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March 2013 Reccomendations for RAID ARRAY editing R3D footage in CS6

Will Keir

Will Keir

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UPDATED: September 2013

After reading numerous articles, speed tests and feedback from users. I've decided on two SSD drives for OS/Apps in addition to my external RAID 5, to speed up my older Mac Pro (4,1).

Samsung 840 Pro (500GB) $420 for 515GB
[520 MS/s Read / 520 MB/s Write]

Samsung Evo SSDs (500GB or 1TB) $650 for 1TB.
[540 MB/s Read / 520 MB/s Write]

or

Crucial M500 SSDs (500GB or 1TB) $590 for 1TB.
[500 MB/s Read / 400+ MB/s Write]

Both have three year warranties, Read/Writes speeds well over the 300MB/s R3D bottleneck and around 80-100k IOPS and over 1.3 Million MTBF.

March 2013

Hi guys, looking for some user input and recommendations. I've been using CalDigit VR & VR2 drives and G-Tech. Looking for a reliable manufacture.

I want a RAID array to plug into my Mac Pro Tower. I will use this to work directly with R3D Epic footage.

Requirements:

- 300 MS/S Read & Write
- 8-10+ TB Storage Space
- Reliability in a RAID 5
- Multiple Connectivity Options (eSATA, USB 3, Thunderbolt?)
- Power Backup in case of a failure? Is this even available?

Wondering if I should be looking into SSD RAIDs. Probably better reliability than spinning media. Faster Speeds but at $1000 per 1 TB, still a bit pricey. Would love some recommendations and any feedback.

Personally I've found G-Tech Support lacking, so I've moved on to CalDigit.
 
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Humm...
 
Have you Contacted MAXX Digital? Ron May be able to Help.(Tell Him I sent you)

And are you going to NAB because i would Like to say Hello.
 
Like others said, hit up Maxx Digital. If you ever need to get to the 48-96TB+ realm I've got some other suggestions, but it's a bit more moolah.
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Not sure about NAB. Got a film coming up and I'd always rather be shooting than drooling over cool gear. Now if there is an after party....
 
Will Keir said:
Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Not sure about NAB. Got a film coming up and I'd always rather be shooting than drooling over cool gear. Now if there is an after party....
Click to expand...

After party? Well Maxx Digital Does host one on one of the days.
 
I'm surprised there are only a few recommendations, or one. Maxx Digital. These are the guys for RAID Storage these days? Seems like a market with little competition which I find highly unlikely.

Anyone else?
 
It's hard to believe there's so little out there. MAXX Digital, well done guys. CalDigit... keep going.

Everyone else? WTF are you doing? G-Tech, LaCie, where's the support fellas? You boys are crawling...

Our lives, our work, our passion rest in digital storage. Now, more than ever, we need reliability, speed and support. The option are very few, making our inevitable choice to go digital a scary one. This is an uncertain future...
 
The latest one that a lot of people have been using are the Promise R4 and R6. They're thunderbolt 4 and 6 bay raids.

Only problem is that I've read a lot on apple discussions, and here on reduser, that they've been failing on them.

I'd do some more digging, but personally, as perfect as they are on paper. I'm just not sure I'm comfortable with it. Lots of people seem to have no issues, but many do as well. Firmware updates have been coming out regularly.

Lacie just came out with a 5 Bay solution, but it uses software raid, so that's off the table for me.

There are only a few right now with USB3 and esata. OWC makes a Rack mount one if you're not mobile.
Drobo also came out with the 5D, but needs their software installed to access the drive. Although the Drobo has USB3 and thunderbolt which is nice. Haven't seen any speed tests on it yet.

There are also many SAS options, and you have a tower, so I'd think that's the best bet.

I think there's going to be some more offerings at NAB, but I'll probably buy an esata OWC before then.
 
Might be a good idea to wait till after NAB.
 
Kinda seems like SAS is the way to go. So I'd plug USB 3 or eSATA from my mobile drives (on set) into my Mac Pro Tower VIA PCIe card. Then copy through SAS to my main RAID storage unit and work from them.

Now what about SSD storage options? Greater reliability with SSDs over spinning media, faster response time and no delays bringing out of sleep mode?
 
There are many options out there for SSDs. Many can be customized, and you can pick which SSD you want in an enclosure, or just go internal.
Are you looking for a Raid, or single drive? What connections are you looking for if you want an external? Common combos are TB, TB+USB3, TB+FW800, esata+FW800

SSDs are still great, but you definitely need to see how much data you need to put on the drives to see if they're cost effective. If money isn't an issue, then they're perfect. Transfer drives they're great, archival is $$$$.
 
