SBS 2003 RAID controller setup. Need opinions.

[jferrante]

Hello all,
I'm setting up this server for my own small/home office. 5 XP Pro workstations. I will be installing SBS 2003.

I bought this server fairly stripped down. I've got the RAM up to 2gigs, now I'm adding hard drives.

I intended to use 2- 250gig SATA drives with the onboard RAID controller with mirroring. This board has an adaptec RAID chipset. The motherboard chipset is the i7221.

I guess I'm asking if anyone has had experience using just the on-board SATA controllers for a simple RAID setup. Does it work well enough, etc. Should I spend the extra $300 for a PCIx RAID controller and adding a third drive for RAID 5?. I'm not concerned with the extra speed but I certainly want redundancy. Is the extra controller worth it? Do the on-board controllers have any issues? Pros and cons??? All opinions and comments appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[tfg13]

I think in a matter of opinion, you answered your own question. You are not concerned with speed, so having a RAID 1 setup should satisfy your needs. Since this is going to be used in your small/home office, are you concerned about space issues?

Personally, I have never had issues with onboard RAID controllers, but then again, I've always used Dell's. The question about the on-board RAID has to be answered knowing what onboard RAID controller you actually have. All this can usually be figured out by going to

http://www.adaptec.com.

 

[jferrante]

The server is a new PowerEdge 800. I was surprised that the onboard controller was an Adaptec, not Intel since the motherboard has a 7221 chipset. I guess they saved a dollar or two that way.

The 250gigs that I'll get this way will be fine for a year or two. I'll worry about it then.

Thanks for the comments.

 

[dkediger]

I would agree with staying with the mirrored setup. With a good controller, RAID 5 doesn't have much of a speed penalty, but in my opinion, the real benefit with RAID 5 is with Hot Spares for the array and hot pluggable drives - neither of which you get with your setup.

Basically, you would only gain the extra disk space for the added cost of a controller and disk.