Hardware Raid is Dead and is a Bad Idea in 2022

Hey! There is a new video on this topic "So if Hardware Raid is Dead... then What?" https://youtu.be/Q_JOtEBFHDs

In 40 years of IT, I have experienced two occasions where the RAID controller card went mad and wiped the data. I stopped relying on RAID but backing up bejesusbytes and having a way to restore it without taking days is the real problem. I've recovered from a hardware disaster but the business was out of action for days. The cloud has the advantage that you can blame somebody else.

"ZFS has Paranoid levels of Paranoia." "My kind of file system." Every time I learn more of about the file system my TrueNAS box runs the more boxes it ticks off and the more I like it.

Before even watching the video, I'm guessing it's gonna be Wendell telling me to use ZFS

Great topic and long live ZFS! I have been a bit curious about the claims made GRAID and this video really helped me understand it better, and of course better understand its shortcomings compared to ZFS & BTRFS.

Linus: Holy sh!t this implementation from Nvidia is FAST. Wendell: This implementation doesn’t prevent data corruption. ;)

Took me months of self-researching and testing to get my head around pitfalls you explained so clearly in a 20 minute video. Bravo. Most people think that their raid5-6 array is safe, until it isn't and data recovery fails. Silent bitrot, scheduled parity checks, recovery, rebuild performance... as an individual I ended up between zfs (on linux) and btrfs. Now I am on a long, very long journey to covert all that mess into a giant ceph deployment which is a different level of headache but it seems to be a solution for availability, correctness, consistency and performance (in that order)

I appreciate the detailed explanations in this video! I am working on a storage solution for a small office and had already decided to go with ZFS, and this solidified my reasoning in doing so. It's been a LONG while since I have set up a RAID controller, and as it appears we are moving backwards in functionality (for most solutions). Thanks, Wendell!

And now a word from our sponsor: RAID Shadow Legends

Fascinating how much verifying the integrity of the actual data on the devices is an afterthought. So much attention is paid to RAID's capability to allow an array to survive the loss of a device that we almost completely forget about consistency.

Meanwhile in France, 90% of companies use RAID 5 over 5/6 disks if not more and bosses answer: it cost less money and we have backups anyway. Or even, as i also heard: i never saw issues yet with raid 5 or 6. Beceause our country is from stone age and want to spend just enough for something to work even if it isnt really reliable

I unironically miss the days when you'd buy a decommissioned raid controller and a stack of random 12k drives, from a data centre, then bodge it all into a mutant raid array for your gaming pc... Once a month it would all come tumbling down and need to be resorted, until then your were speed...

@Level1Techs : this is a very insightful video Wendell, I wish I could give you 2 thumbs up but youtube only allows me to give one.

My how things have changed. I remember not long ago that software raid was constantly shit on.

Would love to have a video with the topic "Welcome to ZFS and BTRFS - Your Wendell introduction and video guide". Basically helping us migrating from ntfs/ext/etc to these other two.

B-b-but what if you only have a Raspberry Pi? Hardware RAID is like 10x faster if you need parity on a Pi.

Once again we get bitten by marketing playing fast and loose with implying that their products solve problems for us that they don't. The storage media space seems absolutely crammed full of this type of thing the past few years. WD hiding SMR in their NAS drive series, NAS units themselves being open to cloud vulnerabilities even when you try to turn off all their stupid cloud extras, SSD manufacturers substituting different controllers, drams and flash chips on their shipping drives compared to what they sent out to get good reviews (always downgrades) and reliability numbers that I wouldn't trust let alone rely on. Now I learn that some of the RAID volumes I've set up to prevent decay of precious files and memories are probably not protected at all against decay or loss. LOL.....

This is exactly the kind of stuff everyone should be learning about in basic computer courses! I mean... not even (some) enterprise solutions are really functionally enterprise grade anymore??? Do we really live in such a fast paced world that the only ones concerned with data integrity are massive data collection maniacs like Google?

Raid is not a backup, but your backup may use raid

Those of us who lived in the enterprise with our massive SCSi, then SAS direct attached, then finally FC SANs, iSCSI,etc..the most fear inducing moment was always when you lost power, lost a drive, and started what, at the time would have been an offline rebuild, hoping you wouldn't lose more drives in the process. One time is all it takes to make you shudder as you are hoping the backup tapes actually have your data! I just decommissioned an LTO6 library! One year of keeping it around for retention. My backups are all on Synology RS units. No more hand carrying tapes offsite either. Hyper backup works well, where various other schemes didn't. I now have backups of backups for two locations, and BTRFS goodness. All because a long time ago I learned that the D in RAID actually stood for dependable, and the RAI was for Really AIn't. Neither are tapes unless you like rolling the dice on year old magnetic bits. Don't ever trust your data to be there, and make sure you have multiple, verifiable backups and actuality test recovery once in a while. Because it may suck to be down for a little while, but if you lost months of data, we call that a resume generating event or RGE in the computer janitor business. And you don't want to be that person.