Feb 28, 2018 raid redundant array of independent disks is one of the popular data storage virtualization technology. But with budget favoring the software raid, those wanting optimum performance and efficiency of raid will have to go with the hardware raid. Onboard raid vs windows 10 raid speed test experiment youtube. Heavy processing can cause some pieces of data to be delayed by a small amount of time. Oct 30, 2015 now, lets see how windows raid0 stacks up to actual hardware raid. 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. Hardware raid and implications for the future duration.
The decision between a discrete hardware based solution versus a software based solution boils down to how robust of a raid platform you are wanting to set up. Benefits and drawbacks of hybrid, hardware assisted software raid. Socalled fake raid is a name commonly applied to motherboard. What is the difference between hardware, software, and. But a great many people are unclear about their differences. There are two parts to the software raid fakeraid equation.
In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a raid controller card inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. By definition, fake raid has no inherent benefits over honest software raid, they share all hardware and the os people have better watch over the implementations. Research before you make that change, as windows wont be bootable afterwards there are ways around it with certain oss per my colleague but i have not seen it. Here are some tips on raid levels and some feedback on the software vs. What is the difference between hardware, software, and fakeraid.
Hardware redundant array of inexpensive disks raid and software raid are two main ways for setting up raid system. Ill explain the differences and why they matter below. What is the difference between a software and hardware raid. With cheaper hardware raid you can also lose data if theres a power outage. With such a controller, i generally disable raid functionality and i use software raid on the physical disks, basically using the satasas. Intel raid on your motherboard, is something people in the linux world refer to as fake raid and what is does is that a raid bios on your motherboard handles raid commands using the cpu to issue those commands rather then a dedicated raid controller, so under heavy readwrite situations, disk io will use more cpu resources than a real. These cards are terrible and need to be actively avoided at all costs. That said, linux software raid is more robust and better supported and thus, recommended over fakeraid if you. This works the same for larger servers as well as desktop computers. Hardware raid offers better reliability compared to software raid. So called fake raid is a name commonly applied to motherboard. Aug 28, 2017 fakeraid is a common and terrible way to sell what sounds great, but really has no viable use case in production. The raid can be implemented either using a special controller hardware raid, or by an operating system driver software raid.
To put those sidebyside, heres the difference you can expect when comparing hardware raid0 to software raid0. As hivizman noted, if you require an enterprise level of reliability and resource allocation, then it is best served to go with a discrete hardware based platform. A hardware raid controller costs money but has no overhead on the server. With software raid your data can be split across different enclosures for complete redundancy one can completely stop working and your data is still ok. 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. Note, these are my terms because i cant remember the proper ones. Two disks, sata 3, hardware raid 0 hardware raid 0. Fakeraid the hardwaresoftware solution users generally refer to fakeraid when referring to products such as the intel ich10r, amd sb850, and various marvell products as another example where raid mirroring, striping, and parity calculations occur through software powered by the host systems cpu. A raid can be deployed using both software and hardware. Jul 06, 2011 reasons for using software raid versus a hardware raid setup. Side by side, intel % change vs software raid 0 intel performance increase over microsoft. Additionally, hardware assisted software raid usually comes with a variety of drivers for the most popular operating systems, and therefore, is more os independent than pure software raid. Raid 1 vs backup and software raid 1 vs hardware raid 1 h. Hardware raid cards introduce an additional device within the system, that singularly may fail itself, but by introducing this additional card it is able to offload the parity calculations from maintaining the raid off of the cpu.
Does fake raid offer any advantage over software raid. The need for these drivers is that they are cheap and so doing all the heavy lifting in software and cpu. In general, hardware raid is better than both software raid and socalled fake raid solutions which rely upon a combination of hardware. May 24, 2005 scott lowe responds to a techrepublic discussion and one members raid dilemma. A software raid can be prone to data corruption, due to the fault of the raid software or driver that is being used. So, the following part will discuss the hardware vs software raid to help you make a decision. Raid stands for redundant array of inexpensive disks. Generally speaking there is no significant performance difference at all between software raid and fake raid, as fake raid is moreorless software raid. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raid s. Jun, 2016 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.
