Thunderbolt RED Rocket

[Martin Christien]

Hello Thunderbolters

For those of you who have been eager to get Thunderbolt into your workflow like us, you have been trying to get your hands on every piece of kit going. Well it just so happens that a few days ago we got our hands on our very own, spanking brand new Sonnet Echo Express Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Chassis. :thumbup: Anyone who has been following DIT Station at all knows that Sonnet have very kindly been working with us to build our new DIT Station Rogue on sale now (shameless plug) and to implement their Thunderbolt tech into what we're doing.
As awesome as the DIT Station Rogue is, www.ditstation.com (2nd shameless plug), I thought I'd post here just to let you know a little about what we've found running the RED Rocket in the Thunderbolt Chassis. We have our hands on the longer two slot chassis that shipped this week so it can hold two, count it TWO, RED Rocket cards. This is realistically about all Thunderbolt can handle and it's doing it very well.
The RED Rocket is basically the first card we put in it but as we were installing noticed that the latest build doesn't mention that it's Thunderbolt compatible, not to mention it also doesn't come up on Sonnet's compatibility chart either. Links Below:

RED Downloads - https://www.red.com/downloads
Build 1.4.27
Sonnet - http://www.sonnettech.com/support/charts/thunderbolt/index.html

This is obviously a little strange for two reasons, we have been testing the RED Rocket through various builds of the Echo Express since they announced it at IBC last year, and we have it right here in front of us working like a champ, AWESOME. So I got on the old phone (my iphone) called my mates at RED and Sonnet and found out why it doesn't list the RED Rocket as a compatible card.

INTERESTING PART
It turns out to be able to officially list any kind of PCIe card as "Thunderbolt Compatible" it has to be hot plug-able. Who knew? Well me now. Basically the Rocket driver is Thunderbolt "aware" and as I mentioned before working great but the only thing is you can't hot swap it while the RED Rocket is in there and the computer is running, other cards on the Sonnet list are fine.
So those of you out there looking for a Thunderbolt RED Rocket, here it is http://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/index.html

THE FIRST IMPRESSIONS REVIEW
I have to say now we have the final product I'm really impressed. It's tough aluminium / aluminum, when I opened it up it has plenty of fans and a nice internal power supply so there's no wall wart, you just plug an IEC direct into the back, sweet. It's got two Thunderbolt ports so you can daisy chain and fits even the longer PCIe cards as well. We ran the RED Rocket in there for ages and it kept it really nice and chilled out. Kind of wish it was Thunderbolt blue for some reason but that's just me.

Keep your eye's peeled and we'll post some official specs ASAP.

Martin
DIT Station:thumbsup:

 

[Tehben Dean]

Great to hear! I'm hoping to use the Rocket along with a raid card (atto r680) if you guys have a chance to try something similar out I would love to know how the Thunderbolt handles a Rocket transcoding footage that is on a raid.

 

[Martin Christien]

Great to hear! I'm hoping to use the Rocket along with a raid card (atto r680) if you guys have a chance to try something similar out I would love to know how the Thunderbolt handles a Rocket transcoding footage that is on a raid.

Definitely have to try that. We'll give it a go. I know some Atto cards are supported officially, we'll have to see how the R680 responds.

 

[Nils Ruinet]

Thanks for the info Martin, good to hear ! I ordered this Sonnet Thunderbolt box last week, really hope I'll get it this week... Can't wait to be able to work comfortably on my Macbook Pro with the Rocket.

 

[Chris McKechnie]

Too bad it's not 4x instead of an 8x channel. :-( Would only upgrade from my mobile red rocket if it had an 8x channel. 4x is what I'm getting with my current setup.

 

[Martin Christien]

It's really nice being able to put a RED Rocket and an eSata card in there to get full throughput.

 

[Paul Hazlett]

how is the fan noise from the cooling fans? the mobile rocket card box are like a jet engine

 

[Martin Christien]

how is the fan noise from the cooling fans? the mobile rocket card box are like a jet engine

I've gotta say I think it's really good considering it's running three fans in there. It's like a normal airflow noise as oppose to that deep fan noise you get from cheaper fans. When we integrate the Echo Express at DIT Station we use the same fans as we think they're the best. Nice and crispy cold.

