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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Media Storage-Lacie12Big versus Areca 12 bay? And Raid 5/6 versus Raid10?

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Grayson Fahrner

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I'm looking to upgrade my storage solution to a fast-enough, big-enough, but very stable high-capacity external thunderbolt 3 drive.

Workflow strategy is to ingest to the large (100TB+) raid, organized by year/month, and backup to cheaper/smaller drives periodically as footage is added.

I'd like the drive to be fast enough for viewing 4/5/8K at 1/2 generally, but for the NLE works-in-progress I already have separate high-capacity SSD raids to work off of.

I'm not technically ready for a server or SAN solution, so the DAS options I'm looking at are:

Lacie 12Big 120/168TB https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod..._stfj168000400_168tb_12big_thunderbolt_3.html


and the Areca 12-Bay https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...J7-7ZCr28Ai4blPBY0q2YT0PhIjG2HWkaAlqYEALw_wcB

There was an article in 2018 that seemed to indicate that the Areca hardware was a superior option.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/areca-arc-8050t3-thunderbolt-3-das,5376-2.htmlI'd like to get the 12 bay for $2,200 and 14TB or 16TB Ironwolf drives (if supported) will round out ~5-6K versus $10K for the fully loaded 168TB Lacie 12Big option.

Does anyone have experience with Lacie and Areca? Is the fuss of loading the Areca with separate drives and maintaining the raid worth the cost and putative performance benefits?

I'm thinking Raid 10 for this solution for speed/redundancy since I have lots of bays and TBs, and was wondering if that is another strike against the 12Big because the article seems to indicate that when you deviate from its Raid-5 pre-format, performance suffers.

Thanks for the feedback.
 
"And if you are unfamiliar with setting up a NAS - as I have said many times before - this is nothing like plugging in a G-Tech Studio XL or Promise Pegasus thunderbolt RAID. IT requires a setup, and unless you are willing to
sit there and suffer thru the setup, you will need to pay someone to help you do the setup. This is not plug and play - not the QNAP, not the Synology. Some people find it easy - many do not. "

Bob Zelin"

My level of skill with storage systems is about a 5 out of 10.

0 is "Why is this USB HDD so slow for editing 8k??"

5 is internal/external raid competency. 6-7 is NAS/SAS;

10 is Bob Zelin/Phil Holland love child.

The 12-bay QNAP looks neat and checks alot of boxes...but I already have a 30TB NAS for photo/project archival. I'd want something more robust for editing and in Raid 10 I think I can get higher performance from an external RAID10 exFat formatted. Also it seems that the QNAP needs SSDs (x4) and M2s (x2) for some level of cache and I'd rather take those bays for hard storage and to simplify cache/volume decisions while getting xx00MB/S read and write...even though it's a DAS wouldn't the data rates be better for transferring, transcoding, and editing than the equivalent volume on NAS?

Simply put I don't think the thunderbolt 3 QNAP NAS setup is equivalent in speed to a straight DAS RAID 10 mega-array. I prefer the simplicity of setting it up as RAID 10 and forget it than having to learn/understand the ins and outs of NAS since I don't need a shared user environment just yet.

I appreciate the suggestion, if I'm wrong about using the SSDs for cache then feel free to correct. My understanding of NAS's is far more limited and I'm not sure what all the setup choices involve trade-off wise w.r.t. speed, size of volume, and data safety.
 
I guess the Areca in raid 60 is a good option for you.
 
I'm not for or against, just giving my input as a person who has worked on both extensively with high res footage and in large scale productions. Disclaimer: I haven't heard anyone mention RAID 10 in quite a few years.

I would look seriously at the NAS solutions.

The biggest advantage of a NAS for me is monitoring / alerts and software solutions for backup/management. DAS management tools tend to suck pretty bad and when things go wrong you end up in a command line with customer support, so in the long run it's almost more complex than a NAS if you run into any issues.. In this day and age, I feel a lot more nervous about my data DAS than I do on a big QNAP or Synology.

QNAP is probably going to outperform anything in their price range. I have also used a lot of synology solutions.