Looking for a RAID of at least 8TB.
Looking for speeds around 300 MB/S (will use for editing in Premiere)
External, able to transport in a car.
Looking for Connectivity, USB3, eSATA, maybe TB but FW800 is definitely a thing of the past.

Taking my time here, no immediate rush.
 
You cannot plug in thunderbolt into the current Macpro tower. PCI/TB cards do not exist (and cannot be built). 300Mbyte/sec=2.5 Gbit/sec. Theoretically USB3 can serve it. I would not risk it. For sure it's a bottleneck on any good RAID5 setup. And you need a PCI card for the USB3. SATA3 (6gbit) is a better bet. But that means a pci card and there goes your portability.
Frankly as a stop over measure I'd just stuff my macpro with 1x ssd for os+apps and three striped 3TB or 4Tb disks. You won't get Raid5 protection, but in my experience the internal 3 disk stripe volume never failed on me.
You can also do a 4 drive internal RAID5 on your macpro. I never tried it.
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/292/755
In either case you would need to carry the tower around as your portable studio.
The alternative is caryying the pci card along a raid external enclosure and install it wherever you go.
or...
Sell the macpro , get the new iMac. It is faster than macpro 12-core in most applications (with the exception of apps that can take advantage of all cores and hyperthreading).
Get a matching TB RAID to your taste. Some TB external card enclosures also exist.
 
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I've been running 4-drive internal RAID-0 on every Mac Pro I've owned. It's great for fast workspace, but do be careful -- if one drive fails, the whole RAID goes *poof* and gone. So regular backups are ideal. I keep a system/ apps drive in the lower optical bay.

As for which RAID to recommend, that's a difficult subject. There are some great options out there for SAS/SATA RAIDs, some for USB3 and some Thunderbolt. I don't know of any good ones that have multiple interfaces. Especially if you want 300+MB/s to actually use for editing. And 300MB/s is pretty much the minimum or starting point for a serious editing drive. That effectively is enough speed to work with two feeds of 5KFF EPIC footage or 3 x 4K Scarlet at once. You will definitely want more speed or more of those RAIDs to divide up media and increase performance.

For USB3 interface, I have no recommendations. Don't use 'em, I've never had much luck with USB3 storage. The spec is flawed and has a lot of overhead, peripheral compatibility is flakey at best for super-speed mode. Sure, it's much faster than USB2 or FW800, but I have yet to see any USB3 system that can go head to head with SATA.

For SATA (SAS) there are tons of options. But you really restrict those options by wanting the RAID to be portable. I'm going to say that RAID and portable rarely go together. What do you mean by portable? To me, that means I'd like to throw it in a backpack or have it in a pelican case that can be rolled around. Hard drives don't like being treated like that. The only RAID I've ever toted around on location was the rack-mount RAID I had on my DIT cart. And if you buy anything with serious performance or in a rackable form factor, that is what you're going to get. Something that needs to be on a cart or in a van.

For rack-mountable SAS/SATA, I would recommend the systems from MAXX Digital, Dulce Systems, the OWC Jupiter RAIDs seem nice too. CalDigit HDPPro with SuperShare switches make for a really nice entry-level SAN that is actually fast or localized external RAID as well.

For Thunderbolt RAIDs the best two are the Promise Pegasus and the Areca. MAXX Digital rebrands the Areca unit and provides drives and support for it. The Promise units have the best performance, hands down, of any of the desktop Thunderbolt units. Unfortunately, they're not as robust as the Areca/ MAXX Digital. I have two Pegasus units and both run great. I did have one drive fail in a unit late last year. Replaced under warranty, very painless swap-out procedure. So, out of 12 HDDs in two units with one being a bit over a year old at the time the drive failed, I would say they have done quite well. Most similar RAID products are nowhere near this reliable, regardless of interface! I just wish the Pegasus units were a little more rugged in build with some vibration dampening or shock-absorption for the drives. You won't feel safe with them unless they're on a solid desk or table where they won't get bumped. That's a tall order on most production sets or work environments unless you have a dedicated room and area to isolate all your computers. I would not want a Pegasus on a cart.

SSD's... Don't get all googley-eyed over the paper specs. They're still quite expensive for what they offer and their advantages are diminished in RAID setups. Reliability, especially in RAIDs, is no better than mechanical hard drives.
 
Wow Jeff. Yellow = GOLD.
 
Jeff, what speeds are you getting with your internal RAID 0?

