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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 :)

Promax FastMax Raid

Jarek Zabczynski

Jarek Zabczynski

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So as I've been posting on other threads, I've been putting together a new system to replace my aging 2006 MacPro.

I went with an 8 bay Raid 5 tower from Promax. With Atto r680 controller.

http://www.promax.com/p-1123-promax-fastmax-fx8-24tb.aspx

Just connected it and it was already configured for Raid 5 with 21TB of usable space.

Inside are 8 Toshiba 3TB drives that came neatly attached to nifty drive trays.

I ran BM Speed test and I was floored.

I maxed out at 1253MB/s reads and 938MB/s writes. I really wasn't expecting that!

I suppose that will go down as I fill it up with stuff, but still, I'm pretty impressed.

Not bad at all for under 3 grand!!!

Just wanted to share!!! Will be doing more tests soon!
 
Impressive. It came with the drives and controller card for that price?
 
Brandon J.F. said:
Impressive. It came with the drives and controller card for that price?
Click to expand...

It was for the enclosure with drives and 2 sas cables. The Card was extra. I picked that up for $750 online.
 
My only question would be, what's the best way to turn off an array like this? Unmouting the volume doesn't physically unmount all the drives in the array. Even when I shut off the machine they remain on. Hard off feels a bit scary.
 
About right for a Mac Pro

About right for a Mac Pro

Jarek Zabczynski said:
I ran BM Speed test and I was floored.

I maxed out at 1253MB/s reads and 938MB/s writes. I really wasn't expecting that!

I suppose that will go down as I fill it up with stuff, but still, I'm pretty impressed.

Not bad at all for under 3 grand!!!

Just wanted to share!!! Will be doing more tests soon!
Click to expand...
You're seeing what you should expect from 8 spindles and that performance will stay pretty consistent regardless of how much data you place on the array from our long term tests here. This is an example of why "more spindles" is better for our realm. And, excellent choice on the ATTO ExpressSAS RAID over the lower priced alternatives.

Not to throw cold water on your excitement, but the only remaining question really boils down to the drives themselves. What quality are they? 8 3TB drives in a RAID-capable chassis for under $3K seems like a "too good to be true" bargain. The only way that I can see that working is by using consumer-grade disks. And with disks, you really do get what you pay for :scared: . For example, 8, 3TB Seagate Constellation 3 drives (1.4 Million hr MTBF) would cost $2,400 with Amazon's bargain pricing. On the other hand, 8 of the Toshiba DT01ACA300 can be had for under $800. And, Toshiba doesn't even publish an MTBF rating for these consumer drives. In our testing, we shied away from Hitachi, Toshiba, and Western Digital spinning disks because of high failure rates in real-world, high throughput testing (like NLE editing). This is why we standardized our lines on Seagate Constellation ES.3 for the spinning disks and OCZ and Samsung for the SSDs.

Be sure that you are doing good backups of your data on that system. While RAID-5 can protect you from a single drive failure, if you lose more than one, you've lost everything.
 
Jarek Zabczynski said:
My only question would be, what's the best way to turn off an array like this? Unmouting the volume doesn't physically unmount all the drives in the array. Even when I shut off the machine they remain on. Hard off feels a bit scary.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that unmounting the array has done all that needs to be done so far as your data is concerned. When you mount and unmount a volume from the system, it's the filesystem on the device, not the physical hardware that matters. Therefore, once you've properly unmounted / ejected the array volume, you can power cycle in complete safety.
 
I have the iStorage Pro 8 bay which looks identical to the ProMax. What I do every day is shut down the Mac and then just hit the power button on the front of the RAID (inside the door). In the morning I fire it up and then start the Mac. I've been working this way for over a year with no issues.
 
Ok cool, I've been ejecting/unmounting and hitting the power button. The hard power off just sounds scary. Wanted to make sure I wasn't doing it wrong. On single disk units and even the dual drive g-raids I can physically hear the disks unmounting and spinning down before turning them off.
 
