RAID and SLI

[grunt58]

Looking for peoples opinions on RAID and SLI.

Are they worth doing specially SLI?

I'm thinking we'll do a RAID 1 with 2 73gb 15K RPM Seagate’s.

Then is it better to get 2 512gb cards or 1 1gb card?

We're running SW 07 upgrading to 08 when we get our new machines.

I know "how’s this system" posts have been beaten to death but I have been unable to find any good info on RAID and SLI.


Thanks


Grant
Applications Engineer
SW2007 SP 3.0
IBM InteliStation Pro M
P4 3.4 GHz, 2GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 3000

 

[StefanHamminga]

From a post I made in a different forum here:

Simply put you cannot change a RAID set after you define it.

RAID is a way of using multiple hard drives in your pc to increase performance, reliablility and storage space.

The drives used for RAID disappear from windows sight as the RAID chip in your PC hides them. The RAID volume you create can be used as any single drive.

RAID has a couple of forms:

RAID0: This is combining 2 or more drives, performance will improve to about 180% of a single drive using 2 drives. Storage is that of both drives combined. Lose one drive you lose all data!

RAID1: The data gets written to both drives. Read performance is double that of a single drive, write performance similar to a single drive. Storage is that of one drive. Lose one drive and only notice degraded performance no data loss. Realworld workstation performance is actually very close to RAID0.

RAID5: Takes minimum of 3 disks. Read performance is 2-3 times that of a single drive. Write performance is equal or lower than a single drive. Storage is about 2 drives worth. Having a good RAID controller makes or breaks this one. You can lose 1 drive without much concequence.

SLI is currently not worth a damn in SW and the added complexity only will hinder performance of a single card. Get the 1GB card (which one?)

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer
Searching Eng-Tips forums

 

[grunt58]

Thanks for the tip on SLI.

Boss said 1gb and I'm a big nvidia fan so that'd be the quadro fx 5500. Personaly I'd go with the FX 4600 768mb it's like an extra grand for 256 more mb's.


Still need more help on RAID.

We work off the network and dont save much to our hard drive (I know it's not recommeded) so will RAID help us speed up or does that come down to the processor speed working off a network?

Thanks

Grant
Applications Engineer
SW2007 SP 3.0
IBM InteliStation Pro M
P4 3.4 GHz, 2GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 3000

 

[StefanHamminga]

Please do compare FX 5500 vs FX 4600... you'll find the FX 4600 is faster! And that extra bit of ram won't compensate for halve the memory bandwith. Also the FX 5500 is older gen.

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer
Searching Eng-Tips forums

 

[grunt58]

Thanks! Forgot to look at bandwidth!

Stefan any thoughts on my RAID question in my second post?

Sorry dont' mean to sound pushy but trying to get some system specs to give my boss.

Grant
Applications Engineer
SW2007 SP 3.0
IBM InteliStation Pro M
P4 3.4 GHz, 2GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 3000

 

[StefanHamminga]

Just go with RAID1, skip the SAS drives, get 2 WD Raptors, an Areca SATA RAID controller with 1GB cache and a backup battery (to be able to use write caching), that will blow your listed setup out of the water with by a fair margin.

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer
Searching Eng-Tips forums

 

[StefanHamminga]

PS. Check out this list of RAID1 storagemark results (workstation traces).



Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer
Searching Eng-Tips forums