Gigabyte z170x-Designare: Advice for internal RAID, first Customac Pro build

[lazerbean]

Thanks again Pastrychef! I will definitely look closer at Xpenology

 

[disample]

The Synology DSM is a popular choice for many businesses and can be found in many server rooms. Since Synology added support for BTRFS about 1-2 years ago which I think brings ZFS feature parity. My array pre-dates the availability of BTRFS so I'm still on EXT4, but in the 3+ years of 24/7 operation, I haven't experienced any problems or any data loss. I've tested by pulling a drive while the array was online and it handled everything beautifully. I have never been brave enough to test by pulling two drives but, technically, it should be able to handle that too.

You are aware that Redhat (for example) has dropped support for BTRFS, and that there are some major issues with BTRFS development? Actually 80% of NAS devices specialized for video / photo are ZFS now (Lumaforge, Small Tree, etc.)
Development of ZFS-on-Linux is going very well and actually FreeBSD and ZOL will have a single shared code base:

The future of ZFS in FreeBSD

lists.freebsd.org

So if Freenas is not an option, ZFS runs on linux just fine (Cent OS, Ubuntu) and it can also be used with Openmediavault (NAS appliance based on Debian).
With so many options I think that there is no reason to clone Synology and have limited resources to find a solution if something goes wrong.

 

[pastrychef]

You are aware that Redhat (for example) has dropped support for BTRFS, and that there are some major issues with BTRFS development? Actually 80% of NAS devices specialized for video / photo are ZFS now (Lumaforge, Small Tree, etc.)
Development of ZFS-on-Linux is going very well and actually FreeBSD and ZOL will have a single shared code base:

The future of ZFS in FreeBSD

lists.freebsd.org

So if Freenas is not an option, ZFS runs on linux just fine (Cent OS, Ubuntu) and it can also be used with Openmediavault (NAS appliance based on Debian).
With so many options I think that there is no reason to clone Synology and have limited resources to find a solution if something goes wrong.

No, I am unaware of issues with BTRFS. I guess I should be happy that I'm still on EXT4 on my NAS. I just know when I played with ZFS and FreeNAS, it was needlessly complicated in an extreme way. As an end user, what matters to me is what works in the simplest possible way and ZFS was not it. I'm glad Apple dropped plans to implement ZFS in to macOS.

 

[lazerbean]

Just to update this thread:

I regret to inform anyone interested in combining Areca RAID cards with a Hackintosh under 10.14.3/4 Mojave that I have been unsuccesful getting my Gigabyte z170 Designare-based build to play along with the Areca 1224-8 card after upgrading to Mojave.

I've had lots of issues and in the process had to reset my Mobo BIOS so I believe the issue is more likely to be with some changed BIOS setting rather than the Mojave OS upgrade, but I don't have time to investigate further at this point.

So will just replace the Areca card with a simple 8-port PCI-card without hardware RAID and Mac native Marvell chip support, and run software RAID instead.

I have to admit my late misadventure with the Areca RAID array going down have scared me off hardware RAID a bit, simply because I now understand how little I really understood about RAID "crisis management" in the first place.

Also, something as simple as setting up e-mail alerts with the Areca cards demands access to an IP-adress-based e-mail server, something that is needlessly complex for what I'm trying to do.

Will likely try the OS X built-in RAID 10 first, perhaps splashing out for SoftRAID to run RAID5 if the RAID 10 speed is too slow.

 

[lazerbean]

Just want to update this thread to tell anyone wondering that I've succesfully managed to set up a RAID10 array inside my Hackintosh using a STLab PCIe SATA 6G A-590 adapter card that is natively supported under Mojave.

I suspect this card is just a rebrand/clone of the Syba and similar inexpensive cards that have been mentioned elsewhere on the forum, but that I were unable to find locally, so i took my chances on this card instead after checking the specs and seeing that they were suspicioulsy similar to the Syba cards etc. (I live in Scandinavia, so a lot of the parts being discussed in this forum can be hard to find around here).

I followed this guide to set up the RAID 10 array with 8 WD re4 1TB drives using Disk Utility.

Quite easy, and hopefully simpler and less prone to break than the Areca card I previously used - which was great as long as it worked, but a nightmare when it first showed signs of failing (without a proper IT background and deep know-how, at least).

The disk speed isn't great, 449,9 MB/s write and 504,5 MB/s read as opposed to 928,3 MB/s write and 769,8 MB/s read with the Areca 1224-8i RAID card.

ST labs card with RAID 10:

Areca 1224-8i card with RAID 5:

I had hoped for better performance, but at least it works. If anybody have any advice regarding the performance - if you suspect something isn't quite right - then I'd welcome any advice. Thanks!