Jarek Zabczynski said:
Ok cool, I've been ejecting/unmounting and hitting the power button. The hard power off just sounds scary. Wanted to make sure I wasn't doing it wrong. On single disk units and even the dual drive g-raids I can physically hear the disks unmounting and spinning down before turning them off.
Click to expand...

Modern drives retain enough of a charge at powerdown to park the heads. No issues with removing power.
 
Brandon OLarey said:
I'd love to see a more in depth blog post on the process. It's something I'd like to try myself.
Click to expand...


Buy unit, install drives, connect cables, turn on? lol.

I'm happy to answer any questions as well.
 
Hi Tim

We were using the cheap seagate drives w terrible failures,
We switched to western digital enterprise drives with good
luck so far, when you mention wd as high failure rate, were
they the consumer grade or there enterprise, you have me
concerned now.

Thanks
Troy Smith




Tim Jones said:
You're seeing what you should expect from 8 spindles and that performance will stay pretty consistent regardless of how much data you place on the array from our long term tests here. This is an example of why "more spindles" is better for our realm. And, excellent choice on the ATTO ExpressSAS RAID over the lower priced alternatives.

Not to throw cold water on your excitement, but the only remaining question really boils down to the drives themselves. What quality are they? 8 3TB drives in a RAID-capable chassis for under $3K seems like a "too good to be true" bargain. The only way that I can see that working is by using consumer-grade disks. And with disks, you really do get what you pay for :scared: . For example, 8, 3TB Seagate Constellation 3 drives (1.4 Million hr MTBF) would cost $2,400 with Amazon's bargain pricing. On the other hand, 8 of the Toshiba DT01ACA300 can be had for under $800. And, Toshiba doesn't even publish an MTBF rating for these consumer drives. In our testing, we shied away from Hitachi, Toshiba, and Western Digital spinning disks because of high failure rates in real-world, high throughput testing (like NLE editing). This is why we standardized our lines on Seagate Constellation ES.3 for the spinning disks and OCZ and Samsung for the SSDs.

Be sure that you are doing good backups of your data on that system. While RAID-5 can protect you from a single drive failure, if you lose more than one, you've lost everything.
Click to expand...
 
Hi Troy,

Actually, we saw a higher rate with both the enterprise and the consumer drives over the Seagate ES.3 and older ES.2 drives. However, the difference between the consumer and enterprise WD drive is astonishing, so you're probably safe with your choice. For our realm (M&E), I urge users to stay well clear of the consumer-grade drives (this means anything that costs $.50/GB or less). Therefore, if you're seeing a 3TB drive for $99, it's consumer-grade and will not offer the reliability of the true enterprise drives.

This also plays into why I'm not a big fan of RAID-5/6. I'd rather have the full capacity offered by RAID-0 (striping) knowing that my protection layer comes from my BRU backups, rather than faith in a disk drive format :smile:

Regardless, I hope that you're actively backing up your work to alternate storage.
 
Thanks for the answers Tim ,

Yea we backup to two sets of raid 5 and Lto5

Going forward ill try out the seagates you use.

Thnks

Tim Jones said:
Hi Troy,

Actually, we saw a higher rate with both the enterprise and the consumer drives over the Seagate ES.3 and older ES.2 drives. However, the difference between the consumer and enterprise WD drive is astonishing, so you're probably safe with your choice. For our realm (M&E), I urge users to stay well clear of the consumer-grade drives (this means anything that costs $.50/GB or less). Therefore, if you're seeing a 3TB drive for $99, it's consumer-grade and will not offer the reliability of the true enterprise drives.

This also plays into why I'm not a big fan of RAID-5/6. I'd rather have the full capacity offered by RAID-0 (striping) knowing that my protection layer comes from my BRU backups, rather than faith in a disk drive format :smile:

Regardless, I hope that you're actively backing up your work to alternate storage.
Click to expand...
 
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