If you're sinking that kind of money, I'd consider it a bonus to have a multiple client solution and a stand-alone server. It seems crazy to me to spend thousands of $ on something I can't connect a second or third computer.

a NAS will hold with a "strait DAS 10 mega array" for editing just fine. I've never tried to make them race, but we edit 8k footage with multiple clients without a problem over NAS/SAN and 10GbE. Yes, the DAS will probably be a faster in benchmarks with a single client but once you get to real work you won't see any significant performance gains. You also have to remember that the NAS is a computer, so it can be doing tasks as well while your edit bay is locked up doing something else.

The SSD/m2 bays for cache are nice if you're doing lots of small file transactions with clients, but you simply don't have to use them if you don't want to worry about it. I've never attempted to configure them as anything other than a caching pool, so I don't know if they can be setup a different way. Realistically you would be looking at a different model though if you want to get to 120+ TB out of it.

Just my .02 cents. Putting that much effort into a DAS solution seems like a wasted effort and creates a massive bottleneck in workflow.
 
The SSD/m.2 feature of the QNAP is for virtualization workloads, not video playback. You can of course provision your own SSD pool for disk less playback, but the QNAP's caching strategy (and hence performance improvement) is not for the NLE user.

I have two 872XTs, loaded with He10 drives and no SSD nor m.2.
 
Hi Grayson -
I do nothing but install NAS systems, so believe me, I want to promote the use of QNAP and Synology (and other shared storage) systems. With that said, if you are a single user, you have to be crazy to purchase a QNAP, and
go thru the aggrivation of doing the setup, if you are not technically inclined. And a stand alone thunderbolt 3 RAID array from Areca, G-Tech, Promise or Lacie will outperform a single user connected 10G to a QNAP or Synology system.
Shared storage - well, that's another story - but you are not looking for shared storage.
Now for the specifics of the other boxes. G-Tech, Promise and Lacie do not sell empty drive chassis. They come loaded with drives, pre formatted, and you pay a premium for this. The Areca chassis comes empty - you put in your own drives.
I am very familar with the Areca setup, back from the days of building Mac server systems, and using the Areca host adaptors in these systems. So I am familiar with doing the setup of an Areca RAID. Certainly easier than doing a QNAP
or Synology setup, but it is NOT PLUG AND PLAY. If you are not technical, or don't want to research this, you will become frustrated. If you just want to buy a box, plug it in, and have it work - get the G-Tech, Promise or Lacie.
It will just plug in and work, and give you the results that you want.
Many users that respond to threads on storage are technical users, that are well versed in solving complex problems. If you are an editor, and want a drive, so you can get to work, and don't want to suffer, or pay someone to help you, just
follow my advice, and you will have no frustrations.

Bob Zelin
 
Hi Grayson. We are Authorized Dealers for both G-Technology and LaCie and we can walk you through best storage options. I can also offer you a very healthy RU discount. Drop me a PM or an email.
 
Bob Zelin said:
Hi Grayson -
I do nothing but install NAS systems, so believe me, I want to promote the use of QNAP and Synology (and other shared storage) systems. With that said, if you are a single user, you have to be crazy to purchase a QNAP, and
go thru the aggrivation of doing the setup, if you are not technically inclined. And a stand alone thunderbolt 3 RAID array from Areca, G-Tech, Promise or Lacie will outperform a single user connected 10G to a QNAP or Synology system.
Shared storage - well, that's another story - but you are not looking for shared storage.
Now for the specifics of the other boxes. G-Tech, Promise and Lacie do not sell empty drive chassis. They come loaded with drives, pre formatted, and you pay a premium for this. The Areca chassis comes empty - you put in your own drives.
I am very familar with the Areca setup, back from the days of building Mac server systems, and using the Areca host adaptors in these systems. So I am familiar with doing the setup of an Areca RAID. Certainly easier than doing a QNAP
or Synology setup, but it is NOT PLUG AND PLAY. If you are not technical, or don't want to research this, you will become frustrated. If you just want to buy a box, plug it in, and have it work - get the G-Tech, Promise or Lacie.
It will just plug in and work, and give you the results that you want.
Many users that respond to threads on storage are technical users, that are well versed in solving complex problems. If you are an editor, and want a drive, so you can get to work, and don't want to suffer, or pay someone to help you, just
follow my advice, and you will have no frustrations.
Bob Zelin
Click to expand...


