Comprehensive data protection for all workloads
Post Reply
wa15
Veteran
Posts: 323
Liked: 25 times
Joined: Jan 02, 2014 4:45 pm
Contact:

ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by wa15 »

This is more of a ReFS specific question but looking at a 200TB Veeam repository on a Dell R740xd server and am wondering what the best practice is regarding RAID controllers. Do RAID controllers need to be certified for ReFS or will any RAID card do?

If I recall correctly, hard drive pass through was required at one point, but it seems that I can actually format a volume with ReFS even if it's on hardware RAID. Any advantages/disadvantages?

Will appreciate some pointers!
DaveWatkins
Veteran
Posts: 370
Liked: 97 times
Joined: Dec 13, 2015 11:33 pm
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by DaveWatkins » 1 person likes this post

RAID is fine. Originally some MS documentation incorrectly suggested you couldn't use RAID but that has been corrected. What version of RAID you use will be driven more by the required I/O and available space
HannesK
Product Manager
Posts: 14287
Liked: 2877 times
Joined: Sep 01, 2014 11:46 am
Full Name: Hannes Kasparick
Location: Austria
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by HannesK » 1 person likes this post

Hello,
I have not seen any requirements for internal RAID controllers for ReFS. This article states that RAID is a perfect fit.
Deploying ReFS on basic disks is best suited
Basic disks include local non-removable direct-attached via BusTypes SATA, SAS, NVME, or RAID.
There was only a time when MS said that it is not supported on SAN (iSCSI /FC) but even that was changed again (see article above).

So RAID is the way to go :-)

Best regards,
Hannes
GreenAlpha55
Enthusiast
Posts: 32
Liked: 3 times
Joined: Oct 25, 2018 2:20 pm
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by GreenAlpha55 »

If it will be a Windows server; Why RAID over Storage Spaces?

I'm planning to purchase an R720xd and run Storage Spaces w/ReFS.
nmdange
Veteran
Posts: 527
Liked: 142 times
Joined: Aug 20, 2015 9:30 pm
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by nmdange »

Performance on Storage Spaces will be pretty poor unless you have 4 servers and can do storage spaces direct. For a single server, I would stick with a hardware RAID controller, with the biggest write cache you can get.
nitramd
Veteran
Posts: 297
Liked: 85 times
Joined: Feb 16, 2017 8:05 pm
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by nitramd » 1 person likes this post

Everything I've read about software RAID over the years has been less than positive, i.e. the software RAID array eventually became corrupt, unusable, and not salvageable.

I agree with @nmdange that hardware RAID is the way to go. Depending on your budget, get a controller that has a large cache (1GB to 4GB) and battery backup.
GreenAlpha55
Enthusiast
Posts: 32
Liked: 3 times
Joined: Oct 25, 2018 2:20 pm
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by GreenAlpha55 »

nmdange wrote: Feb 22, 2019 2:47 pm Performance on Storage Spaces will be pretty poor unless you have 4 servers and can do storage spaces direct. For a single server, I would stick with a hardware RAID controller, with the biggest write cache you can get.
I've seen tests where Storage Spaces (not direct, 1 server only) was faster all around than traditional RAID10. I guess I will have to do my own testing. However, if you use ReFS without Storage Spaces you will lose self-healing functionality.
nmdange
Veteran
Posts: 527
Liked: 142 times
Joined: Aug 20, 2015 9:30 pm
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by nmdange »

RAID 10 is pretty wasteful on a backup server. I'd usually stick to RAID 6/60 and parity storage spaces performance is not good. Also, self-healing requires 3-way mirroring which has even higher overhead than RAID 10.
DonZoomik
Service Provider
Posts: 368
Liked: 120 times
Joined: Nov 25, 2016 1:56 pm
Full Name: Mihkel Soomere
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by DonZoomik » 1 person likes this post

Parity spaces *should* be usable if you use very wide columns and have a good WBC (Optane?). I've wanted to try this out for a long time but still haven't had a chance to get my hands on a big spare server. This shows some useful numbers: http://doc.dataonstorage.com/solution-b ... Spaces.pdf
nitramd
Veteran
Posts: 297
Liked: 85 times
Joined: Feb 16, 2017 8:05 pm
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by nitramd »

If you want some benchmarks you can use the utility Crystal Disk Mark. Another benchmark tool is Atto's Disk Benchmark.

