NEED help with this DIY 16TB RAID

[Nick Shaw]

J Dub, have you seen this card? It is listed as $670 vs $995 for this card
http://www.small-tree.com/Quad_Port_Copper_PCI_e_Gigabit_Ethernet_Server_p/peg4.htm

One is Gb, the other 10Gb

 

[michael zaletel]

I have a RAID that writes 200Megabytes/Sec and reads 700Megabytes/Sec on a Mac G5. I want to be able to get the maximum possible read/write speed from my Mac Pro.

Couldn't I just put a PCI-e Fibre Channel card in my Mac Pro and a PCI-x Fibre Channel card in my Mac G5 and then connect the two together with a 49-foot Duplex Fibre Channel Patch Cable (it's in the other room) to get the full possible read/write speed for under $1,000 (buying both cards and cable on eBay at today's buy-it-now prices).

Please let me know if there's any flaws in this solution. Also, what if I put another Fibre-Channel PCI-x card in the G5 and a Fibre Channel PCI-e card in another Mac Pro and connect those two point to point as well. Seems like a cheap HIGH-SPEED solution for a 3 computer network.

Please advise,

-shooter

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

best 10G cards are CHELSIO

http://www.chelsio.com/products_10g_adapters.html

 

[Mike McCarthy]

I have a RAID that writes 200Megabytes/Sec and reads 700Megabytes/Sec on a Mac G5. I want to be able to get the maximum possible read/write speed from my Mac Pro.

Couldn't I just put a PCI-e Fibre Channel card in my Mac Pro and a PCI-x Fibre Channel card in my Mac G5 and then connect the two together with a 49-foot Duplex Fibre Channel Patch Cable (it's in the other room) to get the full possible read/write speed for under $1,000 (buying both cards and cable on eBay at today's buy-it-now prices).

Please let me know if there's any flaws in this solution. Also, what if I put another Fibre-Channel PCI-x card in the G5 and a Fibre Channel PCI-e card in another Mac Pro and connect those two point to point as well. Seems like a cheap HIGH-SPEED solution for a 3 computer network.

Please advise,

-shooter

Regular Fibre HBAs use drivers that set them up as initiators instead of targets. There is software out there that allows you to use a regular Fibre HBA as a target, but it is expensive, and I have never heard much good about it. Direct connecting 2 10Gb NICs should work. If you are interested in Infiniband, let me know. I might have a cheap solution for you.

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

best 10G cards are CHELSIO

http://www.chelsio.com/products_10g_adapters.html

We are currently specing out and installing a 10gigE network at our facility
(helps to have a brother who is a high-level network engineer) and
I can safely say Jeff that... iscsi does NOT suck. Not sure where you
get that reference?

Infiniband is what we wanted, but Quantel does not support it and its still a tad spendy.

There are indeed a number of companies releasing new and lower priced 10 GiGe switch products... mostly Silicon Valley start-ups... and I can tell you this system costs far less than 4Gb Quad channel fiber... (especially when u factor cabling) and even more especially as 100 GigE is on the horizon. and FCOE (fiber over ethernet) is now supported, allowing more companies to more affordably integrate existing fiber infrastructure.

When we are done, we will publish a white paper on the system, we have some custom software we are writing as well... frankly, it makes my head
hurt talking to my bro about it, Im a producer, not an uber geek.

Its not "cheap" but it less than Fiber and he maintains it will be faster than
8GB Fiber. time will tell. stay tuned.

 

[Mike McCarthy]

Anyone know if you can directly connect 2 10Gb NICs without a switch? (The way you do with a crossover cable on Cat5 networks)
The switch is obviously a big part of the cost, and if you only need to connect two systems, should be unnecessary, right? Has anyone tried this, or know the answer for sure?

 

[Bob Gruen]

Anyone know if you can directly connect 2 10Gb NICs without a switch? (The way you do with a crossover cable on Cat5 networks)
The switch is obviously a big part of the cost, and if you only need to connect two systems, should be unnecessary, right? Has anyone tried this, or know the answer for sure?

If 10GB still follows the same spec (which I assume it does as it's Ethernet) then you would need a crossover cable.

Link aggregation will add about 80% to the single link speed and all you need is an intelligent switch like the Netgear ProSafe 8-port or the Linksys SLM2008.

 

[John Jonathan]

Hey Tim,

I think you were told that iSCSI sucks for one reason, it sucks your CPU power. Most people wouldn't notice this, but if you are working on a really high end station, using lotts or all of its CPU and memory and you are connected to an ISCSI network, it requires your CPU to navigate the data traffic coming to and from your station to your network. Other solutions like FIBRE are more expensive, but don't require the CPU of the station getting or putting data on the network. Basically high speed networks require lots of navigation, a CPU or other entity navigating the traffic, so your network is not a traffic jam with data all piled on top of each other trying to get where they want to be.

I would say if your computers sit idle most of the time, not using their power, like a word processor or spreadsheet, then you will never notice iSCSI taking power from your CPU. If you are doing some high end computing with a station, make sure you test iSCSI before you implement it. Or you could get in situation where an editing, compositing, graphics station will slow down, hiccup, mouse cursor spinning, etc.. to get or write data on to your network. It will probably never be that dramatic, but imagine a situation where you are rendering, but your renders slow down because you are writing to or reading from a iSCSI network.

Just something to think about..

 

[Frank Cueto]

Whatever happened to all the data traffic protocols talked about in this thread?

Is Iscsi something that I can just plug in, or I need ISCSI specific NIC's?
It would be great if I could just plug a iSCSI storage box to my network a voila, everyone has automatic access to it. Does it work like that though?

-Frank Cueto