Is it a mistake to use exFat for these large raid systems?

I typically do field work and ingest with a 2016 TB3 Macbook pro. I typically ingest onto an exFat SSD external hard drive, and back up to a HFS+ hard drive either simultaneously or off the SSD fast drive.

However, I use a PC for the heavy lifting at home and I'd like a large raid for a working editing volume and to consolidate footage. Hence, the Mac/PC interoperability. Also with a raid larger than 100TB I'd hate to have to reproduce it or "twin" it if I go from PC to Apple for an editing machine in the future.

Windows hasn't really made me happy-the 7900x CPU in the x299 motherboard I use got a performance hit with the security patch and I hold my breath on every windows 10 update. I don't trust the updates, onedrive is annoying, and all the other tweaks and gotchas I've encountered just make me nervous with TBs of footage hardwired to their operating system.

Enter Apple and the new Mac Pro. Don't know if I buy it but if I do it would be nice not to have to reproduce and reformat a 100TB+ raid...hence my question if I can use exFat on a large raid safely or if its a shortcut to disaster if I do it to save myself from having to rebuild the raid in a different file format and exFat was a lousy file system choice.

My current setup is a
CPU: 7900x
RAM: 64GB
Video: Titan RTX
Motherboard: x299 designare
Primary Editing Drive-Highpoint 8TB NVME raid
Secondary- M2s and SSDs, with 12TB hard drives for backup
External: Gtech 32/24TB functional raid 5 (HDDs)
Secondary Externals: Smattering of portable SSDs and HDDs that I want to consolidate onto one volume.
 
Grayson -
you have been posting for a LONG time. Have you still not purchased anything ? If you are not technical, and do not want to pay for someone to support you, then do not purchase a QNAP or a Synology. It's that simple.
We are in a technical business. I don't care if you are Mac, PC, Linux, NAS, etc , etc. This stuff constantly changes - just like editing programs constantly change. If you are not willing to keep studying all this stuff, and are
not willing to deal with the technical aspects of this, perhaps all of this is not for you. Either you learn how to do this, or you pay someone to help you. Because once you find something that you like and understand, the
electronics industry will change this on you, and then you will be unhappy again. I mean - just look at Apple APFS. That's our industry - that's what we do for a living. We have to keep up, or find something else to do, to make money.
bob
 
Just wanted to stop by and say a little something about some DAS vs. NAS options at the moment, in particular talking about QNAP, Areca and Promise. I’ve been using DAS on my workstations in the form of Promise or Areca Thunderbolt RAIDs or internal setups on PCs, usually with an ARECA RAID controller. Additionally, I’ve had a NAS layer to my network that has evolved over the past few years. The DAS options always give the best performance when it comes to localized workspace storage and we can still share between workstations over the network, but it’s not collaborative workspace and takes more direct fiddling with things on an as-needed basis every time I need to copy or move a project.

So I have a Promise Pegasus2 R6 that I had been using with a Trashcan Mac Pro and it is now on my iMac Pro, but it’s continuously full and a kludge going from a TB3 to TB2 adapter and then using an optical TB2 cable so it can sit a ways away from me next to a couple printers and other such so I don’t have to listen to its fan right at my desk. Part of me not upgrading until now is that I was waiting for optical TB3 cables... And I will finally take delivery of a 30m Areca optical TB3 cable today! They are semi-officially shipping, kinda, special order from a few vendors like B&H, but hard to actually get.

I decided I was going to get a new 8-bay Areca and fill it with 12TB Seagate Ironwolf HDDs. But I had also been eyeing the QNAP TVS-872XT NAS with TB3 and 10GE since it launched about a year ago. They’re both the same price... Knowing that I’d take a performance hit, I opted for the QNAP. A performance trade-off that would hopefully still deliver adequate performance for the iMac station while allowing me to simultaneously directly connect my MBP and have the unit accessible over the network. And like setting up any QNAP NAS, if you have not done so before, it’s a bit quirky getting account and access and management going. Not really a big deal if you’re used to setting up web-based management stuff. The RAID itself is easy to configure, no different than setting up a Promise or Areca RAID. It takes FOREVER for the RAID to initialize, especially with all those TB’s. I configured this NAS a week ago and was out of town over the weekend when the RAID finished initializing itself.

