Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

RAID solutions using Red

Just wanted to bring up the issue of maximum transfer rates. The Caldigit, for example, uses the Intel IOP333 Xscale I/O Processor and is apparently capped at 500MB/s (see: http://www.barefeats.com/hard105.html and http://www.caldigit.com/news/HDElement.pdf). You could max out internal drives and HD elements in RAID 0, but you still wouldn't break 500MB/s.

The RocketRAID uses the Intel IOP348 and can apparently deliver sustained transfer rates of over 1004MB/s read and 913MB/s write ( http://www.highpoint-tech.com/ ) Barefeats benched it at 1038 read 748 write with empty SAS drives in RAID 0 (http://www.barefeats.com/hard111.html:).

There are obviously many other considerations. Also, I'm no expert, so forgive me if I've overlooked some aspect of the matter.

(edit: just saw that the RocketRAID also supports RAID 3 which is better for huge video files (as do the excellent higher end G-technology solutions))
 
zak forrest said:
what does anyone know about iSCSI? i havent started researching all this yet, but I was told I could possibly hook up to a raid box from two computers using an ethernet cable and forgo a raid card, is this true?

i'm hoping to get a 16 bay (or something like that) raid box and hook up to it from two mac pros, i would rather not get into buying a switch and setting up a whole network, is this possible with iSCSI instead of fiber channel? anyone have any recommendations or knowledge to share?
Click to expand...

Talk to Matt at Small Tree if your after NAS.

You'll be limited to about 60>100MBs though.

s
 
Raid and the meaning of life - long

Raid and the meaning of life - long

Hi All,

I've spent a lot of time overseeing large scale storage systems, and therefore have built and bought from most of these vendors. Some of these systems were built on sata based drives.

(I'm installing Win2k8 server on a home brew supermicro based 16TB server for archive while I type this)

First to the original question. The good news is drives after the initial burn in period are quite reliable. I personally stick to Seagate and Western Digital, but with the exception of Maxtor, which really do suck IMHO, brand hasn't been an issue. The Tom's hardware site is great resource on drive information.

Better raid implementations take advantage of native command ques, and SMART information to prevent problems, and provide early warning of failure, so you should look for that. Also the enterprise class drives are built with much higher MTBF ratings, so they're built to run continuously, and hold up well. They have longer warranty periods, and WD is great because they provide an option to send you a replacement immediately and not charge you if you return the failed drive. I'd recommend the RE3's for large arrays.

A good indication of a good choice is to see what the major raid vendors qualify their cards with, checkout sonnet, LSI, promise, and 3ware's websites.

From context it appears your looking for a capture render solution.

I love my Mac Pro but this is one area in which Apple sucks (only four internal bays) because while it is an overly simplified statement, it's really more about the number of drives than about individual drive speed in larger arrays.

You decision should be driven by how much i/o speed you need.

If fast enough, a cheap and easy solution is to set up two drives in a striped raid set in disk utility.

This will give you about 170MB/s write speed and about 180MB/s read speed. (1900x1080 10 bit 1.0 GB file read/write)

I don't have Red data files at present, but the new lenses have convinced me that I can now afford a Red system soon, so I'd be happy to help test throughput speeds, as I’m going to need to do that anyway.

If you can live with the risk of of possibly losing data on your capture render disk, then you are done. You'll just need an archive solution or near line storage solution that is redundant (raid 5, 6,50,60) or Blu-Ray, tape etc.

I recommend against any direct attached lower budget solution based on FW, USB as bus speed is going to limit i/o to significantly below the speeds aforementioned.

eSata based external solutions are better, but with most lower budget (three to five disks) raid 0,1 and 5 solutions I have had, or have tested, i/o hasn't been much faster that the above (sometimes slower). With raid 5 at least you’ve mitigated risk somewhat, but the ratio of parity data storage on a smaller array is quite a bit higher.

