topic Re: Microserver Raid-5 in ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL)

Microserver Raid-5

bahmanj — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:38:18 GMT

I am looking at HP Microserver for use in several places. It is a great box, but is missing one big thing which is Raid-5 capability. It does have Raid-0 and Raid-1, but Raid-0 does not provide any protection and Raid-1 wastes too much space. I know I can get a raid card for it, but that costs a lot. Does anybody know if HP is planning to bring a version with on-board Raid-5 anytime soon?

Thanks in advance.

BahmanJ

Re: Microserver Raid-5

Jimmy Vance — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:58:58 GMT

@bahmanj wrote:
I know I can get a raid card for it, but that costs a lot.

I think you answered your own quation. At the price point of the Microserver, RAID 5 isn't on the radar. A P212 Smart Array w/cache for RAID 5 costs about the same as the base model MicroServer.

Re: Microserver Raid-5

bahmanj — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:49:56 GMT

Thanks Jimmy
This is a great platform for building a low end NAS, but low end NAS products in the market with Raid-5 costs almost the same as this box. The open architecture of this box is what they do not have. I am not HP, but if they really want to boost the sale of this product, adding Raid-5 is easy. Most chips support Raid-5 now and even the RAIDXpert software that comes for this box supports RAID-5. Is this HP's official position that they do not plan to add RAID-5 or your prediction? Or do you know any other box in the same price range with Raid-5?
Thanks,
B.J.

Re: Microserver Raid-5

Jimmy Vance — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:34:43 GMT

Was just stating my opinion.

This system and others that are similar use software or "fake" RAID, not a hardware based RAID controller. Have you ever considered using the RAID functionality built into the OS? OS based RAID and software RAID provide pretty much the same performance. The biggest issue with software RAID is the drivers are usually binary only and you are tied into specific driver / kernel versions.