2 x SSD RAID 0

[xbl4814]

Hi

Literally just ordered a Mac Mini Server with 2 x SSD option, the plan being to reformat with RAID 0 for maximum performance with a fresh install of OSX.

Just wondering if anyone else on the forum running this configuration and did you notice a "real world" improvement in performance? Or is it a waste of money and better to buy a second TB display?

Still have option to cancel order with Apple and order with either a Fusion or single SSD and save GBP £400

Apart from iTunes and Aperture libraries, I run Windows V8 and V7 Pro virtual machines. V8 is 64 bit and V7 is 32 bit as some of the applications we run are not available in 64 bit.

We thought it would give a huge boost in speed, which is does in the benchmark tests. But these are not real world LOL

Thanks for your help.

 

[maflynn]

I'm not a fan of RAID 0 particularly in a server where uptime and reliability is key.

Since you risk losing your data if something happens to one RAID volume what benefit will you see since you'll be using this as a server. Also what backup methodology will you use since this is crucial imo.

 

[Brian Y]

Buy it with a HDD, and put your own SSDs in there - will be much cheaper.

And yes, you do notice the difference with Raid 0. My 2011 iMac has 2 Samsung 840 Pros in Raid 0 - it's ridiculous how quickly it runs. Opening/closing apps you won't see much improvement, but if you do anything disk-intensive, or have multiple VMs running off of the drive, you will notice the improvement.

For the record, I get just over 1Gbps continuous read speed, and over the array there's roughly 170,000 random 4k ions.

However, for a server, raid 0 is a bit silly. You want it to be redundant, not risky. Servers should always be raid 1 IMO (or raid 0+1 if you have $$$ and room for disks).

 

[xbl4814]

Thanks for the replies and the VM's are backed up on a number of external SSD's and all the client data files in the VM's and our emails are held on our own Cloud storage facility, which we have located remotely at a data centre in London.

So if the RAID does crash, it wouldn't be a major problem.

Also presumably with using SSD for the RAID there is a little bit more reliability built in.

We are keep machines for couple of years and then sell on to clients so think we will be OK.

It is purely whether the huge extra cost (Apple kit in UK is £ = $) is worth it for the speed gains.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I'm not a fan of RAID 0 particularly in a server where uptime and reliability is key.

Since you risk losing your data if something happens to one RAID volume what benefit will you see since you'll be using this as a server. Also what backup methodology will you use since this is crucial imo.

Isn't this why you backup your data with an external drive? I didn't use SSDs, but I did just RAID 0 my conventional Mac Mini drives and I got 2.5x faster performance in XBench (boot time is less than 1/2 what it was and I'm at about 1/2 the performance of a single SSD but with 2TB storage; I'm getting 250MB/sec reads and 160MB/sec writes) and I have a bootable external USB 3.0 drive with all the data on it (safer than backing up to an internal drive that is on all the time and potentially exposed to malware, etc. compared to a backup that's in a fire safe, etc.). I lost the recovery partition, but who cares when I have a full bootable backup external?

 

[KScottMyers]

Buy it with a HDD, and put your own SSDs in there - will be much cheaper.

And yes, you do notice the difference with Raid 0. My 2011 iMac has 2 Samsung 840 Pros in Raid 0 - it's ridiculous how quickly it runs. Opening/closing apps you won't see much improvement, but if you do anything disk-intensive, or have multiple VMs running off of the drive, you will notice the improvement.

For the record, I get just over 1Gbps continuous read speed, and over the array there's roughly 170,000 random 4k ions.

However, for a server, raid 0 is a bit silly. You want it to be redundant, not risky. Servers should always be raid 1 IMO (or raid 0+1 if you have $$$ and room for disks).

I'm running a similar setup in my 2011 mini. Speeds are ridiculous. Couldn't be happier.