Build or buy a RAID6 server?

[vrykyl]

Sorry Jim, I was trying to make the kind of point about the p212 Splash managed for me
4tb isnt really that much - for the cost vs reality isnt raid5 just a far easier alternative?

Anything vital can always be backed up to BD25 disc for the less than the cost of the equivalent hdd space these days too (since the factories got flooded that is).

[Splash]

As an addition to Dave's advice: I have a small 1 disk NAS sat at my parents' house, with a VPN link between the 2. I pre-seeded the disk with data from home (it's a 1Tb disk, would have taken ages even on Annex M Be*) and have my most important data replicated overnight to that, as well as encrypted, then moved to online storage too. If my flat were on fire I'd get the missus and the cats out: anything else can burn if needs be.

[jim]

As an addition to Dave's advice: I have a small 1 disk NAS sat at my parents' house, with a VPN link between the 2. I pre-seeded the disk with data from home (it's a 1Tb disk, would have taken ages even on Annex M Be*) and have my most important data replicated overnight to that, as well as encrypted, then moved to online storage too. If my flat were on fire I'd get the missus and the cats out: anything else can burn if needs be.

Agreed. I've got 2x2TB drives at my dad's place with all of my long-term data on them so if anything goes horrifically wrong I won't lose everything, and 100GB of online backup to take care of the really important day to day stuff. The NAS + VPN is certainly a much better solution, just requires a bit more setting up I guess.

I'm just going to re-run over everything in my head, now I've got some ideas I can start being a bit more specific with exact requirements... whatever happens though I think I'll be pulling back a little from my original aims

[jim]

Okay, I've had a thought. On the basis that the RAID levels are causing all sorts of grief, how about something like the ML110 G6 X3430.

With the standard drive controller, it will run RAID10, albeit not hardware. However, it's not as if I'll have more than two machines accessing at once, so massive I/O is unnecessary, and the quad core should have CPU time to spare. If I want 4TB, then 3x2TB is necessary for RAID5, and 4x2TB for RAID10, but given the money I've saved by not buying the P212, I can afford the extra drive... and presumably the striping should require far less computational power, and perform faster, than RAID5 would anyway? And it has even greater resilience, on the basis that even after 1 drive failure, there's a 66% chance that the second failure won't result in data loss.

Or would it be absolutely terrible, performance-wise?

[spoon_]

R10 will always outperform R5 in a way of putting less stress on the CPU. Pure reads then R5 wins with a solid hardware card to calculate the XORs. Rebuild times / array creation R10 wins.

Performance wise, overall, I'd say go for R10 given that you'll do it all in software. No parity calculations should be good on CPU cycles as R10 is essentially two R1s aka mirrors.

95W on TDP would concern me unless you want to under volt/clock the CPU?