RSTe multi-volume performance question

[d_stanley]

New to the forums, so begging forgiveness in advance if this has been asked before.

I've inherited a couple of servers I'm using on a project, with SuperMicro motherboards that have the C222 Express chipset. I've got four hot swap bays on it, and I'd like to do two Raid 1 volumes (one for OS, the other for a database). I tried to peruse some of the documentation and it appears that this chipset has RSTe, and that it supports multiple raid volumes. If I'm wrong about the multiple volumes, someone PLEASE let me know. External backups to a USB hard drive will also be done nightly (in addition to having spare drives at the ready in case of a drive failure), so I'm satisfied, safety-wise, with a dual Raid 1 setup.

My main question is, what kind of performance hit will there be for doing two RAID 1 volumes instead of, say, a single 4 disk Raid 5 span? In the experience of users here, will I be able to tell much of a difference? The CPU won't have to do the parity calculation work for Raid 5, but I simply have no clue if doing two mirrored drive sets is any faster or slower on RSTe compared to a single Raid 5 set.

[Santiago_A_Intel]

Hi d.stanley,

Thank you for contacting Intel® SSD support group with your request for information on the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology enterprise (Intel® RSTe).

Regarding your question on RAID performance on your setup with the listed available hardware, let me remind you the basic differences on RAID configuration (RAID 1 and RAID 5)

RAID 1 is a simple mirror configuration where two physical disks store the same data, thereby providing redundancy and fault tolerance. On RAID 1, any read request can be serviced and handled by any drive in the array; thus, depending on the nature of I/O load, random read performance of a RAID 1 array may equal up to the sum of each member's performance, while the write performance remains at the level of a single disk. However, if disks with different speeds are used in a RAID 1 array, overall write performance is equal to the speed of the slowest disk.

RAID 5 also offers fault tolerance but distributes data by striping it across multiple disks. However, rather than storing a mirror image of all the data, RAID 5 optimizes storage efficiency by using parity and checksum, computing techniques widely used for error detection and correction. Parity blocks allow data to be reconstructed if one of the data blocks is missing; parity information is distributed among the drives. It requires that all drives but one be present to operate. Upon failure of a single drive, subsequent reads can be calculated from the distributed parity such that no data is lost.

Intel® has available Article No. 000005760. Please access article through the following link: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005760/server-products/raid-products.html on this article, Intel® has included a Guide to configure different families of RAID controllers, please download document on this link: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/server-products/raid-products/SWUG_full_featured_entry_RAID.pdf you’ll find several details and important references on performance.

If you have future questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We will be more than happy to help you in any way we can.

Best regards,

Santiago A.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[d_stanley]

​Thank you, but I know RAID levels. My question is one of experience that hopefully one of the forum members can answer.

Does anyone out there have any experience running dual RAID 1 arrays under RSTe?

[Santiago_A_Intel · Accepted solution]

Hi d.stanley,

Thank you for your reply to Intel® SSD support group.

Regarding your original question on RAID 1 performance, it’s very difficult to get a precise response, since we are analyzing a hypothetical situation, where we don’t know the kind of drives to be used in order to provide benchmarking details on the final setup.

As a generic question, might someone else in the community be able to dare sharing their particular experience on a similar situation, but still you will not have the exact same configuration as it will depend on many factors like type of media, usage, types or drives, CPU, RAM, etc.

Might you have future inquiries, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We will be more than happy to help you in any way we can.

Best regards,

Santiago A.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[Santiago_A_Intel]

Hi d.stanley,

Greetings from Intel® SSD Support group.

This is a friendly reminder your case remains open, awaiting for your reply.

Please let us know if you might need further assistance.

Have a nice day.

Best regards,

Santiago A.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[Santiago_A_Intel]

Hi d.stanley,

Greetings from Intel® SSD support group.

This is a friendly reminder your case remains open, awaiting for your reply.

Please let us know if you might need further assistance.

Have a nice day.

Best regards,

Santiago A.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[Santiago_A_Intel]

Hi d.stanley,

Thank you for your reply to Intel® SSD Support.

This is to let you know this case is being closed.

Please feel free to get back to Intel® communities, whenever you might feel necessary.

Have a nice day.

Santiago A.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

Under Contract to Intel Corporation