Hardware raid is a lot like the big brother of fake raid, nothing is worse besides the price and a few things are better, but still lacks a number of features that software raid has. Learn about what fakeraid is and why you should avoid it. When storage drives are connected directly to the motherboard without a raid controller, raid configuration is managed by utility software in the operating system, and thus referred to as a software raid setup. Software raid 5 vs hardware raid 5 anandtech forums. But the real question is whether you should use a hardware raid solution or a software raid solution. If you want to set the controller to ahci, be aware it will affect your windows install. Imho, im a big fan of kernel developers non directly related to zfs, so i really prefere mdadm to hardware raid. Windows software raid vs hardware raid 10 posts arlesterc. Oct 25, 20 ultimately its a matter of cost hardware vs. Difference between hardware raid and software raid. Where that processing occurs can be important depending on the complexity of your raid setup. Therefore if you want performance and the capability to sustain multiple drive failure at the same time you should investigate hardware raid solutions. Lets start the hardware vs software raid battle with the hardware side. Under software raid, that configuration is performed in the.
My experience with hardware and fake hardware raid is that as long as you stay with the same vendor, the raid metadata will be recognized ive seen this when moving drives between various hp, areca and lsi hardware raid controllers, and with intel, amd and even via hostraid i was pretty surprised when i connected a 250gb hard drive from some old amd desktop box to a hp g1 microserver, and. A software raid is free but does carry some overhead on the server and may be less reliable under certain circumstances. I have a zfs raid 10 software raid as my primary storage setup and the read speeds i get are more than enough to saturate my gigabit ethernet. We now also have a huge number of fake raid hardware controllers. It is used to improve disk io performance and reliability of your server or workstation. 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. Fake raid is the feature that many motherboards and inexpensive sata cards offer. If anything they should be advised to increase ram and be done with it. Software hardware raid 1 as previously mentioned doesnt matter. Windows raid vs intel rst vs raidz vs hardware raid. Dec 21, 2005 for hardware raid, that cpu can be in a disk array or in a raid controller. It is a way to virtualize multiple, independent hard disk drives into one or more arrays to improve performance, capacity and reliability. Implementing raid needs to use either hardware raid special controller or software raid an operating system driver.
Fake raid is raid that is at least partially implemented in software in the driver itself, rather than in hardware. Reasons for using software raid versus a hardware raid setup. You can easily move disks from a failed enclosure to a new one, and all your data is preserved. Hardware raid presents logical disks that are already configured to the system or the san, mirrored and ready to go. This is hardware raid and, honestly, im guessing it is slower than software raid if really tested, it lack the horsepower to anything much. Configuration is still required, but that configuration takes place outside the system. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a special raid controller inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. Software raid is a type of raid implementation that utilizes operating systembased capabilities to construct and deliver raid services. While you might think the computer you are using is the most important part of your everyday and professional workflows, there is something even more important. If you have a server hiccup, you could have some data loss issues. Well, maybe this will help, as i cant give you any guarantees about any combination of hardware. Jul 15, 2008 hardware beats out software substantially in output for parity raid, with hardware being 66% faster for block output and 20% faster for rewrite performance in a 256kb chunk raid 6. You can setup raid 0, 1, 5 typically in the motherboard bios.
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. If you really must run raid 5 on a windows machine that doesnt perform like shit you have two choices. Trying to find the best raid option with what i got, so i decided to test the speed difference between onboard raid and software raid in windows. It is fakeraid, but a class above the other fakes and much faster than any built in parity raid in windows. The problem well at least usually is that the drivers required arent open sourced and are not usually available for linux based systems. These are hardware raid cards but that require software drivers to work. Raidredundant array of independentinexpensive disks that are seen in most markets is hardware raid, software raid, and fakeraid. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raids. Windows software raid vs hardware raid ars technica. Microsoft storage spaces is hot garbage for parity storage. As one member pointed out, software raid is like playing with fire. I remember from past discussions that software raid 5 simply wasnt worth the hassle due to the fact that it took an immense amount of cpu utlizilation in the past. A software raid can also be affected if the host computer is heavily loaded. Early on in my it career, id been fooled by fake raid.