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LockDown32Flag for United States of America

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Looking for hardware RAID 5 controller

   Looking for a recommendation on an entry level RAID controller. I want to run hardware RAID 5 with three SSD drives. Don't want to break the bank. 

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Philip Elder
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For Parity RAID it's important to make sure the cache is either battery backed, non-volatile, or capacitor backed. The method of providing juice to the DRAM cells matters not so long as there is power protection in the event of lost power to the system.


Any LSI 9200 series or 9300 series RAID controller + Battery Pack (many are capacitor based so a one time purchase) would suffice.


I highly suggest staying away from off-brand or less than Tier 1. 

Sorry...

The card I suggested doesn't appear to support SSD
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ASKER

The cache and the battery backup was not in the question. Need the controller first and...... a good battery backup (which is a must) will preclude the need for a battery on the controller.
The cache and the battery backup was not in the question.

No, but they should be carefully considered when looking at raid controllers

a good battery backup (which is a must) will preclude the need for a battery on the controller.

Not really. The controllers BBU helps protect data against not only sudden power loss, but system crashes and disk failures as well. Something a ups/battery backup won't.
Not 100% but 99.99%. There is such a thing as too much insurance. You should also mention, if you are being that complete, that a BBU will not protect the cache on the disks. One way or the other the BBU was not part of the question.
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Member_2_231077

May I ask what SSDs you intend to use? That's rather important when using RAID 5 since TRIM/UNMAP is not available so garbage collection has to be done in background.

No it won't. BTDT

A battery backed cache or one with non-volatile cache memory is a must. Period.

Been in too many data loss situations caused by power supplies failing, server boards, failing, memory causing a full stop, and too many more to list.

If the data is critical, then protect it.

The parity calculations are done with DRAM. No power and it's done. So is the data.

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LockDown32
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Is there something wrong with my recommendation?