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Neeed Helllp!!! about MacPro Raid Card

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MGWLLC

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I am new to everything. I am very confused abour MacPro Raid 0 and 5...

Which one shall I configure? Raid 0 or 5???

3.0 8-cores
16 rams
8800 Nivda
4 TB HD

I need the answer ASAP.

Thanks!
 
MGWLLC said:
I am new to everything. I am very confused abour MacPro Raid 0 and 5...

Which one shall I configure? Raid 0 or 5???

3.0 8-cores
16 rams
8800 Nivda
4 TB HD

I need the answer ASAP.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Raid 0 is for speed. It does not back up your material.
Raid 5 backs up your material but, of course, uses more space
 
Well... A lot depends on what you want to do with your system exactly...

But knowing only what I know from this one post, I would recommend using the first HD on its own for OSX and applications. Group the remaining 3 drives into a RAID set, and now you need to make a choice:

RAID-0 - This will give you 3TB (about 2.86TB actual capacity) This is the fastest option, but no fault-tolerance or redundancy in case of a drive failure. Not an issue if you have a proper backup solution in place.

RAID-5 - This will give you 2TB (1.9TB actual) Not as fast, but provides fault-tolerance or security to some degree. Theoretically one of the drives in a 3 or 4 drive configuration can fail and the data will be preserved.

I can't comment on RAID-5 performance. But with 3x1TB 7200rpm drives in my Mac Pro as a RAID-0, I can sustain about 170MB/s reads.

Also keep in mind that the Apple RAID card is not compatible with BootCamp, nor is it bootable in Windows or Linux. And the RAID card takes over all 4 drive bays in your Mac unless you start running separate cables and getting more involved. Hardly worth it since there's really only 4 HDD bays inside.
 
And those two free SATA ports are not bootable, only accessible within the OS after proper i5400 chipset drivers are loaded. And they're intended for use in the optical drive bays... They make for decent eSATA connectors. There are vendors out there that have brackets to install two 3.5" HDDs in a single 5.25" bay, which is a nice solution if you want to run two SATA cables up to your lower ODD bay.

If you have the Apple RAID card installed, you can purchase a third-party IPASS cable to attach to the primary SATA header on the system board. The IPASS / SATA solution will give you 4 SATA cables inside your system that behave as the 4 SATA connections you would have without the Apple RAID card that takes their place. The trick is where to put the drives. I played with that a bit, but it was more of a hassle to really deal with. In the end, I've gone with 1x1TB for boot/apps, 3x1TB for RAID-0 workspace. And a CalDigit HDPRO external RAID for more workspace that's even faster -- I can grade 2K DPX sequences off that RAID in Color without stressing the RAID.

If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't buy the Apple RAID card. But I would look at the HighPoint 3522 or the new Areca card, both are bootable in OSX, and windows Windows and also offer external connectivity, which the Apple RAID card does not.
 
Curious... Is it possible for me to do Red Alert, Red Cine and FCP without Mac Raid?
 
Jeff said: I can't comment on RAID-5 performance. But with 3x1TB 7200rpm drives in my Mac Pro as a RAID-0, I can sustain about 170MB/s reads.

Is there anyone who know how fast RAID-5 performance is?
 
According to Apple, they're claiming about 165MB/s reads with 3x1TB HDDs in a RAID-5 configuration.

http://www.apple.com/macpro/technology/storage.html

That may be a bit high of an estimate, but I guess they're also claiming sequential reads. I seem to be benchmarking out at 170~180MB/s on my 3x1TB in a RAID-0. I've peaked up to 260MB/s. Also depends on what test software is being used. The AJA benchmark claims my 3x1TB array reads at 242MB/s and writes at 202MB/s, but I've found AJA's benchmarking to be optimized for their purposes (of course) and numbers are a bit higher than what other applications seem to experience.

Like Gunleik said, you don't need the RAID. Faster drives do help with REDCINE and RED Alert, it will keep the drive system from being a bottleneck, which can happen with single drives. You will definitely want the RAID if you're working with DPX sequences or Cineon, Tiff, etc.. Even if the 3-drive RAID isn't quite fast enough to pump 2K DPX sequences through color in real-time. Although it seems to handle Gluetools sequences pretty well.
 
Jeff said: Faster drives do help with REDCINE and RED Alert, it will keep the drive system from being a bottleneck, which can happen with single drives.

Me: You mean faster drives without raid? Please clarify this?
 
MGWLLC said:
You mean faster drives without raid? Please clarify this?
Click to expand...

I was just generalizing... Faster drives as in faster storage. In most cases this will in fact require some sort of RAID setup. For individual drives, the current crop of 1TB 7200rpm units with 32MB cache are about as fast as it gets.

Or to be more specific with my experiences with REDCINE and RED Alert, there is definitely a speed benefit to working off of the RAID vs. working off of a single 1TB hard drive. However, there is a point where the drive system is no longer a bottleneck. I see no benefits in REDCINE when working off of my larger external RAID compared to the internal RAID on my Mac Pro, even though the external RAID is more than 2X faster.
 
MGWLLC said:
Jeff said: I can't comment on RAID-5 performance. But with 3x1TB 7200rpm drives in my Mac Pro as a RAID-0, I can sustain about 170MB/s reads.

