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  1. #1
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    May 2008
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    raid for file hosting business

    Can any one please suggest which raid level is best for a file hosting site?

    And please give some suggestions for this kind of site?

    Thanks in advance.

  2. #2
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    RAID 1 or 10 is probably the best in terms of performance and what I consider recoverability. How much data are you looking at and how many disks?

  3. #3
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    3 drives and around 1 tb

  4. #4
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    Hello,

    It greatly depends on your load. Just because it is a file hosting site does not mean that you are experiencing great load. RAID-10 would probably be best but it depends on the nature of the I/O. What kind of files? Any additional processing of the files?

    Thanks!
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  5. #5
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    No additional process,Just normal file host like rapidshare.First i want start with some high end spec server with less space and after that i will be addding drives and some more servers to it.Is my idea bad?

  6. #6
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    That's not a bad idea. I would plan for capacity too. I would start out with a 4 disk RAID-10 set with SATA disks. Usually for simple read/writes you will not need much speed ... RAID-10 will help for speed on SATA disks and provide fault tolerance. Remember that RAID-10 is N-2 capacity so if you have 4-1TB disks you will have 2TB unformatted space.

    Thanks!
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  7. #7
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    thanks admonet,can u please suggest server specs to start with.I am expecting big growth.coz,i have some good and different business plan.

  8. #8
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    I already suggested a hardware setup in a previous post about fileservers, so I'm going to copy paste here:

    If you're going to use 3.5" disks, use this system:

    Chassis: http://www.supermicro.com/products/c...26TQ-R800U.cfm (Redundant PSU, space for 12 SAS 3.5" disks, Supermicro UIO)
    Motherboard: http://www.supermicro.com/products/m...5100/X7DCU.cfm
    You'll need an UIO SAS controller for that, for example: http://www.supermicro.com/products/a...-USAS-H8iR.cfm
    You'll need 2 of those, as they only have 8 SAS connectors each.

    If you're going to use 2.5" disks (better performance, uses less energy, but way more expensive), get this chassis instead:

    http://www.supermicro.com/products/c...213A-R900U.cfm

    Make sure you also purchase the matching UIO riser card.

    Why did I choose the X7DCU board with only 1333 Mhz FSB? Because that uses regular DDR2 memory instead of FB-DIMM: cheaper, less heat and less power usage.

    I'd recommend a RAID 10 setup. I'd prefer using linux software RAID but the supermicro controllers I suggested above are hardware RAID controllers (with battery backed cache). Here's a controller without RAID: http://www.supermicro.com/products/a...C-USAS-L8i.cfm. Be generous with RAM, even ECC memory is very cheap these days, so you can take full advantage of linux's caching algorithms.
    Last edited by RedShift; 10-13-2008 at 11:01 AM. Reason: Corrected links

  9. #9
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    thanx redshift,
    The links are not working.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by pvakr View Post
    thanx redshift,
    The links are not working.
    Sorry about that, I already corrected the links.

  11. #11
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    I believe that Raid 5 is more than sufficient. It affords the ability to lose a drive and have the array still functioning. Fileshare sites do not need the type of reads that a DB server needs. The quick answer to any Raid question is Raid 10 because you can never be "wrong" given its redundancy and performance but in terms of cost I really think that raid 5 is a perfectly good choice.

    In other words, if you can afford it, go for Raid 10. IMHO it isn't needed but why not if you can afford it.
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  12. #12
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    Thanks coolraul,How many drives enough for raid 5?can u explain about raid 5.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by pvakr View Post
    Thanks coolraul,How many drives enough for raid 5?can u explain about raid 5.
    RAID 5 is striping using parity. You need at least 3 disks for RAID 5 to work and when using 3 disks it can survive the failure of 1 disk. You can find more information on the different forms of RAID on wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID.

  14. #14
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    If i have 3 500gb diks,how much i can use for storage? And how much for recovery(i mean for raid 5 implementation)

  15. #15
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    Pvakr,

    RAID-5 is N-1 usable storage. So 3-500GB disks would yield 1TB unformatted space.

    Adam
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  16. #16
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    May 2008
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    That means i can store only 500gb on it, right?

  17. #17
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    May 2008
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    That mean i can store only 500gb on it, right?

  18. #18
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    Raid-5 is the best for 3-5 disks in a file hosting server. You can recover files even if you lose one harddisk. Usable space is one less harddisk of the total. So if you have 4x 1TB disks, your usable space is 3x 1TB = 3 TB. If you have 3x500GB disks, you can use 2x500GB = 1TB space.

    If you have more than 5 disks, RAID-6 becomes safer. In RAID-6 you can lose 2 disks and you can still recover files. Usable space is 2 disks less than total, so if you have 8x 1TB drives, you get 6x 1TB = 6TB space.

    RAID-10 is an overkill for a file hosting website, especially when you start to have more than 4 disks.
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  19. #19
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    thanx harzem

  20. #20
    In my opinion, if you are looking for drive upgrades. Then, the best is to consider a 3ware RAID 1 configuration with battery backup

  21. #21
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    raid5 and 6 would be best choice for file server. raid10 for db server.

  22. #22
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    Look on NewEgg for an Areca SATA raid card, it's hardware and by some people better than 3ware. They start from $299 for a raid5 card and a good one which can use 8 regular sata2 drives in a raid 10 for example is about $499.

    I'm not sure, but you could probably go the other way and build a server with 16 or 32GB of RAM (there is for example a 4x4GB package on NewEgg) and use several instances of MemCache to keep in memory the most used files and serve them from memory. This way you could prevent or minimize disk trashing.

    You could also use something like Gigabyte iRam if you find them but you'd probably be better just buying additional main memory nowadays.

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