Hardware RAID for the fastest Raspberry Pi CM4 NAS!

Finally, with a bit of help from some Broadcom engineers, I got full hardware RAID working on a Raspberry Pi. And I actually used SAS drives this time.

Special thanks to Broadcom for sending me a controller card and storage backplane to test on the Pi, and for their help in debugging the driver issues!

Products mentioned in this video (some links are affiliate links):

Other videos mentioned in this video:

#RaspberryPi #RAID #ComputeModule4

Contents:

00:00 - Intro
01:02 - What is SAS RAID?
03:37 - Why RAID on a Pi?
05:22 - MegaRAID 9460-16i overview
07:16 - Making it work on the Pi
11:00 - Creating RAID volumes with StorCLI
12:58 - Performance
15:48 - 2.5 Gbps NAS?
16:59 - Recommendations and alternatives
18:02 - Bloopers

[JeffGeerling]

Like if you want to see Jeff get shocked more (— RSJ).

[Centorios]

props to the broadcom guys that were just as hyped as you to make it work

[vincei]

Props to Broadcom. No, seriously, big props. Thanks, Guys!

[mme]

Give a Geerling a PCIe lane, and he'll run a mile!

Once again fascinated by your process and thankful for you sharing your efforts! It's crazy seeing how far you can go with your Pi!

[AndrewDanne]

I just loved this session. I use to run a Lab for XFS & CXFS at SGI in Melbourne Australia with petabytes of storage and more than 2000 CPUs. The Broadcom guys are the best as we were forever rebuilding kernel drivers on beta cards from Broadcom (also with networks). Broadcom was always the most helpful and knowledgeable of all the Interface people we worked with. You brought back some great memories of working at this level of development. Thanks for the work you do, it's hugely interesting.

[shaigluskin]

Let me be clear, I have no intention or need to try this at home. What I love about this and Jeff's other projects is witnessing his incredible patience and tenacity. Recompiling the Linux kernel 50 times! Go Jeff. I smashed the applause button and chipped in.

[JonathanZigler]

Sir, as a firmware engineer I had to order your merchandise.

[bravosixactual]

The Virgin Linus: 24SSD tHreadRiPEr server
The chad Jeff: haha raspberry pi go

[playeronthebeat]

I'm so stoked about that since I want to build a NAS out of the CM4 as well!

I desperately need it for my photos as they're taking up like all the space on my hard drive (and I've got no copy... So, if it fails, it's all lost...).
You're doing such a great job of explaining and showing off all these cool things!

Thanks, man!

[SpencerYork]

Dude I'm jealous this sounds like a great time, getting Broadcom engineers involved in the project.... greatness :)

[Milandr]

"Required about 50 kernel recompiles" ~ You should join us in Gentoo land, you'll feel right at home.

[tdtrecordsmusic]

wow, there are sooo many accolades here !! Going forward with opensource !! Working with Broadcom shows SOO much 4 both parties !!! Keep going Jeff. This is all gr8 !!

[Ntech]

I’m finishing up my last semester of University and I’m building a autonomous robot system with a Pi for my senior design. Everything you say is so many levels beyond my understanding / capabilities but you do such a great job and explaining and keeping it interesting. Keep up the great work man!

[antoniovargas]

This is an absolutely ridiculous setup and use of hardware. Yet, it is exactly the kind of thing I would do and loved nerding out watching it. Thanks for putting it together.

[ItzNickyJ]

I legit am not even interested in anything ras-pi related but this man... This man has my interest. Good work sir.

[austinfarley]

Hey Jeff, IT guy who is a network and systems administrator.I feel like you need to add a disclaimer about RAID in your videos. RAID is not a replacement for a backup unless you don't care about your storage. Outside of that, I love your videos! Trying to get my hands on a bunch of PoE HATs and a rack tray to put them all in.

[syntheticperson]

I love the quote “released the magic smoke”! 😁

[NeemiasJunior]

I have very little experience with hardware but watched til the end, amazing video man! I've got 10% of what you said but motivated me to dust my pi3 and study more. Keep it up! Cheers

[rishabhtomarAda]

"i hate to say mibibyte" This line hit me hard.

[alliejr]

Synology and QNAP have been selling ARM-based NAS RAID forever. Except for sotware RAID, such storage boxes have never been CPU-bound. But, yes, a fun project and great video.