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Does FreeNas use the RAID Controller on my SATA Card?

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InfectiouSoul

New Around Here
Hi,

I am about to embark on building my own NAS, based on the articles on this website. The hardware will be based on the series "How To Build a Really Fast NAS" but I am planning on using FreeNas.

The question I have is in relation to the SATA controller on the ASUS Motherboard (ASUS P5E-VM DO). It says it supports SATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5. As far as I know, FreeNAS does Software RAID'ing so is it using the RAID part of my SATA controller at all?

If it isn't should I be looking at a way to make use of the SATA RAID? Would it be faster/better? And how would I be doing that?

Cheers.
 
Good question. I think it's more a question of whether you can access the features via FreeBSD. I don't know the answer. But if you find the controller manf and part number, you can google for FreeBSD drivers.
 
Thank you for that Tim.

So assuming that I do find a way to use the RAID controller on the SATA card (anybody?) and assuming that FreeNAS (or other software RAID solutions) are not using that same raid controller, which would give me better/easier recovery in the following scenarios:

1. Failing Hard Drive (in RAID 5 setup)
2. Failing Motherboard (in same RAID 5 setup)

Cheers,
Mark.
 
Not sure I know how to answer the question, specifically.

In general, drive failure in a RAID array should be straightforward to recover from.
Motherboard (or power supply) failure is a tougher call. If the fail happens during drive access, the whole array could be corrupted and unrecoverable.

That's why RAID is not considered a valid backup strategy.
 
In many cases the RAID chipsets on these types of motherboard are a hybrid RAID solution that need the right drivers to work and are often only available for Windows.

If you some how you manage to use the RAID on the motherboard the problem will be that if the motherboard fails you will need to replace it with either the exact same make/model or find a make/model that does the RAID in the same way, otherwise you RAID array will be unusable.

If you use the software RAID built-in to FreeNAS then after a motherboard failure you can replace the board with any make/model of motherboard and FreeNAS and the RAID array continue where they left off.

By using the motherboard RAID features you are binding yourself to that make/model of motherboard.

The software RAID in FreeNAS also easily copes with a disk failure.

I hope this helps,

Gary
 
Hi Gary,

Yes that helps tremendously, and it is kinda what I was expecting (that the software RAID would give you some level of independence difficult to achieve with a hardware solution).

I have done some more investigation over the w/e on this matter and got a few more questions that you might be able to help me with (given your insight in FreeNAS).

I presume that FreeNAS' approach to s/w RAID (conceptual) is no different that Linux'? I.e. I could achieve very similar results and definitely the same hardware independence by using Ubuntu?

I read that dealing with a drive failure using FreeNAS is a pain and is not explained very well in the available documentation, any comments?

Also, on these forums I read about Virtual Storage Technology (VST) software from Ciprico, do you know how that fits into all of this? It only works on Windows and some Linux flavours so not with FreeNas/FreeBSD but just wondering how it works).

Cheers.
 

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