The QNAP is sitting right at my desk at the moment and connected via a 1m TB3 cable to my iMac Pro and the 10GE connector running to my 10G switch in the equipment closet.

I’m getting less than half the performance out of these HDDs than I should or would had I gone with the Areca TB3 unit. And yet, still over 1100MB/s. I have the IP options turned off for the TB3 interface to boost performance, don’t need to use them as a network interface, just storage access. What really surprised me is that when connecting the MBP and having my son cut something together in FCPX while I did the same on the iMac Pro, it worked great on both systems. All R3D, mostly 6K, some 8K... Then we tried the same while having a PC do a bunch of file transfers to/from over the 10GE... Definite performance hit there, but all still workable. I’m impressed at how well this thing load balances. While not a speed demon like the single-connection TB3 Areca or Promise units, this thing can legit support three users banging on it simultaneously to the tune of 350MB/s+ each and bursting well over that in the highs and lows as it rolls with the requests of each client. I’m thinking about putting in a couple M.2 SSDs in there to see how well the cacheing works. I have a few 512GB and 1TB 970 EVOs handy that would probably do the trick.

Can’t wait to give the optical TB3 cable a try. 30m is overkill if I place it where the current Promise RAID sits, but long enough where if it works I could relocate the unit to the equipment closet. In that situation I would have to buy a second TB3 optical cable though.. Or I would add a dual 10GE adapter so I could run 20G aggregate into the switch and then connect the MBP via a TB3 to 10GE unit I already own.... Meh. $200 for the 10GE expansion card vs. $800 for the optical TB3 cable. Not that it matters specifically, but I have to use the dual 10GE RJ45 adapter (PCIe v2 x4) rather than their newer/better (PCIe v3 x8) with dual 10GE SFP+. Boneheads at QNAP gave us an X16 and an X4 slot in the unit and the X16 being the one that supports TB3 pass through. They should have given two v3 x8 slots. This NAS can be ordered off-menu with the newer PCIe v3 x8 10GE adapter installed instead of the TB3 card. Which makes it the best price/performance 8-bay unit QNAP offers with multiple 10GE ports.

Anyway, that was rather long and drawn out for what it was. Just wanted to point out this NAS as an option for those considering TB3 DAS solutions. Depending on your setup, the performance hit may be negated by the ease of connecting multiple systems, all for the same money. I don’t think I would recommend the 4 bay or 6 bay version of this NAS for a performance setup. Not enough cost savings to take the respective 25% and 50% performance and capacity penalties.

Wish they made a 12-bay or 16-bay version of this unit that included dual TB3 and dual 10GE right out of the box. There is an older version of this unit that provides 4 x 2.5” bays in addition to the 8x 3.5”, but only PCIe v2 slots, slower CPU and no M.2 slots. It does have dual 10GE and quad TB3 out of the box, so it’s still a big seller for them. It’s also double the price.

I’m also digging the new 24-bay Areca 8050T3 SAN system. Trying to see if I can arrange a demo of one. They’re telling me it far outperforms the Jellyfish for 1/5th the price and can attach 9 TB3 clients simultaneously.

Oh, and I don’t recommend ExFat as a file system on any large RAID. It’s just not a robust file system. And don’t put all your eggs in one basket with a RAID like this. Sure, there’s redundancy, but I’ve seen too many failures that still result in catastrophic data loss or corruption. Have a good data management plan and backup system in place. 100TB on a single RAID with no backup is just asking for trouble.
 
The optical Thunderbolt 3 cable (30 meters) is working! That said, I don’t know if I’d buy another unless prices drop by quite a bit. They offer a great solution for distancing peripherals, storage, displays or whatnot from the host system. For storage or network applications they’re superior to 10GE within a limited application and setting, but pointless for larger or ground-up installations with current pricing and availability of 40GE and 100GE solutions. The above setup is my home/office continuously evolving experiment.