The next level up is an internal raid card with three drives in a raid five array internal to your Mac Pro. I don't have such a set up to test here, but I'd recommend this solution if it's fast enough for you. It's pretty cheap, and if you loose a drive you are still probably OK.

My experience with build quality and failure rate put Promise’s controllers in the second tier after 3ware, lsi/adaptec, atto, -sonnet, but for the Mac they are one of the few options available.

I'm think that atto is the sonnet’s oem for the card, and I've had very good luck with sonnet's products on my Macs, but their price is quite a bit higher than Promise. Caldigit’s card’s specs do look good, and the price is fair. For their external raid solutions, Caldigit's elane interface is proprietary, so you wont be able to use it with an eSata express card 34 and the eLane card is crazy expensive at 379.00.

But I’m a little wary about recommending Caldigit.

I too had heard very good things about them. Therefore I recently purchased an HDOne. It's been a mess. I'm a month in we are still trying to get the thing to work. Perhaps I am the one in a thousand outlying data point, but while they are really nice on the phone, I paid a huge premium for the HDOne expecting a “it just works solution”, and there have been a lot of roadblocks along the way. Many software revisions tried, purchase of third party disk management software over and above the two I already owned etc. I'll be happy to detail this off line, and I'm still trying, the new enclosure showed up today, and so far so good, so I’m hopeful. But in the latest example of the obstacles encountered in reaching problem resolution; after a week of waiting for the replacement enclosure, and sending follow up mail I got:

Sorry for wait. The warehouse made a mistake, and shipped your replacement to another customer.

I issued another enclosure for you, and it will go out today via UPS.

Your mileage may vary.

The next level up would be a raid card with an external storage solution or an external storage solution with an internal raid card. I’d stick with a known vendor like Gtech, Sonnet, or Caldigit. My experience with most home brew solutions at the middle of the market are really a mixed bag. The few Gtech solutions I’ve had, while expensive have been bullet proof.

These solutions can be pretty fast, the HDOne, when it’s bloody well online ;-) gives me about 350 MB/s write, and 410 MB/s read speed at 1920x1080 10 bit, 1 GB. Which is plenty fast for mutiple streams of ProResHQ, which is my predominate work flow.

I’d love feedback on if that’s going to be enough for Red work flow.

You can’t upgrade the drives to larger drives on these “storage solution products” without voiding warranty. That seems fair to me, but wanted to be sure you were aware.

For archival / final cut server / near line storage, I use Windows. Not because I like windows, but I’ve had a 3ware raid 50 array running for lots (~5+) years on the same card, and when a drive craps out it auto-rebuilds and send me an email, It just works. The LSI is similar but I haven’t had it as long. I’ve had two Promise cards die in the same time frame.

To provide some perspective, total cost of the 16TB server for me was around four thousand dollars, less than twice as much than the two TB solution I purchased from Caldigit.

I’m not going to speak to fiber channel or multiple workstation set ups as they are super spendy and likely more than you need.

Also I’d avoid NAS based solutions, for the same reasons, they are generally really slow, and only really an option for long term storage, not render, unless you spend huge dollars.

A couple more points.

If you are really counting on your storage, a battery back up on the card is important. It’s bad mojo to have an array lose power in the middle of write. My servers have redundant power supplies, battery backup on the cards, and a mofo big APS UPS in the rack, and I’ve never lost data.

I’m unaware of an external raid solution that provides battery backup, consequently, mine are all on a UPS.

Feel free to PM me with questions, it will be nice to give back rather than just lurk for a change. :-)

Steve
 
vico said:
I use sonnet D400 and D500:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusiond500p.html

Amazing speed, no problem during last year, very hard work year.
Click to expand...

Which card did u use with this, and is the raid controller in the box itself, or is this simply a external harddrive box, I'm looking for a solution to travel around with on a upcoming red shoot we are doing, plan would be to have something like this at base camp that we dump our footage to each night, and also backup to lto4.

Thanks
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top