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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

New MAC User : Three questions

Jack_Flesher

New member
hm drobo,
I'm not to sure about that, as it has its own proprietairy file system.
So if things go wrong with the drobo itself/internal raid controller, whatever apart from the harddisc, you can't just put a harddisc out of the drobo in the mac/external enclosure, as it will not be recognised.

The only way to access the data is buying a new drobo and waiting to be delivered...

And it works pretty much that way with any RAID5 system :)

And if you read my entire protocol I outlined above, you'll note that my DROBO will be redundantly backed up to individual drives stored offsite, so for the most part my data files are totally re-constructible.
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
hey Jack

that wasn't a offense towards your new baby; I simply wanted to make George - a newbee in terms of HFS+ - aware of the fact:

"Using an intelligent mixture of industry standard practices to protect your data, Drobo can offer significantly more storage capacity than standard RAID solutions."

Other data storage systems allow RAID 1, aka mirror-RAID, whithin HFS+.

Sure, the add a disc-feature of the drobo is nice, its just the "intelligent mixture of industry standard practices " beeing the price you pay for.
 
As for SAS

SAS:

I read a review in the last Sound on Sound magazine, they do tests concerning sample streaming and audio track replay at rates such as 24 bit and 96 khz, loading Reverb Units and playing virtual instruments.

The conclusion was that SAS did not provide a considerable boost in performance concerning the required audio performance compared to non SAS mac's. The Tester concluded that the perfomance boost probably makes sense for people that use HD video streaming in programs such as Adobe Premiere or similiar, but questioned the capital expenditure for other applications.

As Jack said, the prices for the RAID controller and (here) 300 Gig SAS drives are extraordinary high, and you can not mix it with regular SATA 2in the Mac Pro.

My thoughts concerning such storage solutions are:

- Performance

Does it really give me an edge in terms of real world applications? Programs such as NUENDO seem not to benefit THAT much from it, and sample playback does not need it either, here RAM is rather important. Current SATA 2 drives already have a high performance for such applications.

- Reliability

That is a different cattle of fish. Raid 5 allows to have a fully mirrored OS and Dataprotection. But do I really need that? Back in 2001 I decided that I have more advantage from a striped Raid-0 with Raptor SATA 1 drives, but this was at a time where these babies outperformed literally everything else on the market in terms of datatransfer and speed. This has changed now, may be not with the new Velociraptors, and I will have a look into them as well, also because they are really enterprise class HD's.

- Cost/Benefit

What does it bring in terms of benefits? Photoshop and other stuff will hopefully feel comfortable with 16 Gigs, so a scratch disc as fast as possible is not really needed for me.

OK, I can see one more practical point, say I come home from a Trip with my MBP and transfer files on a DAS/NAS/SAN whatever, (at least for NAS) I do not even need to start the MCP to acess and transfer files. Then again, My maschines are on most of the time when I am in the office, I can't see that "bad" habitt changing. LOL :)

Then again, it is not likely that I will add another Mac any time soon, so I literally have 2 to deal with, apart from PC's, this might be different for you guys.

So, I think I can just run a Gigaswitch and connect MCP, MBP, Printer, DAW controller etc. and my MBP has access to all drives on the MCP, admittedly, the MCP has to be switched on including external drives.

An empty NAS controller box for example from linksys would cost me in the region of 600 euro.

Then again 600 euro would buy me 2x 2GB Lacie Ethernet Discs, or 2x WD 2GB NAS Discs.

....choices, choices, choices

Then again, it sure has the Uebergizmoeffect <grins>

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10458

;)
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Georg:

I think your above strategy is sound, just know that for whatever reason Mac doesn't like to work well with all NAS storage protocol -- yes it's weaker than PC here -- so stick to names that show up as working in the various Mac forums. Frankly that is one of the reasons I chose the DROBO over other options is I knew it worked well with Mac. Of course there are others too, just do your homework.

One last thought. Since it is only your two machines and since you can network the machines through GigLan, you might want to consider simply attaching a true RAID DAS to your MacPro and share it across the network. THat way you can easily write to it across the Lan from your MBP yet get all the added performance benefit of DAS when massaging the files on your MacPro. And unlike NAS, there are plenty of good DAS RAID boxes that work perfectly on Mac -- if it's all about performance, then I'd get one of the 4 or 5 drive multilane hot-swap SATA boxes and a good card, you'll have speed and redundancy.

