RAID 0 - better NVMe performance?

pnutbutta
pnutbutta Member Posts: 28 Member
in Komplete General

Has anyone had better performance in a RAID 0 config on either a NVMe or SATA with the full Komplete library? If so, can you give any general or specific benchmarks on specific libraries?

I currently run Komplete 14 standard on a single 2TB NVMe (teamgroup, no DRAM) and it's fine, but I am now thinking of trying it in a RAID 0. I am not asking about RAID 0 in general, I know that it is a better performing configuration in general, but this is specifically for a Komplete library since it can vary a lot on what is being loaded. Normal benchmarks shows it can run very fast, but at times, a smaller instrument that you would think should load pretty fast, is relatively, very slow.

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  • Studiowaves
    Studiowaves Member Posts: 634 Advisor

    It depends on your raid controller. Nvme drives share bandwidth with video cards on the pcie buss. There are raid controllers for Nvme drives but generally on motherboards designed as servers. You might try Windows Raid 0 on the Nvme drives on your computer, it might work ok. In general motherboards with 40 lanes with dedicated hardware raid controllers like intel enterprise devices are expensive. They'll toss data around like you've never imagined. But for this, it's a bit overkill. As in my computer cost quite a bit.

  • pnutbutta
    pnutbutta Member Posts: 28 Member

    Even if it does share lanes and on a mobo that supports RAID, there are two drives handling the load. But even then loading NI libraries on a single fast SSD can be slow, so its not about just bandwidth, but being able to process what is being transferred to RAM. Having 2+ drives taking care of that would seem to help. You do not need anything special for RAID 0. There is no parity or striping going on.

    Anyway, just looking to see if anyone has Komplete on a RAID 0 setup.

  • BIF
    BIF Member Posts: 956 Guru
    edited October 14

    I would not bother with RAID in any DAW.

    Usually, it adds complexity, cost, and time to maintain. RAID requires multiple SSDs (otherwise why would you do it?) all of the same size (except in the case of Synology NAS boxes). SSDs are expen$ive, and now you're multiplying those costs!

    You have to ask yourself WHY are you doing RAID just for the library files? Is it to improve speed of access? If that's the case, then you need a minimum of TWO drives to stripe. But you STILL ARE NOT PROTECTED from a loss of one of those drives. In order to guard against a sudden drive outage, you need to MIRROR. And that requires 2 drives.

    • Mirroring alone does not improve performance.
    • Striping alone does not help you keep working through an outage.

    So knowing that, you have to have 4 drives to improve performance AND protect against a hardware outage. 5 drives if your chosen RAID method requires parity. Surprise! Now you've gone from the cost of one drive by a factor of 4…or 5.

    And you STILL need to provide a backup drive anyway. So now you are $ X 6 for your data device costs for your DAW. Why do that to yourself? Will you be spending time rebuilding the array after a failure? Believe me, that takes longer than just restoring from a backup.

    Do you really have hundreds of dollars burning a hole through your pocket? If so why not just buy an extra backup drive or two so that you'll always have a cold "airgapped" spare on a shelf somewhere…or maybe a copy of your data stored in a safe offsite location? Or do some room treatment in your space? Or take some lessons and learn how to read musical notation? Or buy me lunch! (I promise I'll be a cheap date).

    I have about 4.5 TB of plugins from all manner of different vendors such as Native Instruments, Arturia, Sonic Couture, Heavyocity, and more. The libraries are all on a single 8TB SSD, broken into four Windows partitions to avoid having any single backup take 12 hours. My biggest partition, "VST 3", takes 3 hours for a full backup every other month via USB 3, and that's because it's over 2.5 TB in size.

    We use RAID in data centers to improve performance AND guard against outages to massive databases, and that's because we could have 100 or 1,000 people using that database at any point in time. Some of our biggest applications could have 5,000 or 50,000 users at any moment in time. Some databases can do a half-million transactions in a day from all those users. Yeah, THAT'S when you use RAID!

