I was surprised there doesn't seem to be too much of a discussion on RAID configurations and no hardware RAID controller on the pro build. Just bought me a
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115121 but it's not in yet. Hope it was the right one to go with.
I use the 2720 rocketraid.
It's worked quite well (knock on wood).
In the past I've also successfully used the 3ware (now LSI Logic?, but not their other megaraid product line) controller.
It worked as well.
These cards seem to help quite a bit when doing raid5 parity configurations.
But if you use a 4 drive raid10, like I happen to be on the 2720, I imagine you'd achieve similar results from a software raid off the motherboard controllers.
It's also a little harder to find a m/b that has an independent 8-lane pcie that doesn't cripple the 16-lane graphics card slot.
I personally prefer the h/w raid to keep the workload off the cpu.
I use raid10 for the VM images. The throughput blows away raid5 for sure.
For temp (non-fault-tolerant) workspace, I also use 3 older drives in a s/w based raid0.
Very fast - if it breaks - who cares.
Anyway, good luck, and don't forget to backup...
I hate WONDERING whether or not I'll be able to rebuild a mirror or not...