Just a thought,
 
SAS:

The conclusion was that SAS did not provide a considerable boost in performance concerning the required audio performance compared to non SAS mac's. The Tester concluded that the perfomance boost probably makes sense for people that use HD video streaming in programs such as Adobe Premiere or similiar, but questioned the capital expenditure for other applications.

As Jack said, the prices for the RAID controller and (here) 300 Gig SAS drives are extraordinary high, and you can not mix it with regular SATA 2in the Mac Pro.
That could be a controller limitation.

Regardless, after market RAID cards support more drives at that price point (8-12). Most brands advertise the ability to mix and match SAS and SATA drives.

But where I am advocating the possible use of SAS controllers is with 6+ drive raid arrays where aggregate read and write speeds exceed the speed of an x4 PCI-Express port. On an x8 PCI-Express 2.0 electrical connection one can move 4 Gbytes per second to the controller making the drives the limiting factor. But you can get controllers that support 12 or more drives, allowing growth.

Bringing up hard drive performance can greatly improve performance. Just putting new drives on an older machine can greatly boost bottom line performance (load times, disk writes, ...) which makes you seem more in control of the situation.

16 GB of RAM is nice, but for the $3500 USD Apple wants for it one could get 16 GB of after market RAM and a SAS or eSATA RAID.

Do not forget that a fast RAID will also fill that 16 GB with data faster. You do not buy disk for benchmark measured performance, you buy disk to speed up slow processes in your business workflow. This is about taking a coffee break rather than going out to lunch while running a batch. If all your work fits into RAM and if it loads fast enough, then you do not need RAID.
My thoughts concerning such storage solutions are:

- Performance

Does it really give me an edge in terms of real world applications? Programs such as NUENDO seem not to benefit THAT much from it, and sample playback does not need it either, here RAM is rather important. Current SATA 2 drives already have a high performance for such applications.
What higher performing disk gives you is the ability to not have to say wait as much on the phone while talking with a client. This has more application to 32-bit systems than those supporting 8+ GB RAM.

RAID allows the creation of huge disk volumes so you can more easily keep all your data in one logical locale (the DROBO is good for this too).
- Cost/Benefit

What does it bring in terms of benefits? Photoshop and other stuff will hopefully feel comfortable with 16 Gigs, so a scratch disc as fast as possible is not really needed for me.

OK, I can see one more practical point, say I come home from a Trip with my MBP and transfer files on a DAS/NAS/SAN whatever, (at least for NAS) I do not even need to start the MCP to acess and transfer files. Then again, My maschines are on most of the time when I am in the office, I can't see that "bad" habitt changing. LOL :)
The more RAM I have, the longer my computer stays on. This is because of load times and how convenient it is the just sit and work. But I am a power user in computing style so whatever RAM I have will fill.
Then again, it sure has the Uebergizmoeffect <grins>

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10458

;)

Looks like a fun toy. But at that $1500 price point one could buy 16 GB RAM in 4GB sticks after market. At the end of the day your business needs should define what you buy. Do you need a silent system? Do you need more responsiveness? Do you have enough RAM? What do you need?

some thoughts,

Sean
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Sean mentioned acoustics, which we have not really discussed... One of the huge benefits to the Mac Pro is it runs nearly silent, even when working hard. I have mine on the desk literally right next to me and cannot hear it most of the time. However, the drives you choose are paramount! Most of the newest SATA2 drives are pretty quiet. For example, I have a pair of 500G Seagate 7200.11 drives that I cannot hear. But the OEM OS drive for my MacPro was a previous generation Seagate 500G 7200.10. Both have virtually identical specs, but the 7200.10 has noisy heads -- I've relegated it to an external SATA box as my Time Machine disk and moved it as far away from the main box as the cables allow. But TM runs every hour and the head seek noises are obvious even though TM usually only runs for 15 or 20 seconds. The buzz-clicking drives me nutz, so as soon as the DROBO arrives this drive is going to become one of the dedicated off-site back-up drives so I don't have to listen to it any more...

FWIW, here are other drives I use that are very quiet: WD 1TB Greens, Seagate 7200.11's, both 500G and 1TB versions, and Samsung 1TB spinpoints.

Cheers,
 
Regardless, after market RAID cards support more drives at that price point (8-12). Most brands advertise the ability to mix and match SAS and SATA drives.

Hi Sean,

do you use such a mix, and if so what Raid controller did you build in? - Fiber channel seem to be the non-plus-ultra, but well, too expensive. -

I know there are many mac foras out there, but can you guys here recommend one to watch? I suppose this subject is beyond the normal Mac User and probably more to be found on the Server side of things.