I’d like to see someone make TB3 optical a baluns that could utilize standard fiber patch cables we can already run and terminate as needed. IMO, that makes more sense than trying to sell integrated cables at pre-set 10, 20 and 30 meter lengths.
 
At the moment I am putting together a 12 bay RAID using the Areca SAS Expander System (Areca ARC-4038-12 12-bay 12G SAS Tower JBOD) into an Areca ARC-1883x RAID Controller Card. I am hoping this gives me a certain amount of expandability with the benefit of DAS performance. The other advantage is that you can get 6m long SAS cables which is plenty for me. All this hardware is based on the newer 12 Gb/s architecture. I am hoping this system is stable
http://www.sasexpanders.com/
 
The Areca 4038 seems like a reasonable SAS/SATA solution. The dual 8644 ports can supply an aggregate 96Gbps of throughput if run in SAS 12G mode — you have to install SAS 12Gb HDDs or SSDs. Using SATA 6G HDDs gives you 48G bandwidth, still a bit more than Thunderbolt 3. Truth be told, current HDDs can’t sustain 6Gbps I/O anyway, so you’ll probably need another 8 or 12 bay expander on there to saturate your bandwidth. And even then... If you went with SSDs, you could saturate it, but then you’re sacrificing lots of TBs for speed and spending a lot more money.

Having used the Areca 1883 RAID adapters in several installations, I think you will be pleased. The 4038 enclosure series looks just like their 8050T3 Thunderbolt3 series and seems to be pretty much spec’d out identically but they pipe out the SAS/SATA interface to your external host.

Which HDDs are you planning to use?

I’m doing a QNAP NAS install this weekend. I’ll outline it here on the forums as I think it will be of interest to some. It’s for a fellow RED user on a budget who was initially considering a 12-bay Thunderbolt 3 Areca unit, but ultimately went for the 16-bay QNAP so he can serve both a Mac and a PC workstation, maybe a MacBook Pro too.
 
The QNAP TVS-x72T3 units allow you to disable the IP/Net functionality of the TB3 connection and gain more performance. That said, it’s still not as fast as a dedicated TB3 DAS unit like the Areca as the QNAP is built to balance and share access vs. single-user performance of the Areca, Promise, etc...

Ultimately, if someone wants to share between workstations the QNAP performance NAS units are a great option. But I recommend 12-bays or more with dual 10GE or better as the NAS interface to the network. That’s plenty of bandwidth to support 2 to 4 users all simultaneously working in 4K+ unless they’re doing some real intense stuff. In that intense scenario, one has to go back to DAS options for the workstations that need it. Or look to even larger NAS setups with 24+ bays and/ or SSD storage to enable the multi-user throughput they need. But then to serve it up, we have to start looking at 25G, 40G, etc.. interfaces. Dual-port 40GE cards for the PCs or the NAS are right at $400. Not bad considering 10GE cost more than that just a couple years ago. Switching hardware prices are falling fast, but are still out of reach for a lot of indie and small boutique guys. By the time they do the NAS, high speed interface cards, switching hardware, etc.. they could just put an 8-bay Areca TB3 unit on each workstation and call it good. But like I said, prices are falling. This is one of my favorite switches on the market right now, it’s a beast and way better than buying a 24port Netgear piece of junk for the same price.
 
The qnap we got has 9xhdd and 6xssd where the ssds works as a cache for most used folders. A combo that works quite well / combinds the benefits of fast ssds and big hdd. Have not tried to use the tb3 connection as such as we got 6 machines connected.

But its fast enough for working with 8k R3D files. But ofcourse lags with larger exr files and such and yes depends how many are pushing/pullibg to it at the sane time.

The qnap ftp, filesharing and the whole nas layout is really nice. Basically a computer on its own and nice to hook up usb devices and such that can be reached over the network and web etc. So yes the server aspects of it all has benefits. But we also run pegasus r8’s and lacie big’s with local storage for faster read writes for flame / stonefs and such.

So if working alone on one machine then a lacie big or such works great, but if you work as a team / have the project go trough a few machines then a qnap is great.
 
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