10 Replies Latest reply: Mar 21, 2014 12:49 PM by PixelDeep RSS

    Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences

    LJH Community Member

      This Asus MB is supposed to be one of the best single CPU workstation MB's out there. Construction and component wise I guess it's definitely in the higher echelons [should be for the price].

       

      Has anyone experience of using the on-board Raid facilities provided by Intel and/or Marvell. This is crucial in my circumstances and I do not wish to buy a separate Raid card if I can avoid it.

       

      I'll be using Raid 10

       

      Thanks,

       

      LJ

        • 1. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
          ECBowen CommunityMVP

          Well Raid 10 on the onboard does not have the best performance and the rebuild times are longer. However as long as you get enterprise drives you should be ok. Keep in mind the Onboard controllers don't handle corruption well at all especially on raid 10. So make sure you keep your data backed up.


          Eric

          ADK

          • 2. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
            PixelDeep Community Member

            Hello.

             

            I am pulling th etrigger on this mobo.

             

            What about raid 0 configuration ? Is it working OK ? Sould I use Marvell (6GB) or Intel (3GB) esata ?

            The goal would be to RAID 3 SSD (probably samsung EVOs or crucial M500 for media...

             

            I feel like buying an areca is maybe too much for raid 0 only ?

             

            Thank you

            • 3. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
              ECBowen CommunityMVP

              If you are raiding 3x SSD's then you absolutely want to use the 6Gbs ports. The Marvell will likely have limited bandwidth so you wont get the full performance. It doesn't hurt to test to make sure though since every board is different with this. Preferably you want a X79 board that has 4 6Gbs ports on the Intel controller. I believe the Asrock Extreme 9 does. Do not get the Samsung Evo's if your raiding. They perform poorly if not single drives. Get the Crucial M500 drives for raids.

               

              Eric

              ADK

              • 4. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
                PixelDeep Community Member

                Thank you Eric for your kind response.

                 

                I will take the M500 (I deduce that the Marvell 9287 are more appropriate than the  the MEX controller of the EVOs ?)

                 

                Unfortunately, the P9X79-E WS has only 2 Gbs ports on the intel controller. I was going to this board because of the pci lanes (4X16 through PLX), so it would be OK when adding a seconf 770 4GB for resolve.

                 

                I read a thorough test somewhere when they said the onboard marvell 6GBs were far better than the previous version, even if it was not up to the intel's. I thought it mentionned 420MB throuput vs 520 for Intel's. If I do 4 ssd, it may bring me around 1,5GB, which would be enough ?

                Else I will use the 4 intel's 3GB...

                 

                I'm gonna try :

                intel 6GBs : system

                intel 6GBs: cache

                Marvell : 6Gbs (3 to 4 SSD M500)

                intel 3GBs : Export

                Intel 3GBs : DVD:BR Burner

                 

                Maybe another SSD for project on intel 3GBs, but I'm not sure about that....

                 

                Do you think a areca is worth the price for raid 0 ?*

                • 5. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
                  ECBowen CommunityMVP

                  Well in this case yes the Areca card would be worth it if the onboard Marvell ports don't have full bandwidth. The problem here isn't the Marvell controller per say. It's the highway available to the Marvell controller that is the limiting factor. Often times that secondary controller doesnt have the highway big enough to handle more than 1 SSD drive at full speed. Soon as you add 2 or more all the drives are much slower. Last I checked this 2 drives in a raid 0 only gave 600MB/s versus 1GB/s on the Intel 6GBs ports. Theoretically those 4 drives should be in the 1.5GB/s range however that is probably unlikely. I would expect 1GB/s or close to that as the toal maximum bandwidth available for the Marvell controller even if its that high. So it doesn't hurt to test first but expect to get an Areca card for the full performance.

                   

                  Eric

                  ADK

                  • 6. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
                    PixelDeep Community Member

                    OK. Thanks again.

                     

                    When I got everyhthing, I will try that. I think 1GBs output will be enough.

                     

                    By the way, the ASrock  9 extreme has only 2 6GB intel. 2 6GB more with one marvell, and 4 more with another marvel.

                    http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X79%20Extreme9/?cat=Specifications

                     

                    But you can only have 2x16 PCIe.

                     

                    I wish areca woudl make an inexpensive raid 0 only 4 sata card...

                    • 7. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
                      ECBowen CommunityMVP

                      The Asrock has 2x PCi-E gen 3 16X bandwidth slots if you dont use the other 2 and 1x PCi-E Gen 2 8X slot for the 5th. The E-WS is still better slot layout wise but the Asrock is cheaper so it balances out.


                      Eric

                      ADK

                      • 8. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
                        Bill Gehrke Community Member

                        Have you looked at the Asrock Extreme11?  For only $250 more than the Extreme9 you have plenty of PCIe slots plus a built-in LSI RAID controller with 8 SAS/SATA 6Gb/s RAIDable ports.   

                         

                        "The feature-rich X79 Extreme11 motherboard offers rich storage options. It provides 10 SATA3 ports, 8 of which are SAS2 (6 Gb/s) ports sourced from LSI™ SAS 2308 PCIe 3.0 controller. Via LSI™ MegaRAID® utility, users can get high transfer speed 3.8 GB/s through 8 SSDs in RAID 0 mode."

                         

                        Admittedly the RAID options are limited but it sure is not bandwidth limited.

                        • 9. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
                          LJH Community Member

                          As this was my original post, I thought I'd chip in here. PixelDeep, you may find this of interest. None of this by the way refers to Raid 0,  that has a very specific use and certainly isn’t secure.

                           

                          My original intention was to add WD Black disks to my Obsidian 900D and contain the Raid completely with the case [it's quite a size]. However I've now realised that adding fewer disks and using NovaBackup every night is basically just as reliable and you don't have any horrendous costs to worry about wrt dedicated Raid cards, additional disks etc

                          .

                          NovaBackup is an industry standard and costs approx. £45 UK. http://www.novastor.com/en/software/windows-backup

                           

                          As an example, I have a 2TB 'work' disk which is updated every day. NovaBackup is set to do a Full backup of this disk once a week with an Incremental every evening. You can also run the schedule manually if you feel the need i.e. you can't wait for the evening run. You can have separate schedules for different reasons i.e. backing up non volatile media

                          Raid is great, indeed indispensable, if you’re managing a server with large volumes of customer data being managed/secured. For individuals managing their own workload/data, I’m not convinced it’s necessary. With the above example, I have 2 x 2TB disks with an additional regular Archive. So basically two disks [work/backup] with a scheduled archive of my machine data. A raid system would need substantially more than this with all the necessary disks involved. I’m sure you will know that regular archiving is necessary whatever your backup scenario is.

                          • 10. Re: Asus P9X79-e WS Mobo Raid experiences
                            PixelDeep Community Member

                            Thank a lot to you all for the interest.

                             

                            Bill, from what I gathered from different forum, it would seem that X79 is better handled by asus than any other manufacturer. I've read some warning about the asrock. I don't know if they are all justified but it is enough to make me nervous...

                             

                            However, I can have for a reasonable price (roughly 180$) a second hand lsi 9260-4i (withour breakout cable though)  It seems OK for what I want to do.  I might go with that and the asus.

                             

                            @LJH. My goal in raid 0 is throuput. It is for a media folder only (rushes). Those media will be doubly  backed up to regular 2To HDD, which will rest in a drawer in two separate places. So I have no use for backup strategies. I'm backing up my work on usb key and ftp. All the rest (programs, cache etc...) can be rebuild.