DATA solutions, options. RAID 5 on set, Pegasus R4, SAS, eSATA, etc.

[Martin Landsburg]

I've been asked to come up with a data solution for both on set and back up.
Obviously, best speed/reliability/bang for buck factors considered.

We have a team of 5 data wranglers, 5 Mac Book Pro's and 2 Mac Pro's.

I was originally planning to do the following:
Use OWC dual eSATA 6Gb/s enclosures for $50 each.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MESATATBEK/
For safety/data redundancy, we would use a software RAID 1.
Interface is 6Gb/s per drive as it has two ports, one per drive.

Connect to Caldigit $100
http://www.caldigit.com/FASTA-2ex/
x 5 stations = $500
Sonnet Echo express card to accept Alexa SxS media @ $170
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet Technologies/ECHOPROE34/
x5 stations = $850
Add our own 3TB x 2 = $400 per MBP station.
x5 stations = $2000 USD

Total MBP on-set = $3350

For Mac Pro's that go on jobs, we could use the internal drives and swap those out, but would force us to power down to do so.
so these will come in handy for features, esp if shooting ARRIRAW:
http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/scsat44xt.asp
x2 stations = $400
8x 3TB = $1400
2x ATTO R680 to make RAID 5 possible = $2040
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATTO/ESASR680000/

Total Mac Pro on-set = $3840

Master storage:
When a data wrangler finished a job, they offload to an 8 bay SAS enclosure, possibly 2x 8 bay SAS (see below)
http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/scsat84xt.asp
either via the SAS interface of a Mac Pro to the eSATA of the OWC cases, or the drives taken out of the cases, inserted and replaced for fresh, formatted drives into an optional second 8-bay SAS, which does the transferring to the main 8-bay. This would be good if a case needs to go on another job and there is no time to wait for a big data transfer.

Note: This would require one of our Mac Pro's to be available to do an offload.
Ideally we would have a system dedicated to this. Mac Mini with thunderbolt to SAS adapter, or PC Windows/Linux/Hackintosh with both Tunderbolt and SAS
or Mac Pro (most expensive)

Footage kept for no more than 2 weeks for our clients, before deleted.

So one empty and one 8-bay SAS trayless populated with 3TB drives would be
2x 8-bay SAS = $700
8x 3TB = $1400

Total Master storage not including dedicated network storage system: $2100

Grand total for above:
$9290
==================
Questions and other ideas:

What are people's experience with offloading to RAID 5? It is supposed to be slower write speed than RAID 0, but is it faster or slower than RAID 1? In above scenario with the dual eSATA vs idea below with Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID 5

Instead of the OWC dual enclosures with software RAID 1,
use the Pegasus with hardware RAID 5.
Better for cost effective redundancy? Reliability?
Cost would be
5x $1100 for each MBP station = $5500
20x 3TB to have larger capacity = $3500
= $9000
The latter may not be necessary for commercials but possibly for features.


Not sure if this is correct:
The pegasus bandwidth is 10Gb/s max over thunderbolt.
Split over 4 drives, this would be 2.5 Gb/s.
Less than half as slow as the 6Gb/s eSATA option. Or does the RAID 5 bundled bandwidth make up for it, i.e. be equal or faster than the eSATA route described above?

Master Storage:
Would it be possible to have a PC hardware solution, either windows or Linux based, to act as a network storage device? It would be good to have a motherboard with Thunderbolt AND an SAS option in one box.

To keep it all Mac and affordable:
Another idea would be to have a mac-mini with thunderbolt ports and one of these ATTO thunderbolt to SAS adapters:
http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?cat=17&scat=28&prod=105&sku=TSSC-3808-D00
pricey though at $1000 USD but still cheaper than buying a Mac Pro with ATTO Raid controller.
Would also make transfers from Pegasus R4 to SAS master storage possible via Thunderbolt to SAS.

 

[paul schefz]

i have the pegasus r6 12TB...in a raid 5 (10TB) via thunderbolt i get around 600mb/sec read and write....no magic, it just works....esata will give you around 200mb/sec max....
also afaik thunderbolt will give you 10 up and 10 down....at least i get no slowdown when daisy chaining the R6 and my lacie little big (with 2 ssd drives)....
the pegasus is such an amazing deal size/performance and thunderbolt has been the most rock solid connector for me (compared to scsi, esata, usb, FW) just superfast and no problems....

 

[Martin Landsburg]

Thanks for the feedback Paul...I had one bad experience with Thunderbolt, offloading via a Seagate goflex adapter. The slightest tremble would loosen the cable and interrupt the offload. Good to hear that the Promise is stable. It does seem quite heavy though, so for our Mac book Pro stations I think a lighter setup would be better. Amazing that you get 600mb/s, really good value for that speed.

 

[Wil Wong]

Drobo mini

Drobo mini

Hello,

I've been debating about getting a Drobo mini since it will have usb3 and thunderbolt. I like the notion of getting ssd for them but I know ssd is no where the capacity of hard drives. Still, having 4 bays (2 being raided to back eachother up) seem like a good idea and ssd looks to be better for storage than hard drives. The catch is that you'd have to get a ton of ssds.

Just a thought.

 

[Martin Landsburg]

Drobo: I like the 5D on paper, but have heard not so good reports about them on the forums.
Anyone any experience?

Also to consider is the offload speed of the Epic SSD: it tops out at 300Mb/s?

Paul, question on the Promise: the 600 Mb/s was that in RAID 5? What were you writing to the drive?
We would use them as media offload stations...thanks!

 

[paul schefz]

Paul, question on the Promise: the 600 Mb/s was that in RAID 5? What were you writing to the drive?
We would use them as media offload stations...thanks!

the only speed test i have ever done was with the blackmagic disk tester app and that is where my numbers come from....yes that is with raid 5 which gives me a total of 10TB available space on the R6....you can check out any review of the pegasus boxes, they all have the same results....somehow pegasus makes the raid 5 scream.....how they get these kind of read/write times with 7200rpm HD is beyond me but i really don't care....it just works....
i also have the goflex 2.5" thunderbolt adapter, which can be used with any bare drive...amazing value....100$ for the adapter (unfortunately 50 for the cable of course) but you can use any bare ssd in it....afaik it is bus powered and could be a great in the field....off load to a stack of ssd and back up to a cheaper, larger USB3 drive? the goflex is only limited by the ssd speed (i have tested it at 300-350 RW with samsung ssd)....256 are about 200$ and 512 around 400$...just make sure you get the latest versions...last years models are almost half the speed (at sometimes more money)...

 

[Colter Ripley]

Really interesting thread, I'm pricing out a mobile data transfer station and you guys have some great points.

Regarding Drobo: I have used data recovery about three times. Once with a Drobo. The only time I completely lost everything was with a Drobo. I had to cancel projects, tell clients and it really fucked things up for me. If you google Drobo you'll come up with shitloads of people like me. The good thing about hard drives, RAID 5 drives or other RAID enclosures is that they are not PROPRIETARY. So if it goes down, data recovery people can get it back (now I just double back up or use mirrored drives anyway).

The thing I'm wondering, why don't you go with USB 3.0 Martin? Or Thunderbolt?

Also, G-Tech drives seem to be really well respected and stable.