A hardware raid can be pricey but it helps prevent data loss and improve performance. Ive been hoping other people would post with some experience, because im in the middle of a decision and am leaning toward software but just basically fear the unknown. To put those sidebyside, heres the difference you can expect when comparing hardware raid0 to software raid0. All of todays operating systems have some form of software raid built into them os x, windows 710 and linux. I cannot see how software raid would be dependent on a proprietary hardware. With cheaper hardware raid you can also lose data if theres a. I was advised to use that rather than fake raid, which would pretend to. With software raid, you must have a driver for your disks for each operating system. Again though, esx will not be handling the disks in any kind of raid capacity essentially just forwarding the controller to the vm. A brief history of raid raid has been around since 1970s 1989 berkeley paper was a taxonomy 1989 witnessed the first raid5 in software 1990s saw many hardware raid3, 5s lsi, 3ware, maxstrat, highpoint, intel 1990s also saw the introduction of raidframe mdraid came along in 2001. I have been using raid on macs and pcs since 1999, and i have done it in software and 78 different kinds cards on various oses. With hardware raid, if the enclosure fails, you can lose all your data. I need some more space, so will remove the two old drives and setup another raid.
If you created a raid using disk utility in any version of the mac os prior to 10. You cant use software raid on the os drive except on a server os, iirc. What is the difference between hardware and software raid. Apple mac os x, hp hp ux, ibm aix, linux, microsoft windows ab windows nt oder sun solaris sind.
With software raid your data can be split across different enclosures for complete redundancy one enclosure can completely stop working and your data is still ok. To analyze hardware vs software raid, it is inevitable to talk about the. To be safe, check with the manufacturer of your raid to see if any updates are needed. The lacie software installer installs lots of unix. Does os xs disk utility create hardware raid or software raid. Lots of trouble getting it set up into a raid 1 confusing info. The raid implementation in winxp in my opinion is flawed to the point of making it unusable. We used the same benchmark suite found in our ssd charts to measure and compare the performance of different single and multidrive configurations of samsungs 840 pro. Hardware, inter erst or windows i want to install samsung 970 pro nvme drives into the workstations and reuse the 500gb desktop hard drives for a raid 1 setup i may use a 3rd drive as a hotspare.
Some raid cards will hide the whole array from the os but the driver will still know that it is raid. You are restricted to the raid levels that your os can support. If you are using raid on a server or workstation, then there is a case for hardware raid as the processing power and the hardware raid controller means that there is a possibility of data retrieval speed increases but not with software or storage spaces which is, as i understand it, simply a new version of the ms dynamic disk. Right now the benefits if os raid on sata ports are trim and cost. Numerous operating systems support raid configuration, including those from apple, microsoft, various linux flavors as well as openbsd. But then i dont know xraid which might have the same processing requirements. If your hardware supports it and you passthrough the disk controller to the vm, then the vm will see the controller and could do its own raid. What is the difference between a software and hardware raid. But with budget favoring the software raid, those wanting optimum performance and. Software raid, such as softraid, can provide incredibly fast. What is the difference between hardware raid and software. A hardware raid is a raid array that includes a separate computer that manages the raid.
To do it, write out the following command in a terminal. Plus, software raid permits users to reconfigure your arrays without being restricted by the hardware raid controller. It combines multiple inexpensive, small disk drives into an array of disks in order to provide redundancy, lower latency maximizing the chanc. Softwareraid gegen hardwareraid im benchmarkvergleich. You connect the raid box to your mac, install software that lets os x talk to the box, and youre off and. If youre new to software raids, heres how to get started with the. I will tell you two reasons why i wont use software raid anymore. Hardware raid is dedicated processing system, using controllers or raid cards to manage the raid configuration independently from the. Consumer nas all use software raid and hence completely ignore them. The distribution of data across multiple drives can be managed either by dedicated computer hardware or by software.
For example, with a softraid volume, you can only use it with computers running mac os. This type of software raid uses hard disk drives which are attached to the computer system via a builtin io interface or a processorless host bus adapter hba. Side by side, intel % change vs software raid 0 intel performance increase over microsoft. A hardware raid solution will work on any operating system. Apple raid configuration vs hardware raid super user. This is because it needs to process the data before it is written to disk. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raids. Using mdadm to create a new raid array is very straightforward.
