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[OT] Storage Arrays

  • July 20, 2012
  • 9 replies
  • 14 views
ImAMacGuy
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We are acquiring a MacPro for some video editing / streaming. The users are asking for an 8TB Raid Storage for "video streaming".

The mentioned the promise pegasus 8TB RAID storage, but the MacPro doesn't come with thunderbolt and I haven't come across any PCIe --> TB addin cards.

Apple rep suggested either FW 800, Fibre, or eSATA.

The FW 800 I think will be too slow
the Fibre is expensive as all heck, plus the drive ensclosures look like they are rack mounted (they want it on the desk next to the machine)
the eSATA will probably fit the bill (after we put in an eSATA card), however I'm not sure what's a good brand to look at. I despise Lacie on a molecular level, so not them..

The most important factor they requested is high speed read/write over redundency.

What are your opinions?

    9 replies

    ImAMacGuy
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    • ImAMacGuy
    • Author
    • Esteemed Contributor
    • July 20, 2012

    If I do a MacPro w/ 4 x 2TB drives, can I stripe them together? or does a boot drive need to be there and the rest be striped?

    J
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    • jarednichols
    • Valued Contributor
    • July 20, 2012
    The most important factor they requested is high speed read/write over redundency.

    You're looking at Fibre channel to RAID then.

    EDIT: I thought you literally meant high speed "layered" over redundancy. Like RAID 10 or something. You're meaning speed is more valued than redundancy, yes?

    ImAMacGuy
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    • ImAMacGuy
    • Author
    • Esteemed Contributor
    • July 20, 2012

    yes, speed of read/write > redundency but I think Fibre may be too expensive due to the card, the storage, the cable runs, etc.

    R
    Forum|alt.badge.img+13

    you can stripe all the internal bays if you use one of the optical bays for the boot drive, spinning or ssd.

    i wouldn't do that, though.

    had to double check the mac pro specs to find they don't ship with thunderbolt ports. dafuq?

    in the past, i used esata cards and small 4 or 6 bay port multiplier boxes with either hardware or just software raid for local video editing station storage. speed is okay, hardware's affordable enough. just have the users store all final or work in progress centrally and only use the local disk as scratch/temporary work storage.

    mm2270
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    • mm2270
    • Legendary Contributor
    • July 20, 2012
    you can stripe all the internal bays if you use one of the optical bays for the boot drive, spinning or ssd.

    I did the same thing once with a Mac Pro. Installed the boot drive into the extra unused optical bay, then had 4 x 1 TB drives in the main 4 drive bays. I created 2 striped RAID sets using 2 drives each, which gave me ~2 TBs x 2, then mirrored those together, which gave some basic speed and redundancy. Basically RAID 0+1. No, it ain't "real" RAID, but it worked for what I was using it for.

    I know in some video production environments they set up all striped raid arrays and don't worry at all about redundancy, since its temporary space for rendering and the final files just get moved off right after into a more secure space. If that's what the purpose is, I suppose its OK to just stripe all the drives. it'll be pretty fast, but if one fails, its all sunk.

    R
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    • rdeadmin
    • New Contributor
    • July 23, 2012

    You might consider looking into a Mini-SAS solution. The arrays come in both tower and rack configurations from different vendors. You would also need a Mini-SAS PCIe card in the Mac Pro.

    Many of the cards also support multiple RAID levels. ATTO and Highpoint make good options for Mac.

    Mini-SAS is also really fast - up to 48GB/s in some configurations and definitely cheaper than a Fibre Channel solution.

    donmontalvo
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    • donmontalvo
    • Hall of Fame
    • July 23, 2012

    If you're building/buying a RAID, I wouldn't put too much trust in SATA drives, even in RAID arrays...silent corruption and all...

    --https://donmontalvo.com
    B
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    • bajones
    • Contributor
    • July 23, 2012

    Don, your post inspired me to research silent corruption in SATA drives. I was previously unaware of this concept. It's horrifying!

    donmontalvo
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    • donmontalvo
    • Hall of Fame
    • July 24, 2012

    @bajones Dan Shoop hammered this concern home on the admin lists some while back...at the same time he explained that ZFS would eliminate the problem.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_corruption
    http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dan-shoop/0/403/510

    Too bad Apple decided to stop working on ZFS. Having worked on Solaris for so many years (Xinet), silent corruption was never a concern.

    Don

    --https://donmontalvo.com
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