:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Installing-swappab...

The rear end of the drive cages in the Z620 and Z820 are the same...... a "Blindmate" interface from Foxconn, regular combined SATA data/power connectors.  What I did to enable fully separate dual boot capability was find quality parts that let you tap into the Blindmate connector at the rear of the drive cage, and run high quality SATA data cables up to a switch mechanism.  The same parts might be of interest to you related to how to cleanly tap into the power/data ports built in there.

[DGroves]

just a quick followup as many people seem to be unaware that MALE TO MALE sata adapters exist which allow you to connect the adaptec cards mini SAS/SATA cable(s)  to the "Z" series sata drive cage cables

also when doing a SAS/SATA card to Drives,....you require a FORWARD BREAKOUT cable not the more common reverse cable