    But for a 1-user DAW, I think it's much more important to put library data on a competently fast hard drive or solid state drive, and then make sure that drive gets backed up on a regular basis. Most people (and many companies too) don't do backups like they should. That seems to be the weak spot in most people's day-to-day practices.

    Buy a backup drive today, install it, and back up your data. Then use all that other time you were going to spend building RAID arrays, and go play music instead. Right? 😁

  • pnutbutta
    pnutbutta Member Posts: 28 Member
    edited October 15

    Nah raid 0 is the simplest type and very easy to setup. SSDs are also pretty cheap these days. If all I am doing is loading komplete or some other larger libraries, there is no concern for backup. Lets put things in perspective. You can analyze raid and all uts use cases, but hat is way beyond the scope of my question. All im looking for is someone that actually has tested out komplete on a raid 0 and say; yes its faster, but only by this much Etc. Thats all. Pretty simple.

    To your point about music, if I can load a large instrument or change articulations X% faster , then thats less time messin around with that stuff and just getting into the music composition part. Apologies for assuming you knew that was a part of this question.

  • Studiowaves
    Studiowaves Member Posts: 634 Advisor

    I use raid 0 all of the time. If your loading samples into memory buffers I can use the shortest buffer. At one time I had four sata drives in raid 0. NVME are actually faster if you have enough lanes on your pc buss to actually not have to time share the drives. Just check your motherboard specs and see how many NVME drives you can actually use. Generally one NVME drive is all you need for this stuff. Big servers, well that's an expensive game there and could be a waste of money. Also check your buffer settings for your samples, they might be set high for use with a standard hard drive. Minimize it and see what happens.

  • lord-carlos
    lord-carlos Member Posts: 3,495 Expert

    Mirroring alone does not improve performance.

    Improves read performance.

    I currently run Komplete 14 standard on a single 2TB NVMe (teamgroup, no DRAM) 

    I would just get a decent NVMe (with dram) and call it a day.

  • PoorFellow
    PoorFellow Moderator Posts: 4,424 mod
    edited October 16
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/184273#Comment_184273

    All im looking for is someone that actually has tested out komplete on a raid 0 and say; yes its faster, but only by this much Etc. Thats all. Pretty simple.

    Here is the problem with that.

    As you can see then people here are generally happy if they have their stuff on NVME attached SSD and no one here expects it to be worth the cost and bother to try setting up more NVME attached SSD in RAID to improve on that. I myself am still waiting to upgrade from mechanical drive to a SSD - especially since I like BIF already has passed the limit where 4 TB is enough (I think though that I will divide and settle for a 4TB to my most used).

    My own take here is that I would more concentrate on checking speed of involved parts and make sure that everything is up to the task including CPU and RAM. And also , if you have one of them new style CPUs with both E and P cores them maybe check if the cores settings (or other settings) makes any difference.

    I think that the only solution to your question is for you to do it yourself , make a fast NVME RAID 0 and then return and tell the rest of us about your findings 😁

    Anyway , have fun both with RAID and with your music software in general 🙂

  • BIF
    BIF Member Posts: 956 Guru

    If OP really wants to do this, great. The world needs people to push the envelope and discover new ways forward. Especially if you have no limit of expendable funds for the project. First we saw Elon Musk make a rocket booster that could land itself. Then he made one that landed itself on a barge bobbing around out in the ocean. And now he makes landing pads that can snatch the booster right out of the air.

    I would never tell Elon not to investigate new things. And I won't tell OP this, either.

    That doesn't mean that I'm wrong in my first post. The supermajority of great music being made today is being done on a laptop. With the equivalent of an i5 processor and one drive and maybe an external drive. Or a similar Macbook setup. Without RAID. People sometimes accuse enthusiasts of being insensitive to cost. So we have over time, changed our advice to reflect that.

    If you are a similar enthusiast and you have no limit of funds to spend on drives and RAID, I say go for it and like @PoorFellow says, come back here and report your findings so that we can all learn from your experience!

    Good luck and more power to you!

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