Storage spacessoftware raid what are my best options. The problem well at least usually is that the drivers required arent open sourced and are not usually available for linux based systems. Be sure to modify and remove the xs in the terminal operation, as your drive labels will differ from the example given. Fake raid is raid that is at least partially implemented in software in the driver itself, rather than in hardware. It usually plugs into the pcix or pcie slots of the computer. Important information about akitios hardware and software raid.
Learn more about software and hardware raid volumes akitio. Configuration is still required, but that configuration takes place outside the system. For hardware raid, that cpu can be in a disk array or in a raid controller. He asked for the raid 0 and i bet he knows that raid 0 does not go hand in hand to be reliable, it is about the performance. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a special raid controller inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. So could i do a software raid 5 of 18 tb total 3x 6 tb. Hardware raid vs os raid solutions experts exchange. However raid 5 might need a lot of proccessing power. A redundant array of inexpensive disks raid allows high levels of storage reliability.
Hardware raid is dependant on the card and os driver. Both have physical cpu, physical memory, physical sassata controller. Numerous server oses support raid configuration, including those from apple, microsoft, various linux flavours as well as openbsd. Agreed the benefits of hardware raid look like speed and easy of use.
Hardware raid presents logical disks that are already configured to the system or the san, mirrored and ready to go. Windows software raid vs hardware raid 10 posts arlesterc. Does os xs disk utility create hardware raid or software. External enclosure raid vs software raid spiceworks. At the most basic level, hardware raid and software raid are the same thing. The question is, it seems that i can just create a raid set inside of disk utility, as raid 1, and then i will have a 3tb mirrored drive.
It doesnt say it is software raid or hardware raid, and i assumed it is software raid. A replacement raid card, especially after a few years can be impossible. The features these so called enterprise drives or raid drives have are only meaningful for hardware raid. I never messed with software raid because of reliability concerns. Windows software raid vs hardware raid ars technica. Raid redundant array of independent disks is one of the popular data storage virtualization technology. What they dont agree on is whether software raid can replace hardware raid in many applications that need access to large volumes of digital data and content quickly. In this case, the drives os x software is just as important as the hardware. Soft possibly the longest running battle in raid circles is which is faster, hardware raid or software raid. If you have hardware raid with battery backed cache use it over software raid.
Under software raid, that configuration is performed in the. A raid 1 will write in the same time the data to both disks taking twice as long as a raid 0, but can, in theory read twice as fast, because will read from one disk a part of the data and from another the other part, so raid 1 is not twice as bad as raid 0, both have their place. And then i got a wd thunderbolt duo 6tb, with two 3tb drives in it. And as you can see, theres quite a bit that gets installed. When you create a mirrored raid set, your data is written to multiple disks so the information is stored redundantly. In general avoid the fake raid controllers that are on the motherboard like the plague. Imho, im a big fan of kernel developers non directly related to zfs, so i really prefere mdadm to hardware raid. Akitio thunder2 quad mini, the raid can be created by the operating system on the computer e. If you have a server hiccup, you could have some data loss issues. Hotswap support is spotty not all software raid implementations support hot swapping. You cant use software raid on the os drive except on a.
Before raid was raid, software disk mirroring raid 1 was a huge profit generator for system vendors, who sold it as an addon to their operating systems. Raid 0 will speed up your system disks a lot and if you want reliability you go for raid 5. Software raid is a newer type of raid and its cheaper than hardware raid,where no specialized hardware is needed, and the host computer is responsible for the drives. Software raid virtually belongs to operating system. According to this article the wd thunderbolt duo 6tb misses in contrast to the pegasus2 series one essential thing to be able to create a. A raid can be deployed using both software and hardware. Create a disk set using disk utility on mac apple support. Comparing hardware raid vs software raid setups deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard in a server or pc, and the management of those drives. As one member pointed out, software raid is like playing with fire. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raid s.
It doesnt say it is software raid or hardware raid, and i. It is used to improve disk io performance and reliability of your server or workstation. Hardware vs software raid i have a mac pro 2008 running server 10. Software raid can have trouble with dissimilar drives. For software raid i used the linux kernel software raid functionality of a system running 64bit fedora 9. But the real question is whether you should use a hardware raid solution or a software raid solution. Software raid, as you might already know, is usually builtin on your os and unlike a hardware raid, you will need to spend a little extra on a controller card. Whether software raid vs hardware raid is the one for you depends on what you need to do and how much you want to pay. Will the hardware raid be more performant when dealing with large video files. Software raid is generally slower and less reliable than a hardware solution. Two disks, sata 3, hardware raid 0 hardware raid 0.