I was considering going with 1TB SSDs. I like the snappyness of SSDs, not a fan of waiting for the disk to spin up.
Are you using 7200 RPM drives? OWC?

Jeff Kilgroe said:
I've been running 4-drive internal RAID-0 on every Mac Pro I've owned.
Click to expand...
 
Internal RAID-0 in Mac Pro systems. In one tower I have 4 x 2TB WD RE4 drives and get around 390MB/s sustained read and 340MB/s sustained write. Both speeds burst faster than that, but bursts don't help so much as the drives fill up and we're working continuously with R3D files spread across 2GB segments. The other tower I currently have has 4 x 3TB Hitachi UltraStars. Write speeds are nearly identical, hovering around the 340MB/s, but reads are more in the 450MB/s range.

If you run a RAID-0 in a Mac Pro, be sure that your system DOES NOT POWER DOWN HARD DRIVES WHEN INACTIVE!!! You will have serious lag waiting for the RAID to come online and it increases your chances of data corruption. Same applies if you use SSDs. Most SSDs are not instant-on. They still take half a second to initialize themselves. And you run into the same issues, it's just much faster.

I have not dabbled with SSD RAIDs much recently. In the past, working with SSD RAIDs, I found the SSDs to be very touchy, often burning themselves up or having issues with the internal compression. Be very wary of any SSDs that have SandForce chipsets on them and the compression. You also have to be aware that the numbers advertised for SSD's are bogus in most situations. They take into account the on the fly data compression performed within the SSD. Most SSDs, All SandForce based units for starters, do internal compression on the fly to keep internal transaction rates up on their internal data pathways. If you feed it or pull data from it that is already highly compressed, like ZIP, R3D, H.264, etc.. the internal compression offers no benefits. For small files this is inconsequential, for larger files it makes a very big and noticeable difference.

When transferring around large, highly compressed files, like R3D's, SSDs usually post read speeds that are not much faster than half of what's advertised. Write speeds are slower still, often no better, sometimes even worse, than most of the better HDDs on the market with these large files! Given that as a general rule of thumb, I tend to stick with SSDs for my system drive, load the OS and Apps... They work awesome for that. Some newer SSDs don't rely on the compression as much. The FLASH storage within the new MBP Retina and new iMac appears to not be strung up by compression and many other common SSD factors, it's just very fast! It's also very expensive!

OWC SSDs use SandForce chipsets and suffer from these compression issues. Newer units are not as bad as the older ones. That said, OWC SSD products are usually quite solid and reliable. They have excellent wear-leveling, just like they claim on their site. My favorite SSDs are the high-end Samsung units and the OCZ Vertex 4 and Vertex 5. Ones that have moved away from the SandForce and similar chipsets. But these are relatively newer, and I admittedly have not put them through their paces in a RAID.


One thing to consider about SSDs though, is they are indeed still quite fast, compression issues or not. They don't suffer from the latency on transactions like HDDs do with their seek times. A 450MB/s or faster 6Gbps SSD, even a SandForce based one, will still deliver 220 TO 250 MB/s rates on highly compressed files. That's double what the best mechanical HDDs are giving. I guess it comes down to how willing you are to spend the $$$ for multiple SSDs. A lot of money for the faster speed, but a huge sacrifice in capacity. Reliability has been no better for me for SSDs in RAIDs. In fact, as of the last few times I tried, the reliability was far worse than HDDs. It may be worth trying again now with newer SSD models on the market. Their reliability as a whole has greatly improved over the past year. Be sure you get SSDs that are specified or optimized for use in RAIDs!!! Like the OWC Mercury Pro ones or the Samsung or Hitachi enterprise series RAID approved ones.

The SATA interfaces in a Mac Pro are all 3Gbps. If you use the internal connectors, the fastest your RAID is going to go with 4 x SSDs in a 0-stripe is right at 1GB/s. ;) So yes, you stand to have 4TB of storage that is kick-ass-fast on the speed-o-meter. For the same or less money, you could have an external RAID that runs at the same speed with 3 to 4 X the capacity and better data security via RAID-5 or 6. That of course takes up a PCIe slot and you still need to figure out what to do with those internal bays...


If you go with a PCIe RAID controller, the only two I recommend are the ATTO and Areca cards. Both are Mac-bootable, if you're so inclined. The ATTO are the only ones that will talk to LTO tape drives reliably. HighPoint makes some great stuff too, but doesn't give you as much flexibility for SAS, SATA, bootability, etc.. all in one solution.
 
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