Good stuff.
nezzer
Influencer
Posts: 22
Liked: 5 times
Joined: Apr 27, 2018 11:40 am
Full Name: Andreas Svensson
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by nezzer »

Hey! I would recommend running REFS on storagespaces.

I will also add that speeds on 2019 is highly positive but it's not slow on 2016 either.

We run 3 Veeam repos (standalone) with 2019 and storagespaces mirror with paralell rebuild. We are seeing performance of about 1500MB/s on 35 7200rpm nl-sas. QD is about 25 in that scenario.

Running this with a raid controller on the same machine resulted in about 600mbs. It was actually the exact same controller but with a Raid firmware.

Just my 2 cents! 8)
patrickbeau
Novice
Posts: 7
Liked: never
Joined: Jun 08, 2015 9:20 am
Full Name: Patrick Beau
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by patrickbeau »

GreenAlpha55 wrote: Feb 22, 2019 2:27 pm If it will be a Windows server; Why RAID over Storage Spaces?

I'm planning to purchase an R720xd and run Storage Spaces w/ReFS.
Why? Because of SSD caching.
I have a R740xD on Windows 2019 Server.
There is 16x10Tb 7200tpm NL-SAS and 2x2Tb SSD SATA Mix Use. There is a Perc H730 in it with battery pack.
SSD are a mirror and HDD are Raid6. Storage space is a simple -mediatype HDD -Columns 1 -WriteCache 50Gb. No parity nothing.
Deduplication works at 900Mbps. Copying is 700Mbps while backuping. Veeam average is 400Mbps (compellent source).

And with all issues that run into ReFS, mine is NTFS. Ask Microsoft why they are no more able to make a filesystem to answer why.
ejenner
Veteran
Posts: 636
Liked: 100 times
Joined: Mar 23, 2018 4:43 pm
Full Name: EJ
Location: London
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by ejenner »

Patrick, I think if you view in the context of how long it took Microsoft to perfect NTFS... ReFS is still very new. I'm not using StorageSpaces but ReFS on 2016 is giving us a lot of extra space via deduplication.
mkaec
Veteran
Posts: 462
Liked: 133 times
Joined: Jul 16, 2015 1:31 pm
Full Name: Marc K
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by mkaec »

I think that's not possible. Deduplication was not available for ReFS on Windows Server 2016. Perhaps you mean you are using Veeam block cloning.
Vek17
Service Provider
Posts: 49
Liked: 15 times
Joined: May 29, 2018 8:42 pm
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by Vek17 » 1 person likes this post

mkaec wrote: Feb 25, 2019 4:44 pm I think that's not possible. Deduplication was not available for ReFS on Windows Server 2016. Perhaps you mean you are using Veeam block cloning.
Deduplication with ReFS on Server 2016 has been available for a few months now. (Since 1709)
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... s-overview
mkaec
Veteran
Posts: 462
Liked: 133 times
Joined: Jul 16, 2015 1:31 pm
Full Name: Marc K
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by mkaec »

I've never seen it, but I didn't think 1709 would be branded Windows Server 2016. To me Server 2016 is the 1607 LTSB version.
ejenner
Veteran
Posts: 636
Liked: 100 times
Joined: Mar 23, 2018 4:43 pm
Full Name: EJ
Location: London
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by ejenner »

they had to back-port functionality from Server 2019 to solve some problems with the 2016 version.
nmdange
Veteran
Posts: 527
Liked: 142 times
Joined: Aug 20, 2015 9:30 pm
Contact:

Re: ReFS on Hardware or Software RAID?

Post by nmdange » 1 person likes this post

1709 is not Server 2016, they are different. There are fixes to ReFS backported to 2016/1607, but new features like Deduplication are not backported. You have to be on Server 2019 for that.
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Amazon [Bot], chris.mcdonald, Google [Bot], RValensise and 142 guests