asked on

SSD - Software RAID or Hardware RAID - RAID1

SSD in RAID.

Lots of comments I have read on EE and Googleiiinggg about Hardware SSD Raid 1 is a massive performance hit because the TRIM feature is lost.

As a means to keep redundancy, software RAID in Server 2016 is seen as a serious option. Still supports TRIM for the fast performance.

Please can I have some comments as I am about to commit to this in a 2x SSD and 2x SAS drive config in a server.

Thanks

R

David Johnson, CD

The ability to use TRIM and its usefulness is greatly exaggerated. The industry is well on its way to get rid of hardware raid. The major online storage providers don't use RAID at all. This performance hit you see is mainly in SATA SSD's (the SATA interface cannot keep up with current SSD's (being the bottleneck))

https://serverfault.com/questions/776564/what-is-the-current-state-2016-of-ssds-in-raid

ROM

ASKER

Hmm interesting David.

This suggest in this smaller environment that at RAID 1 of SSD may be quite fine if I provision only 90% of it.

Can I ask in a HP DL360e with 2x SSD and Server 2016 (Other mechanical drives for file data etc..), how would you set this up?
Assuming 1TB SATA SSD.

4x VMs on 2016 Hypervisor. RDS, DC, DNS, VPN, SQL+APP etc... The big hit here is the RDS and SQL really.

Very interested in your comments.

Would you
a) RAID 1 P420 RAID Controller
b) NO RAID in controller and 2016 Software RAID.
c) NO RAID AT ALL
d) Other

Thanks

R

David Johnson, CD

I would use Storage Spaces

ROM

ASKER

Ah ok. Have you done before and successfully seen performance improvements to that of Hardware RAID 1?

R

David Johnson, CD

I have 4 servers and using Storage Spaces Direct it is trivial to move compute loads around, take a server down/maintenance mode (do updates and other maint.) bring compute back up, transfer from replication server. All with almost 0 impact to the user. Redundant Compute, Storage and Networking.

ROM

ASKER

Very interesting. Thank you David.

Member_2_231077

Enterprise SSDs do not need TRIM since they have enough spare hidden space inside to do their own garbage collection, so if you are using HPE SSDs in an HPE server there will be no problems using hardware RAID.

The B120i that you get with a DL320e is fine for RAID1 but it does not support Smart Path since it is only the Intel chipset fakeraid with HPE's firmware on it.

I think you may find it difficult using Storage Spaces Direct on a server with just two disks in it.

I'd use the B120i because it makes maintenance easier, it's not hot-swap though but no knowledge of Windows is needed to change a disk using that. Otherwise you can turn it off and use dynamic disks to mirror the disks but that's more effort.

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pgm554

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Philip Elder

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ROM

ASKER

I trashed the Array.

Built Array A 2x 500GB SSD in RAID 1 Hardware.
Built Array B 2x 4TB 7.2K SAS in RAID 1 Hardware.

All running very well.

Thanks everyone.

R

Member_2_231077

You didn't use Storage Spaces then ;)