NVRAID vs Matrix RAID vs RAIDXpert

[DigeratiPrime]

I searched the internet and could not find a comparison of these competing integrated RAID solutions, so I'll just start one.

nVidia NVRAID

URL: http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_raid.html

Console: MediaSheild

Supported Levels: 0, 1, 0+1, 5, JBOD

OROM: Yes

Compatible with Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2? ???

SMART Details: ???

Tray Alerts: ???

Staggered spin-up: ???

Capacity Expansion: ???

RAID Level Migration: Yes

2TB+ Volumes: Yes

Screenshot: ???

AMD RAIDXpert

URL: ???

Console: Web GUI

Supported Levels: 0, 1, 1+0, 5, JBOD

OROM: ???

Compatible with Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2? ???

SMART Details: ???

Tray Alerts: ???

Staggered spin-up: ???

Capacity Expansion: ???

RAID Level Migration: ???

2TB+ Volumes: ???

Screenshot: ???

Intel Matrix RAID

URL: http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm

Console: Matrix Storage Console

Supported Levels: 0, 1, 1+0, 5, JBOD, Matrix

OROM: Yes

Compatible with Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2? Yes

SMART Details: No

Tray Alerts: Yes

Staggered spin-up: ???

Capacity Expansion: ICH10R

RAID Level Migration: Yes

2TB+ Volumes: Yes

Screenshot: ???

Please reply if you have anything to add

[CoffeeFiend]

Also:

Staggered spin-up: no, no and no respectively.

I don't care if onboard RAID and cheap "software" RAID cards don't have a costly fancy dedicated processor to do XOR'ing (I'm not using RAID5 or 6 anyways), but I never understood why they don't offer this option yet. It would be great to have, even on systems with lots of drives that aren't in any arrays. A dozen drives spinning up at once takes a lot of power regardless. It sucks having to get a overkill PSU to cope with it but I'm just not spending $800+ on a fancy RAID card for that feature alone.

I believe "RAIDXpert" is just the name of a user-friendly piece of software to configure RAID though (instead of using the BIOS to set it up), not the name of the actual feature which they unpretentiously call "RAID" (no fancy marketing name). But I've been wrong before...

[ripken204]

Also:

Staggered spin-up: no, no and no respectively.

I don't care if onboard RAID and cheap "software" RAID cards don't have a costly fancy dedicated processor to do XOR'ing (I'm not using RAID5 or 6 anyways), but I never understood why they don't offer this option yet. It would be great to have, even on systems with lots of drives that aren't in any arrays. A dozen drives spinning up at once takes a lot of power regardless. It sucks having to get a overkill PSU to cope with it but I'm just not spending $800+ on a fancy RAID card for that feature alone.

I believe "RAIDXpert" is just the name of a user-friendly piece of software to configure RAID though (instead of using the BIOS to set it up), not the name of the actual feature which they unpretentiously call "RAID" (no fancy marketing name). But I've been wrong before...

that would cost a bit more and it would only benefit 1% or fewer people.

to the motherboard manufacturers it's a waste and consumers don't want to pay more for something that they will never use.

i use matrix raid since i only buy intel at the moment and i only do raid0 with two drives in my desktop.

my server on the other hand needs its XORing, hence a dedicated raid card.

[CoffeeFiend]

that would cost a bit more

Barely. It only needs trivial changes to the BIOS' code (using code that's been around forever, pretty much), which should also easily fit in the existing flash (only a few extra bytes), and then they could have the feature on every single board they make for good. The cost here is negligible (as in, less than a penny/motherboard likely). The only thing that's "expensive", would be a SATA power connector with pin 11 left floating or such. I don't see those being any more expensive than plain old SATA power cables either, and they could be optional too (or even mod your own).

i use matrix raid since i only buy intel at the moment and i only do raid0 with two drives in my desktop.

my server on the other hand needs its XORing, hence a dedicated raid card.

And that's where you're somewhat missing the point. I'm not actually using RAID with a lot of drives. Most of them are mounted somewhere in the filesystem (no drive letter or anything). But that's still a dozen drives spinning at once, RAID or not. Yes, there aren't too many consumers with 12 drives in RAID, but people with more than a pair of drives is a LOT more common than 1% for sure.

[DigeratiPrime]

I dont want this topic to divert too much from the original purpose, to compare different raid solutions, and get into the benefits of particular features.

IMHO staggered spin up is not to useful on client machines which typically only have a single or couple of drives, since the total watts isn't going to comprise a significant or majority of the stress on the power supply and/or ups. I think a single drive uses around 10 watts on spin up. If you have many drives you're probably (should be) using a discreet raid controller and redundant power supplys or distributed filesystem. However I agree it should be simple to implement and I have noticed that some BIOS will wait for drives for a configurable amount of time - not exactly a staggered startup though. Wikipedia comes through on the details of this feature : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin-up

[CoffeeFiend]

I dont want this topic to divert too much from the original purpose, to compare different raid solutions, and get into the benefits of particular features.

Sorry for the hijacking...

is not to useful on client machines which typically only have a single or couple of drives

RAID isn't really useful to 99% of home users either, typically those same people you're talking about.

I think a single drive uses around 10 watts on spin up.

It's far more than that. 10W is closer to the average use of a drive already spinning. And it's not so much about watts, as much as how many amps. Each drive spinning (ignoring the initial short peak) uses about 2A from your 12v rail. A dozen drives means around 25A over your normal PC consumption (with an initial peak that's MUCH higher). It's a fairly significant peak.

If you have many drives you're probably (should be) using a discreet raid controller

I don't see any reason to do so. Unless you want to do RAID 5 or 6, as it sucks a fair amount of CPU power. Some people just have a lot of data e.g. a couple drives for their "movie server" use (fills up REALLY quickly with HD movies), a drive for digital photos (large RAW files and even larger PSDs), a drive for VMWare images (or Hyper-V or whatever you use) and ISO images you use a lot, a drive for PVR'ed TV shows -- for MCE or the like, your music collection (lossless takes a fair amount of space), etc.

RAID5 or 6 wouldn't really do anything for me. In case of a drive failure, it would mean a quicker restore, and that's about it. It's no replacement for backups or anything. I'm way more likely to lose data to filesystem corruption or a virus or such than drive failure in the first place, and RAID doesn't help one bit for that. There's absolutely nothing that justifies a $800+ RAID card.

redundant power supplys

Those are failover replacements. If my PSU ever dies, I can definitely afford the 30 min downtime to replace it... Also, this requires expensive redundant PSUs (server class hardware), a case meant for it and so on ($$$)

distributed filesystem

Which mostly complicates things, requires several machines to be left powered on and all that stuff. Besides, DFS needs Win Server (expensive licenses) and a full blown AD setup, and is mainly for load balancing & high availability. However, libraries are a nice feature of Win7, which I'll use to scale beyond 12 drives soon. That, and most likely port multipliers (on eSATA ports -- been thinking about infiniband too)

One can get 10TB of space for like $800 these days (10x 1TB Hitachi drives) along with a decent case and PSU for like $1000 total (buy the case, then a new drive each month -- not that bad). However, something like you describe (Win server, with redundant PSUs and fancy PERC) could easily cost 10x that... I may as well look into SANs at that price! Just too bad I don't have the price of a small car to spend on this.

In fact, I'd be buying this case for my upcoming build, but w/o staggered spin up that's an extra 40A load or so on the 12V rail... Not just any PSU will cope with that kind of abuse.

Anyways. I haven't had to rebuild an array (at home) ever, be it on a Promise card, onboard Intel matrix or whatever else.

Edit: more infos here