Is there anyone who know how fast RAID-5 performance is?
Click to expand...

RAID performance is scaleable depending upon cash, and the hardware technology that you purchase.

There are 3 types of systems that give usable RAID performance.
Slowest is SCSI U320:
SCSI is a reliable performer. With 6 drives and a dual channel SCSI based RAID card, (UL4D or a UL5D from Atto technologies, for instance) should sustain about 280 Megs a second. It used to be pretty expensive to set this type of RAID up. But as it is "yester-year's" technology, it should be pretty cheap. With 8 drives you can set up a decent RAID 5, with drives that are designed to take a lot of head thrashing, and run 24/7 for years on end.

SATA2/eSATA
Mid-speed el'cheapo RAID
This is going to be the best option for a low cost RAID solutions. You can find inexpensive SATA2 cards out there, and with a SATA JBOD, you can assemble a terabyte pretty cheaply. Often for less than $1200 USD. With 6 to 8 drives you can get about 280/320 megs/sec with RAID5. SATA however, isn't as robust as SCSI. The SATA bus can easily become confused, and sustained rates have been known to drop off. Often SATA controller card companies do "tricks" to make sustained data rates possible. Also, the drives do not have the livespan that a SCSI drive does. However at a fraction of the cost of a good SCSI drive, you can live with this, if you plan carefully ahead of time. (ie: have a spare drive on the shelf, and use RAID5.)

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
Ridiculously Fast and reliable storage, but for a price.
This is what I use. This is the "Next Generation" SCSI format. In the same way that older ATA drives when "Serial", so did SCSI. This technology change allows for much faster drives, combined with the bullet proof-ness of SCSI. 6 Drives will give you about 550Megs/sec *sustained*. 8 drives are recommended for RAID5. This combination is about $3000, but well worth it. In RAID0, I can sustain 1 Gig/sec. (Yes, you read that right, 1 Gig/sec.)


bob..
www.gluetools.com
 
Hey Jeff

Just got my Mac pro yesterday. I have 3 seagate 1TB 7200rpm units with 32MB cache, besides the 320 system drive. Will the software raid solution in Mac work very well for the (3) 1Tb drives or does a card like the HighPoint 3522 make a big difference in overall speed?

Thanks
Frank
 
Software RAID does add a little bit of overhead, but it may not be that big of a deal, depending on what you do. I would imagine that on the current crop of Mac Pro systems, the performance hit for RAID-0 would be unnoticeable under most circumstances. You won't be able to use RAID-5, which under a software implementation would be kinda slow -- so it's not offered.

RAID controllers are a good option, but if you want to seriously consider adding hardware to get a faster RAID configuration, then I would steer you in the direction of the CalDigit external RAID solutions. Or you can roll your own with various enclosure and drive options and controllers like the HighPoint card. CalDigit has several options though starting with their 4-drive external HD-Element up tot the 8-drive HDPro.

Like bob (gluetools) said, there are also SAS interface options if you really want to move a lot of data really fast. Hoewever, there's a steep price penalty to pay and they also come at much lower capacities. On their own, 300GB 15Krpm SAS drives are not much faster than the 7200rpm 1TB drives -- where they really pull ahead is when you group them into a RAID. The much faster seek times make a world of difference when staggering data blocks across an array. ...Sorry to go off on that tangent.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
There are vendors out there that have brackets to install two 3.5" HDDs in a single 5.25" bay, which is a nice solution if you want to run two SATA cables up to your lower ODD bay.
Click to expand...

Kilgroe: Sorry to go off topic, but could you point me in the direction of where to get these brackets? Have only found brackets that adds support for one...
 
helgeloken said:
Kilgroe: Sorry to go off topic, but could you point me in the direction of where to get these brackets? Have only found brackets that adds support for one...
Click to expand...

Here's the one from MaxUpgrades -- it's a bit expensive, but includes the cables and everything you need to mount two drives in your second optical bay off of the ODD SATA connectors.

http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=158

I'll see if I can find another link or two to some others. I've seen them around, but not thinking of them off the top of my head. Other solutions are the same, but not quite as elegant and don't include the cables, etc..
 
Thank you Kilgroe, I'll check out that solution.

If I chose to pair 6 drives in RAID5 on a RAID card in my MacPro, what speeds should I expect? For booting I would use an external eSata drive.

What would be the downsides of this configuration?
 
6 drives in a RAID-5 inside your Mac Pro? You would need a 3rd party controller. The Apple RAID controller won't work beyond the 4 primary HDD bays and software RAID-5 is not offered (or desirable).

booting from eSATA is OK, but once again, that requires a third-party controller or the extension of the ODD SATA ports to the outside of your system. The ODD ports are only bootable in OSX because EFI / BIOS support for them is incomplete, you can't use bootcamp to boot to them. They're not visible in Windows or other OS's until you can load i5400 chipset drivers.

IMO, trying to cram a 6-drive RAID-5 inside a Mac Pro while still booting from an external unit just seems kinda strange. I'd just build myself a 6 or 8 drive external RAID-5. Won't cost any more in the end, maybe a bit more for the enclosure, but that's it.
 
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