I was looking up this box for DAS

http://www.macobserver.com/review/2007/09/21.1.shtml

but what is a deal breaker is the max. cable length of 2 meters, simply because the Box is apparantly very noisy! Bummer.

Jack, this is re assuring, I was expecting a loud box, and already looked up foam material to put into the side panels, but I wait until I have it up and running. I was talking to my dealer about the Velociraptors, he talked to WD, no ETA yet here in Europe for the Mac Version. <shrungs>
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Georg:

Just be aware that not all cards work in Macs and usually need to specifically say they will work in Mac. A few places to shot for Mac-specific goodies:

http://www.macsales.com/ -- I buy all my RAM here, same spec as the OEM sticks and about 1/4 the cost. Also has a nice assortment of DAS and NAS for Mac as well as a good assortment of bare drives.

These are pricey, but get consistently excellent reviews, the DAS units bundled with their cards work perfectly in Mac, and styling to match your main case ;) : http://www.g-technology.com/index.cfm
 
Hi Georg,

do you use such a mix, and if so what Raid controller did you build in? - Fiber channel seem to be the non-plus-ultra, but well, too expensive. -
Sadly no. I still run XP w/ 3 GB of RAM and some 9 odd harddrives to in 6 volumes with 4 older drives condensed to a RAID 0+1 and a noisy case (lots of fans to move air in a full case). As I work with computers I follow the industry regardless, but as I am close to out of drive space and want more storage with better performance so have been watching this area closely for a while (it's a recurring problem). The faster disk greatly reduces the number and severity times when you must tell someone on the phone to wait while computer loads something. This small performance bump is probably best felt in human productivity as the computing process intrudes less on the creative processes of the mind by not stopping your creative flow. It is disk access that slows my workflow and wastes my time, not CPU bound processes.

There is no joking about Fiber Channel. <smile> It is simply not a technology intended for consumers, it is intended for industry where reliability is more critical. You would not buy an industrial dump truck to move some dirt around your yard when a wheel barrow will do. Slighlty exaggerated, perhaps. SAS is the next step down in terms of entry price.

eSATA w/ a port multiplier on an external case will probably be my next upgrade as my system will likely be a notebook (my computer is fast enough for my needs except w/ disk). This is a solution to saturating an x1 PCI-Express/Express Card link using RAID.

More RAM would be nice, but I do not need it for work. But, an SAS controller w/ SATA drives is still there as I would love to have a disk controller that is designed with more reliability in mind and a fair bit of expandability (more interface bandwidth, large cache) and it would cost less than a new computer and do more for my workflow in terms of performance.

Also remember, RAID is not a substitute for backups as the RAID controller and driver are both single points of failure. RAID 5 needs a hardware controller to perform well from the tests I have seen.


I know there are many mac foras out there, but can you guys here recommend one to watch? I suppose this subject is beyond the normal Mac User and probably more to be found on the Server side of things.
I do not follow platform based fora much so I cannot help there. This is beyond the realm of the average Mac user on the streat ("it works") but with video people on Macs this should not be an unknown problem.

I was looking up this box for DAS

http://www.macobserver.com/review/2007/09/21.1.shtml

but what is a deal breaker is the max. cable length of 2 meters, simply because the Box is apparantly very noisy! Bummer.
You can buy longer cables (SFF-8088/SFF-8088) up to 10 m leaving only the question of signal integrity in a longer cable. You should contact the manufacturer to ask about signal integrity versus cable length . This specific SATA controller uses SAS cabling. So there is likely an independent link to each drive so it should be upgradeable in the future so as to saturate each link with a single drive. eSATA port multiplier solutions are lower cost, but 3 or 4 drives in RAID 0 will saturate a link leaving no upgrade path except larger drives and future use as nearline storage.

There are also drive silencing kits out there. Rubber gasketed screws and rubber/silicone gaskets to damp vibrations and a high quality replacement fan would likely fix that. But what will work depends on the drive sleds and how well damped they are among other factors.

some thoughts,

Sean
 
It is disk access that slows my workflow and wastes my time, not CPU bound processes.

Yes, in the situation where a client is waiting on the phone, that's important to consider. However, not all practices are the same. What works best for me, doesn't necessarily work best for someone else.

My specific tasks are often slowed down by limitations in processing power and slow internal storage (should one run out of RAM). My secondary requirement is secure secondary storage capacity (and optionally remote access), which reduces access speed constraints.