 

[Martin Christien]

Great to hear! I'm hoping to use the Rocket along with a raid card (atto r680) if you guys have a chance to try something similar out I would love to know how the Thunderbolt handles a Rocket transcoding footage that is on a raid.

It looks like the Atto R680 is on the full compatibility list on the Sonnet website and it just so happens we have one knocking around here somewhere so I think that's one of the first tests we shall perform. What kind of storage were you thinking of running Tehben? 8 or 16?

 

[Martin Christien]

Talking about storage, what kind of setups are people looking to run with their Thunderbolt PCIe expansion chassis as regards cards and storage?

 

[Tehben Dean]

It looks like the Atto R680 is on the full compatibility list on the Sonnet website and it just so happens we have one knocking around here somewhere so I think that's one of the first tests we shall perform. What kind of storage were you thinking of running Tehben? 8 or 16?

Sweet. I have an 8 bay Maxx Digital chassis.

 

[James Peach]

Any one find out whats the difference is to all 3 of the thunderbolt pcie cases?
The ones I see are.... sonnet, magma, Mlogic.
All 3 still don't have them for sale yet from what they tell me.
Well besides mLogic they don't ancer the phone or return emails.(not good business)
Any way Im not on here to bash any one just telling how it is.

I would like for it to be real small.
And would like to get it now.

I see Maxx has the pciexpress ones but the new macbook does not have the slot and no 17".

 

[Tehben Dean]

The sonnets are available now according to their website. The mLogics appear to be the smallest and cheapest, they do have a RR specific one though which I haven't heard about since NAB.

 

[Mike Halper]

Vapor-ware on the mLogic? I signed up for a reservation the moment I heard about it and have yet to receive anything from them, and I know of no one who's received any response from them.

The Sonnet is available now. I thought I heard or read July on the Magma somewhere. The Magma seems like the best solution for the Rocket since it has 2 x8 slots and 1 x4 slot, but what I wonder is if you get x8 performance or x4 performance like on the Sonnet (which has 2 x16 slots).

 

[Mark Toia]

Got me buggard why RED don't make these... Would so help there them.

Glad you got them working well. I'm ordering now....

 

[Marc Dunham]

I ordered the one from sonnet about two weeks ago and they told me they still haven't shipped out, I think they are behind a little

 

[Stephen Lovett]

Any one find out whats the difference is to all 3 of the thunderbolt pcie cases?
The ones I see are.... sonnet, magma, Mlogic.
All 3 still don't have them for sale yet from what they tell me.
Well besides mLogic they don't ancer the phone or return emails.(not good business)
Any way Im not on here to bash any one just telling how it is.

I would like for it to be real small.
And would like to get it now.

I see Maxx has the pciexpress ones but the new macbook does not have the slot and no 17".

Hey James,

Like most things it depends on what is important to you.

I got to use both the mLogic and the Sonnet this week, and they both have their strengths. The mLogic was a prototype and the Sonnet was the release version.

The mLogic is quite a bit smaller, and specific to Rocket. If you are looking for a small Rocket specific solution, then it would be a good fit. It was louder than the Sonnet, but again the mLogic was a prototype.

The Sonnet I used was the bigger full height two card version. The thing was very quite, worked right out of the box with the current rocket and RCX-Pro builds, and did work in a daisy chain configuration with a TB raid array. (The mLogic may have as well, I didn't have time to test it.)

I'd like the option to have a SAS controller as well as the Rocket for LTO etc and thus like the flexibility of the dual slot configuration. That said it is more money, and a LOT bigger.

Hope this helps,

Steve

 

[Sven Seynaeve]

so but to get all crazy , with 2 thunderbolt ports on the new retina mac, and the ability to put 2 rockets in a sonnet station;

does this mean , you could actually use 4 rocket cards in combo with a macbook, to speed up things almost 4 times when necessary?

 

[Mike Halper]

Are we sure the 2 Thunderbolt ports on the Retina MBP are separate TB buses and not a single shared TB bus?

 

[Sven Seynaeve]

Got me buggard why RED don't make these... Would so help there them.

Glad you got them working well. I'm ordering now....

I also don't get it why Jim doesn't come with the RR inside of the box already. Red could push things 10x faster then anyone else in this industry, that's what we've seen. We had to wait on some parts , but let's face it , who has built a company like red before??