Last night I replaced the 2 smaller of 4 drives in my NAS, in 2 sessions, by hot-swapping one disk at a time. This was as much a stress-test for my relatively new NAS (and to build my confidence), as it was an operation to boost the RAID storage capacity to almost 2.1 TB with affordable 750 GB drives in a small box. I now have 2 Western Digital and 2 Seagate drives in the box, which allows me to compare between the two (the more expensive Seagates run a few degrees hotter, according to the SMART data, and the hottest one of them already reallocated a sector).

When it was done, the NAS sent an email with the results, as it does whenever something noteworthy happens with the hardware, while it automatically manages problems should they happen. That can be a great help if you are not physically on the spot but want to follow progress and keep access intact. It also allows to leave the NAS running without having to have the computer on at the same time (which also saves power and wear).

So, different strokes for different folks ...

Bart
 
Bart, what about noise levels, are the fans in the box constantly running or is it a managed system with temperature/fanspeed control.

The NAS model I have (the NV+) has a single 92mm fan at the rear which varies its RPM with temperature. The built in powersupply is a fan-less type to reduce the noise, but of course that demands more of the rear fan, and requires the fan to also run (slowly) when it's asleep. I therefore also purchased a spare fan as an insurance, just in case something goes wrong during a weekend or at night and I don't want to wait for a replacement.

The fan itself is a Y.S. Tech FD129225HB-N rated at 37.5 dBA at 2800 rpm. My unit with 4x750GB drives on average runs at 2027-2083 rpm in a 23 degrees Celcius room temperature, which keeps the drives at approx. 40 degrees Celcius when in operation. During a Fan calibration the RPM varies between 1648 and 2816 as far as I could see, so it has capacity to spare (global warming and all ...). In addition to the fan there is of course the sound of the drives which is very low, but audible.

It is much less noisy than my old PC (modern PCs are much improved with large diameter fans), but I wouldn't place it too close to a analog sound recording setup, if only to avoid the occasional clicking sounds of the drives. You could place the NAS anywhere you want, it only requires an AC wall outlet for power and an Ethernet cable to your Router/Splitter/Computer.

Bart
 
For anybody interested, I posted some comments with screenshots from my DROBO experience on this thread: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2560

Hi Jack,

Seems you are sofar enjoying you new Drobo. Can you say anything about drive temperature (which is a good indicator of the amount of abuse drives are subjected to)? Does the Drobo software allow to monitor the health of individual drives (e.g. SMART data like temperature and other early warning signals) other than by the general LED feedback?

Bart
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Hi Jack,

Seems you are sofar enjoying you new Drobo. Can you say anything about drive temperature (which is a good indicator of the amount of abuse drives are subjected to)? Does the Drobo software allow to monitor the health of individual drives (e.g. SMART data like temperature and other early warning signals) other than by the general LED feedback?

Bart

Hi Bart:

No, you do not have access to any SMART drive info such as temperature. Would be a nice feature, for sure. If the drives are still running normally, you do get an "I am healthy" report.
 
Hi Bart:

No, you do not have access to any SMART drive info such as temperature. Would be a nice feature, for sure. If the drives are still running normally, you do get an "I am healthy" report.

Okay, thanks for the info. It then might be interesting to find a utility that allows to read SMART data via FireWire, if the Drobo and/or FireWire controller allows such access. I don't even know if SMART readout via FireWire is possible at all. Other than that, if the unit doesn't get hot to the touch (there were reports about that with the Version 1 model), or the fan exhausts a moderate temperature airflow, I suppose things a fine.

Bart
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Other than that, if the unit doesn't get hot to the touch (there were reports about that with the Version 1 model), or the fan exhausts a moderate temperature airflow, I suppose things a fine.

Bart

Mine isn't even warm to the touch, the top of the box is basically room temp. BUT I suspect unit temps are a direct function of drives installed, and I am using drives known to run reasonably cool; I have a mix of Samsung 1TB Spinpoints and Seagate 7200.11. I also tested it with some WD 1TB Green's and it didn't get hot either, FWIW.

Cheers,

Jack
 
Hi Jack,

Seems you are sofar enjoying you new Drobo.

While I don't want to detract from the potential positives of a Drobo solution (I've been tempted to try one myself), I've also been really put off by the following:
http://www.drobo.com/buydrobocare/?s...TDF072604820;:

I have lots of sympathy for (small) new initiatives, but find their 'extended coverage' policy (having to pay for e.g. firmware upgrades beyond the first year, if I read them correctly) an uncommercially short term orientened one (for a proprietary solution). If so, they've lost me as a potential customer.

Bart
 
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